The changing face of advertising in China ...as seen by Ashok Sethi.

Reading this article early this morning, I wondered when China Daily will ask some of the Chinese interactive leaders to write about advertising. The author of this one is a TNS big shot in Asia Pacific. A researcher. The article gives a superficial overview of what he thinks to be the changing face, but he clearly is not aware of the landslide going on:  advertising is not "changing face", but "losing face". You can continue to call it a change, but that's a suicidal euphemism. It's also not a phenomenon which is uniquely Chinese, but intensely global.

But nevertheless I want to share with you the most funny part of his article in which he comments on the discovery that Chinese consumers are human beings. A great discovery indeed. Read it here. The changing face of advertising in China: "It was earlier thought that Chinese consumer is a simple soul and can't understand the subtlety of soft and clever advertising. Direct communication of the benefits in unambiguous terms was considered the safest route of communication. As a result, while advertising in many other markets is as much entertainment as brand communication and attempts to engage the consumer through subtle creative devices, in China it is often a direct onslaught with the core benefit - often repeated several times within the same advertisement. However, research in China shows this direct approach does not have to be the one that an advertiser needs to embrace to succeed. Emotional advertising works and so does humor, endorsement or any of the other genres of advertising practiced elsewhere."