Opinion... It is time we learned to love China's shanzhai marketers

My first instinct is to see where communications and marketing have failed, and attribute a company’s weaknesses to that particular issue.

But I recognise the tendency, so I step back and I do a reality check. For most companies in China, the main problem is neither communications nor marketing. It is poor productivity, insecurity about their own capabilities, insecurity about the future, industrial price wars, rampant counterfeiting, low returns on investment, government (especially local) meddling, and the speed of change in almost every industry.

Compound that with a generation of leaders that never had the luxury of learning management in the classroom, much less at the dinner table (where business is best learned), and marketing as a problem falls to the bottom of the list.

Which is why lately I have begun to develop a greater appreciation of those companies who have actually decided to do any marketing at all.

Speaking at an event in Beijing recently, I noted that many Chinese companies think ‘marketing’ means ‘advertising’, that ‘branding’ means ‘getting a logo’, and that ‘PR’ stands for ‘pay the reporter’. But on the way home, I kicked myself for my arrogance. We should not be knocking these companies, the up-and-comers who drop astronomical sums at the CCTV auction, who come up with logos that make us laugh or scratch our heads, and who conduct dog-and-pony press conferences with 300 reporters, each paid for their attendance.

Those companies are at least trying. They are early on the learning curve, but they are cobbling together the beginnings of a marketing capability in the best way they know. We should celebrate them for making that step.

And we should watch and learn.

Because in cobbling together their shanzhai marketing plans (shanzhai is a Chinese term referring to something that is an imitation or counterfeit), they are learning truths about marketing in China that are not taught in marketing books. I am not saying we should ape them: much of what is being done is wrong, even for China. But I suspect some of the most important innovations in marketing in China - especially marketing to the inland West and rural areas - will come from these same places.

David Wolf, CEO, Wolf Group Asia
[email protected]


This article was originally published in 3 December 2009 issue of Media.