09.27
About eight months ago I moved to Shanghai. It’s my first time living outside the United States as an adult, and as a consumer it sometimes feels like being reborn. Don’t get me wrong—Shanghai is a modern, diverse city, so it’s not so hard to find familiar Western brands here. But because of the ubiquity and lower cost of local brands (or at least less familiar ones), I’m constantly in the position of making decisions about brands with which I have no history—not the brands I grew up with and saw my parents using as a child—not the ones for which I remember a famous ad campaign from the 80s or can hum a jingle on cue.
(And as a side note, sometimes even the most familiar brands are somehow unfamiliar here.)
Of course it’s impossible to remove all the preconceived notions that influence a purchase decision, but in some ways I feel like a subject in an experiment: How do we form opinions and develop biases about things that are new to us? And it’s not just that they’re unfamiliar…the written language barrier also blocks access to otherwise simply communicated messages. Since moving here I’ve twice bought yogurt thinking it was milk. (Hey, show an American a white-and-blue, one-quart cardboard carton at the supermarket, and it’s milk. Talk about a strong semiotic code. Now I do a shake-test just to be sure.) Sometimes I can’t even read the name of the salty packaged snack I’m buying, much less the ingredients list, nutritional information, or where it’s manufactured, not to mention any romance copy about how crunchy or flavorful it is.
If this was an experiment, what could we learn from it? It’s hard to say how applicable the results would be to any other situation. Most adult consumers are literate. They watch local TV and read local periodicals. The fact is, I’m not even in the target market for the majority of the products I’m buying. Regardless, I do feel I’m learning about my own consumption habits from a new perspective and therefore gaining some insights that could be generalized to other consumers. For example:
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07.02
Heard about it on NPR and then On the Button: pork wants a shiny new tagline. Without further ado, some (mostly joke) ideas.
Pork:
- Brought to you by the makers of bacon
- Carnitas? More like carneato!
- Don’t hog the pork
- Don’t stick your snout up at it
- Favorite of the Chinese, your soon-to-be overlords
- Finally, something that doesn’t taste like chicken
- Got a beef with beef? Think chicken’s for chickens? Try pork.
- If you’re not eating pork, the terrorists have already won
- It’s actually red meat. Gotcha!
- It’s cracklin’!
- It’s in the can
- It’s got chops
- It’s time for America to bring home the bacon
- It’s what pork rinds are made of
- Jews can’t eat it. Muslims can’t eat it. Someone’s gotta!
- Makin’ bacon
- Now available in smoked flavor
- Oink it up!
- Pig out
- Probably an ingredient in SPAM
- Red, white and true
- So sweet. And yet so sour.
- Solving the mystery in “mystery meat”
- Swine and dine yourself (Wine and swine yourself?)
- Ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres (Pulp Fiction reference)
- That ain’t kosher
- That’ll do
- The red, white and good-to-chew meat
- This little piggy is delicious
- What’s one less pig?
- What’s the matter? Chicken?
- You can’t spell “spork” without pork
Got ideas?
[Thanks to Mom for originally pointing out this story.]
06.27
While visiting the US I stopped by Take a Bao, a new concept installed in the food court at Century City’s Westfield Mall. Despite feeling a bit funny about traveling all the way to LA for a Chinese-inspired lunch, I was drawn in by my fascination with fusion food, Take a Bao’s visual identity work, and the fact that I love char siu bao.
The idea for the place seems pretty straightforward. In their own words,
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06.15
Just something that’s been on my mind lately. Thought I’d throw together a mock menu. Click for a full-size version. If you open this restaurant, please get in touch.
05.03
I need to get my own mug for use in the office. Did a little homework online. Links below.
Top-left quadrant (structural, functional):
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04.26
[Originally published on BrandSource: Labbrand's Blog of Branding Insights. Please visit that site to comment.]
With last month’s announcement of Starbucks’ plan to offer tea in its hundreds of China-based stores, old questions are resurfacing about how Western brands should approach the Chinese marketplace. Chief among these questions is how to balance advantages of being perceived as a foreign brand with the increased relevance that comes from catering products to a local market.
As evidenced by mixed consumer and media reactions to Starbucks tea, there is no black and white answer to the question of whether brands should weight their product offerings more toward foreign or local attributes. Starbucks customers have been quoted as saying “How could a foreign newcomer satisfy us with our strict [tea] requirements?” while headlines like “Starbucks discovers that Chinese people like tea” suggest the company is late to the party—that it should have started selling tea closer to when it opened its first mainland store in 1999. Doubtless, many consumers will be delighted by the new option, while others will have legitimate complaints ranging from price, to concern for local teahouses, to the assumption that the American company can’t possibly make a good cup of Chinese tea.
But Starbucks is far from the first Western brand taking steps to localize its menu in China. Other local adaptations include
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