For the last decade, China has represented the fastest growing economy on the planet. It first tapped its vast resources as a cheap manufacturer due to the low cost of labor and favourable exchange rate. This attracted an endless supply of western companies wishing to improve their competitiveness by lowering their cost base. This was the catalyst that powered the urbanization of the Chinese people and with it the need for a vast array of new infrastructure and concomitant natural resources that helped sustain a general trend of global growth.
China’s rapid increase in global trade brought with it a natural increase in exposure to the western world. As the Chinese authorities contended with its censorship control the new generation of city dwellers demanded more and more western goods and with it, western culture.
Companies such as Ingredient?, a London based independent creative agency specializing in sports branding and television channel branding, were in big demand as we supplied the look and feel for much of what they were exposed to in the western world. Our designs and creativity were nowhere to be matched in China and the Chinese people were keen to learn.
Our first foray into China yielded a rebrand of CCTV-10, the Science and Technology channel, which was a real eye opener for us. They required our designers and technicians to work from the CCTV offices in Beijing so that they could learn our techniques and share ideas with us. The result was fantastic and to this day they use the logo we designed across all CCTV channels.
We still work with CCTV and are currently pitching for two projects; one on CCTV2 and one on CCTV5.
Every human being is creative(that is why we have developed a forebrain) so to extract the maxi- mum out of ones creative potential requires a combination of education and environment. The UK has always provided the best of both of these, which is why places like Soho in London, is a melting pot of multicultural creativity on the planet.
What is important when working with different cultures such as China is to be mindful of their different creative requirements. What works for you might not work for them. Sure, they might want to like as good as western brands but they still require a degree of customizing so their own culture is reflected. This is why working with them, and not just for them, is so important.
We have set up an affiliation with a Chinese production company, partly because this is a requirement to do business in China and partly because have local expertise is incredibly important when growing a business in China. Like anywhere in the world, a countries culture is extremely important to them and to be ignorant of their beliefs and idiosyncrasies shows a lack of respect and is a sure way to fail.
I have been travelling to China for many years and whilst they have been guilty of piracy and have had a general disregard for the respect of intellectual property, it is not entirely the fault of the people. In a country that is generally socialist yet simultaneously so capitalist, it is not surprising that their denial of the west has lead to a lack of control of how to deal with its infiltration. The Chinese people are as creative as anyone else in the world and are desperate to learn what ever they can about the techniques that have been used by the west for so many years. This is why working closely with Chinese people has been so rewarding for us.
The only advise I would give Chinese companies in creative industry would be to partner similar companies in different counties and share creative ideas from sometimes very different perspectives.