They haven’t seen anything yet. As Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Coca-Cola take aim at the world’s most populous country, the advertising industry is close behind. More than 50 foreign agencies are battling for a stake in a market that’s tiny today but promises to be enormous tomorrow. Five years ago advertising in China meant billboards. Today advertisers jockey for exposure on national programs that can reach 600 million people in the evening “golden time.” At $20,000 for a nationwide prime-time minute, there’s no better bargain than state-run television. “Maybe 99.5 percent of the people can’t afford your product,” says Beijing marketer Robert Christensen, “but ads are so cheap that you can go for the .5 percent.”
Creative directors are riding a wave of Chinese infatuation for anything new and Western. Tang has recycled old spots touting itself as the drink of American astronauts. Maxwell House coffee commercials give China’s tea-drinking proletariat an otherworldly scene of elegant Westerners on an Italian terrace. The message, as one Beijing ad-agency chief puts it, is that “imported equals good, local equals crap.” So why not urge Chinese consumers to celebrate the fact that they have a choice? No matter that Beck’s Beer, made in Fujian under license from the German brewer, costs three times more than local brands. “In Chinese society people always listen to their parents, to their teachers, to their boss,” says Mary Peng, CEO of Dentsu, Young & Rubicam in Beijing. “So our campaign for Beck’s was: listen to yourself”
Sophisticated techniques honed in Western markets have been put to use quickly. Take cigarette advertising. China, like many countries, bars it from television. That proved to be no problem for Philip Morris, whose Marlboro brand treated television viewers to a dazzling “New Year’s greeting” featuring a cast of thousands. Ironically, the widely watched program was directed by acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimen, whose own feature films are banned in China for political reasons.
Western firms don’t have the fast-growing market to themselves. Already, thousands of Chinese middlemen have sprung up to peddle TV time. That’s because a new Chinese law prohibits advertisers from going to the TV stations directly. To win prime spots over local competitors, “we have to crawl on our bellies,” gripes a media buyer. Of course, nobody likes crawling. But thinking of those 1.2 billion Chinese consumers does make it easier.
