The top ten things to con­sider before launch­ing your brand in China

11Jul12

As a China-based Inte­grated Mar­ket­ing and PR Agency, E3 members Adsmith China have man­aged the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion of many brands into the Chi­nese mar­ket. Draw­ing on his highly valu­able exper­tise, agency founder Mike Golden, an American living abroad, together with Australian blogger David Ansett of Truly Deeply, have com­piled a list of the most impor­tant things for busi­nesses to con­sider when launch­ing a brand into China:

01. Pre­pare to be per­sis­tent and patient. Take your busi­ness plan and dou­ble or even triple the amount of time.

02. China isn’t that cheap anymore.

03. HR Headaches. Hire the best peo­ple you can find. And then be pre­pared to let them go after major disappointments.

04. Visit China 10 times before start­ing any­thing. Talk to as many peo­ple as you can.

05. Make sure your busi­ness has a Chi­nese brand name and that you trade­mark it in China.

06. Be aware that ‘main­land’ China, Tai­wan (Man­darin or Stan­dard Chi­nese) and Hong Kong (Can­tonese) use dif­fer­ent speech as well as writ­ten char­ac­ters. You will need sep­a­rate entry strate­gies for these regions.

07. Be sure to make busi­ness cards (prefer­ably with Chi­nese and a Chi­nese ver­sion of your name) before vis­it­ing. Don’t use Google Trans­late for this (one client showed up with “Black Con­quer Death” on his card).

08. Brace your­self for long ban­quets with poten­tial clients. These may include toast­ing red wine in shot glasses, long pours of warm beer, and uniden­ti­fi­able meats. Suck­ing this up is what ‘cul­tur­ally sen­si­tive’ means.

09. Keep con­trol of your brand image and mar­ket­ing col­lat­er­als. Keep­ing your inter­na­tional image is impor­tant; the local mar­ket­ing agency can help make sure the text and pho­tos make sense in Chi­nese and por­tray your brand iden­tity and posi­tion correctly.

10. Last but not least…don’t be scared off by all this! The mar­ket in China is fan­tas­tic and Chi­nese are ready to do busi­ness. Huanying! 欢迎！

Whether you are a brand strug­gling to make head­way in the Chi­nese mar­ket, with plans to launch there soon, or are keen to develop our brand with an eye to China in the future, E3 agencies are uniquely posi­tioned to help you achieve those goals.

Mike Golden and his team at Adsmith China focus on marketing communications and public relations to help launch brands in Asia.

Feel free to contact David Ansett or Mike Golden to see how they can help you take your brand into China.

(And thanks, guys, for the post!)

Filed under: Advertising Management, Cross-cultural, international marketing   |  1 Comment
Tags: china