Advertising to the Masses: Everyone Wants to Lose Weight
There is a lot of buzz these days about how western companies can break into the Chinese market. After many months of observing Chinese billboards, newspaper adds, and commercials...I think I have come up with the winning formula. Take a riduculous product, add a misunderstanding of what it means to American or European, add an advertising campaign that comes waaaayyyyy out of right field, and throw in a couple of B-rated Chinese soap stars and you have a plan that is sure to sell your product.
Or, atleast if this doesn't work, your failing with everybody else in China because everybody is using this for their advertising strategy. And I think the best genre of merchandise to observe this ad strategy has be in the weight loss/personal health area. Of course, some of you could argue that I'm just fat so I pay more attention to this stuff in a desperate search for exercise inspiration, but thing is...wieght loss products in China don't really invove exercise.
The other day I saw a cheesy infomericial for what I call drainage socks (I have to make up my own name because I have no idea what the Chinese name is). The premise of these things was unbelievable: when you wear these socks, they shoot some sort of wave through your body which causes fat to break up, drain down the interior of your legs, and then oose out of the pourous surface of your feet. The socks had dispossable pads to absorb the excess fat. Aparently, with these things you can spend your day in the office and lose more weight then you would with a moderate hour long work-out without stressing your muscles and joints.
Who knew wait loss was this easy...sign me up, and tell Oprah I found these things on TV and I'll be an overnight star.
Here's a picture of my second favorite Chinese "exercise" equipment, the iGallop.
Do I need to explain this one? Probably not, but let me tell you this, you HAVE NOT LIVED until you have a watched a mall full of Chinese people riding these things. Who knew that when I went to ride the Merry-Go-Round at Barnes Crossing Mall as kid, besides having fun, I was also shaping and toning.
Of course, the ultimate irony of this is that Chinese people are NOT fat. I guess there's such thing as obicities of scale.