How do you communicate?

I recently read an article written by Jonny Tan who is BBH's creative director. He wrote a diray following a tyical week in his job talking about the difficulties that you can face when trying to communicate especially in advertising in China.

The first issue he highlights is that there is no set rules or system when it comes to advertising. It may be the case that there is but if so it is one which we dont understand as westeners. This can partly be due to there being more than one regulatory body so where we have ASA here they have thie equivilant but also the channels who are broadcasting get a say. As a result there can be inconsistancies in what gets shown.

However general areas to avoid are politics, violence, sexuality and morality. Jonny also highlights that although China has caught up with us in the West in many aspects they are still far behind in the forms in which they communicate. In particular he talks about their strong morals such as respecting elders and those who have achieved and also because they take things very much at face value metaphors, irony and self deprecating humor really does not work well.

China in becoming increasingly techology minded however they and many other developing countries seem to have little consideration in terms of sustainablility. Which is ironic in some ways as we in Britain actually send our paper to be recycled in China. I feel this is partly due to the fact that they are developing so quickly, they are missing steps. I am interested in trying to convince developing countries that sustainability is an important issue without them feeling that they are having western values inforced on them.