What are the cultural differences between Chinese and foreign advertising?

Category: Business/Financial Management

Analysis:

Chinese traditional culture is profound and has a long history. With benevolence and righteousness as the core, it has derived a self-contained value system. Traditional culture The penetration of value concepts in TV advertising has changed the role of TV advertising as a simple economic and social product. Whether it is wives, husbands, children and parents, they all make a fuss about family ties. From melatonin to alcohol, mobile phones, toothpaste, washing machines, and laundry detergent, it has developed in the direction of integrating education, publicity, and entertainment, and has become a new cultural form.

An important creative characteristic of domestic TV advertisements is the emphasis on emotional appeal. Perceptual appeals are related to consumers' social and psychological needs for purchasing goods. Many consumers' motivations to support their purchase decisions are perceptual. When making purchase decisions, they may feel more about the brand than the characteristics or attributes of the brand. Understanding is more important. When many advertisers sell brands that are not significantly different from the competition, since rational differences are difficult to discern, appealing to consumers' emotional appeals will play a better role. Another characteristic of domestic TV advertising is that it embodies integrity. Integrity is the core of ethics and a basic requirement for business behavior. Domestic TV advertising content uses this as a fulcrum. Milk "Bright Milk" has triple advertisements, and "Sanlu Milk Powder" is guaranteed to be safe and fresh. China Mobile Communications' advertisement uses key moments to tell the story of "Trust Global Communication", running through three stories: the love of musician Xiao Meng, the business of a certain company CEO; and the Chinese tourist who was in distress at sea in Vietnam on June 10, 2002. The cultural spirit of the Chinese nation that values ??harmony has nourished a broad mind that advocates harmony and unity. A happy and harmonious family, a peaceful and prosperous country, and national unity and unity have become the permanent goals pursued by people for thousands of years.

Chinese advertising reflects people’s collective concept of independence: emphasizing the whole and attaching great importance to family and affection; while Western advertising reflects their self-centered culture and emphasizes individual independence. and the main role, emphasizing the publicity of personality. From the perspective of the typical theory of aesthetics, the typical view that emphasizes individuality is developed from the typical view of typology, and the effect is naturally better than the latter. Let's take alcohol advertising as an example. Almost all domestic famous wine advertisements have the appeal of exaggerating family affection, friendship and love, and emphasizing harmony. The advertising creativity of British alcoholic products is quite individual, and almost every advertisement is very different. In the MONDARIZ. TV commercial, when a young man woke up after drinking and took a shower, he was surprised to find that many metal rings had been pierced through his ears and body by others while they were drunk. Then the slogan appeared: If you don’t want to get too drunk, you should choose MONDARIZ. Obviously, this advertisement implies that its product MONDARIZ. is a kind of wine with a mild personality, and you will not get drunk even if you drink too much.

Chinese advertisements have long language (high context), pay attention to sound modeling such as commentary, and are highly expressive. They often create a beautiful atmosphere to make the audience have some intuition or favorable impression of the product. They pay attention to It is emotional and touching, and focuses more on perceptual knowledge: this type of advertisement often shows a warm family of three sitting around the dining table drinking milk, with the slogan: Pay attention to the health of your family and give them a bright future. (Friends of Friends milk ad). . British advertisements are usually more objective, with short slogans, emphasizing the precision and generalization of language, as well as the reasoning and association of image modeling language. Therefore, there are more rational elements. The entire advertisement mostly foreshadows a meaningful image, and finally gives The finishing touch is the advertising slogan. Let’s first look at a European and American milk advertisement. The first thing that appeared was the picture and sound of milk being squeezed into an iron bucket, and then the camera kept moving up. Surprisingly, what appeared was not a cow but a hand squeezing boxed milk. This is a metaphor for how fresh the milk of this brand is. . Another advertisement was for Begott cream. The first thing that appeared on the screen was a group of cows walking through a meadow, and then another group of cows passed by. Then the advertising slogan is about the handover of the cream processing factory, and the voice-over is that our cream comes from nature. With a little logical inference and abstract association, the audience of this advertisement can come to the conclusion that the product is fresh and natural.

The differences between the East and the West in the field of TV advertising coincide with the main differences between the West and Chinese traditional aesthetics - that is, the difference between realism (reproduction) and impressionism (expression). The long monologue in the "New Mother" chapter of Diaopai Toothpaste is a typical Chinese advertising language style: it first describes the changes in the emotional world of the two, and then the product-related slogans appear: true love, soul exchange, carving brand toothpaste. Let’s take a look at a typical Western advertising slogan that uses visual language to tell stories. A car transporting old furniture was parked downstairs of a house, and old furniture kept being thrown into the car from the second-floor window. After the car moving the furniture drove away, another car drove downstairs and happened to park under the window. After the driver got out of the car and walked a few steps, he threw an old sofa out of the window and smashed the roof of his car. This is the slogan of a store-brand insurance company: life is full of surprise. (Life is full of surprises). Generally speaking, Chinese texts are spiral and get to the point at the end; while Western texts are linear in terms of discourse and get to the point directly. This is a significant difference between Chinese and Western cultures in television language modeling.

In fact, both Western and domestic TV advertising creativity should take visual effects as the ultimate goal. Seeing and listening are the two functions of TV. TV focuses on seeing and mainly relies on picture language to express content. Listening is only an auxiliary means for watching. Those TV advertisements that have not yet got rid of the influence of broadcasting rely solely on perceptual commentary to survive. It is difficult to leave a mark. Therefore, when creating TV advertisements, we must focus on the effect of picture modeling and language, and tell stories through picture language. The author believes that when shooting TV commercials, taking the language effect of the picture as the foothold of design and production is the key to success.

Everyone is familiar with the American McDonald’s advertisement for the baby. The baby in the cradle laughs and cries while being rocked back and forth, highlighting the strong brand awareness. In a digital camera advertisement in the UK, there is no oral introduction to the special performance of shockproof like the domestic broadcast advertisement. The content of the advertisement is as follows: A poor man wearing only shorts was coerced by the underworld to take a photo of a family in the winter snow, so he took the photo with trembling hands. The snow in winter is very cold. The poor guy only wore a pair of pants, and he was naturally frightened when he saw the gangsters. Under such circumstances, the photo effect was extremely clear, and the camera's shockproof performance is self-evident. Domestic advertisements also have some typical examples that use picture language to describe. Midea's air conditioner TV commercials always show a shrimp and an air conditioner in the center of the picture. As Midea's air conditioner cools down, a cooked shrimp gradually turns from red to brown. Finally, it sneezes because it can't stand the air conditioning, and then Escape. The entire advertisement has no language to force sales, and no product ostentation. The content of the picture is not special. There is only one shot, but the expression and form are very creative, making people feel simple and interesting, and it is easy to accept it.

The creative characteristics of Western TV advertisements are the common use of counterarguments and anomalies. When introducing the performance of products, domestic advertisements often use positive and false methods, and are not good at telling the truth and speaking bluntly. Say, say one thing and mean another. There are numerous examples of this technique abroad. The famous British Stella Artois beer advertisement relies on wit and a large production budget to promote the brand by positioning it as guaranteed to be expensive, in order to deepen the audience's trust in product quality; the United States does not stick The pot advertisement only shows the whole process from the juice flowing in the pot to the fried egg forming in the pot. The last picture is the trademark of the pot. Voice-over: This best non-stick pan can only stick to the Silverstone trademark.

The emergence method means that advertising producers should use rich associations as the premise of conception and imagination, break conventional thinking, and create an unexpected advertising language. For example, beer advertisements in China are mainly based on gatherings of friends and family and drinking praise. The language is not subtle enough and lacks freshness. However, a beer advertisement for a certain British brand uses a tennis ball boy running back and forth non-stop (like quickly fetching the ball in a tennis match) to collect empty bottles. to elicit the popularity of this brand of beer in bars.

In a very famous public service advertisement in the UK, the picture shows a very cute child playing with many toys. As he plays with it, he unknowingly starts to play with a knife, and finally puts the knife in his mouth... and then the subtitles appear on the picture - - Taking drugs is tantamount to suicide. Finally, it is worth mentioning that animals and children often appear in Western television advertisements, which is also an extension of the heterogeneous method. In the mid-1980s, the American advertising industry was once known as a paradise for dogs. Today, four-legged animals and children still appear very frequently in advertisements. The innocent animals and children on the screen are considered by many to be a powerful weapon to attract the audience's attention. .

Should TV advertising focus on artistry or sociality? This is a long-debated issue. Although the attributes of mass communication make TV advertising mainly focus on information transmission, excellent advertising works are often artistic. Artworks are human memories, and their value scale must reflect the development of human values. However, excessive artistry will destroy the channels of communication. The artistry of TV advertising must expand the space under the premise of non-artistic or social nature, and find a balance between the two. In other words: it must be understandable to the audience, but also novel and catchy. Just like the domestic melatonin advertisement, although it has attracted widespread criticism, the sales performance is obvious. The most critical criterion for evaluating the success of an advertisement is of course not its artistry, but only its sales ability. The reason why melatonin is successful is that it directly targets the traditional Chinese social customs of caring for relatives and caring for the elderly, reciprocity of courtesy, and transaction of favors in modern society. Enterprises with strategic vision can always stand at a higher cultural strategic height and promote themselves in TV advertisements. As a medium that carries culture, TV advertising not only promotes products and pursues economic benefits, but also assumes certain social responsibilities. It is the so-called life first, business later. This concept has developed into a unique cultural form that is exemplary and directional. The series of public service advertisements of Harbin Pharmaceutical No. 6, which has been popular in China, focus on the company's brand and cultural responsibility. Harbin Pharmaceutical launched its own product advertisements only after almost everyone in the country knew about Harbin Pharmaceutical.

Chinese culture itself has no public domain or public space. At the moment when China is undergoing social transformation, its culture is in a state of carnival of the gods. The influence of traditional culture on personality is weakening. Socialization is following the direction of consumerist ideology. Classes are redifferentiated. Groups are powerless. ** All the congenital shortcomings of the same body make it easy for television discourse and television advertising ideology to penetrate directly. Frequent advertising myths bear this out. Big Red Eagle, White Sand, Qinchi, and Three Melatonin Plants, as long as they have strong advertising support, they can achieve sales miracles.

To develop and strengthen China’s TV advertising, it must combine the characteristics of Chinese society with the advanced creative and regulatory experience of the Western world. Although China does not have a civil society similar to the situation in the West, nor does it have a public sector spawned by the bourgeoisie, this does not mean that the West’s experience in TV advertising creation and supervision is not worth learning from. Stones from other mountains may not be able to attack jade, but at least they provide a lot of valuable experience in many details and ideas