Ms. Small’s Big China story

March 29, 2004

The Hoffman Agency’s AP managing director, Ms. Small’s Big China story

Hello, I am Hyun Jin Kim, covering the enterprise section, from automobiles, advertising, Internet companies to consumer products to foreign companies. Transferred to the economy team 2 months ago, I have been reporting on major companies from both online and offline, acknowledging that the hottest issue is China and its sheer size of market, seen some times as a compelling investment market and other times as a threatening competitor.

I have recently met with Whitney Small, The Hoffman Agency’s Asian Pacific managing director, who is a highly-regarded PR expert with 20 year experience in Marketing and PR consulting, while helping global brands, such as AT & T, Caltex, Coca Cola, IBM, Motorola and Visa International enter the Chinese market. Prior to The Hoffman Agency, Ms. Small played a key role in Disney Land’s entry to Hong Kong when she was in charge of Marketing and Sales at Walt Disney Asia Pacific. I would like to give some tips from Whitney’s know-how for companies who are entering or have already entered the Chinese market.

During the interview, she first pointed out the rare exposure of Korean CEOs in China discussing differentiators in economic terms. Basically, Korean companies have many advantages in China, such as proximity of culture and media in-roads yet most companies fail to capitalize on these advantages. Some Korean companies have studied and understood the impact of the current favorable youth orientation to Korean pop culture and have done very well by using instantly identifiable Korean entertainers as spokespeople. This is a start, but is fairly superficial and easily replicable by global competitors from the US, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, where most famous sports and entertainment celebrities can also help promote goods in China. Leveraging Chinese people’s anti-Japanese sentiment and their brotherhood-like attitude, it is the key to success for Korean companies to maintain the consistent and strategic messages in communication.

She added that Many PR practices in China due to the government-driven economic policy revolve around public affairs efforts, meaning working with groups other than consumers. Global firms, such as Texas Instruments, Intel, Siemens, Nokia, and Sony all utilize extensive networks of well-trained personnel to communicate to the very highest strategic levels of the Chinese government. Many international firms in China even use public relations personnel to provide outside assessment and measurement of its own China employees’ understanding of corporate messages coming from headquarters.

She also mentioned media landscape in China. Reporters in China are keen to learn about companies that are entering the market and love hearing about how important China is. Although the Chinese media is gradually becoming more objective, foreign companies perceived as ‘wronging’ Chinese companies or consumers will find very quickly that it becomes a foreign vs. Chinese nationality issue. The general view has become that most large foreign companies, ones that have not done a good job of communicating their messages, are basically just in China to “use cheap labor and take the money back home” rather than contributing to China development. What seems worrying is that Korean companies specifically are thought of in this regard.

Closing the interview, Ms. Small stressed that one of the most common problems of all MNCs is that they throw their common sense when they get in the China door. Yes, the market is big, but take your time and don’t be overwhelmed. Don’t think you have to change completely when you arrive in China. You should bring with you the best of your corporate culture, brand values and people. There are no exceptions that only apply to China.