Thammasat University students interested in China, business, economics, marketing, sociology, media and communication studies, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 8 November Zoom webinar on Madmen in Shanghai: A Social History of Advertising in Modern China (1914–1956).
The event, on Friday, 8 November 2024 at 8pm Bangkok time, is presented by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Hong Kong University (HKU).
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Chinese advertising.
Students are invited to register at this link:
https://hku.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XqFn0EXMSpCi1L8FIS9vqw#/registration
For further information or with any questions, please write to
smblai@hku.hk
According to the event webpage:
Abstract:
Madmen in Shanghai: A Social History of Advertising in Modern China (1914–1956) provides a novel perspective on the emergence of Chinese consumer society through an extensive historical investigation of the advertising industry in pre-Communist China. Utilizing a diverse array of previously unexplored primary sources, including professional literature, newspapers, photographs, and municipal archives, it charts the development and growing influence of the advertising profession, fostered by professional organizations, agencies, and prominent practitioners. It underscores the crucial role of this hybrid and transnational profession in introducing an expanding array of consumer products and in shaping the enduring narrative of the “four hundred million customers.” This book will be of interest to scholars specializing in modern Chinese history, urban and consumer studies, media and mass communication, and also for professionals engaged in the fields of advertising and marketing.
About the Speaker
A historian by training, Cécile Armand is a postdoctoral researcher at École Normale Supérieure in Lyon (Lyons), France. Her past research has focused on the social history of professional advertising in early 20th-century China, particularly emphasizing Shanghai and urban advertising. Her first monograph, titled Madmen in Shanghai: A Social History of Advertising in Modern China, stems from this research. Scheduled for publication with De Gruyter later this year, the second volume of her research titled Between Public and Market: A Spatial History of Advertising in modern Shanghai, will delve into the development of outdoor advertising in modern China, exploring the material and spatial aspects of advertisements in both the press and the streets of Shanghai. […]
The books by Dr. Armand are available to TU students through the TU Library Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service.
On the website of the China Research Center is a 2017 article, Advertising in China. It begins:
The history of Chinese advertising in the broad sense can be traced back to the Song dynasty when stores used signs and words to advertise services. In the 1920s and 1930s, advertising in Shanghai was already a dynamic industry, with foreign advertising agencies and brands competing with the Chinese counterparts prior to World War II.
After the Chinese Communist Party takeover in 1949, the government gradually eliminated commercial advertising in the belief that a centralized socialist economy did not need advertising. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), almost no commercial ads existed, except for limited commercial information about exports to foreign countries.
China officially announced a resumption of commercial advertising in 1978 after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. At this meeting, China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, declared that China would shift from a political orientation – focusing on class struggle – to a more pragmatic approach – centered on economic reforms and the opening of the economy to global capital. Since then, advertising has gained strategic and symbolic importance in opening up society and developing the economy in China.
In the past few decades, Chinese advertising experienced exponential development. Foreign advertising agencies urged their global clients to enter China in 1979, right after the country opened its door to the outside world. Now foreign brands and advertisements have become an inherent part of the daily lives of Chinese consumers.
Convergence between foreign and Chinese advertising practices
The Shanghai TV Station aired China’s first foreign commercial for the Swiss Rado wristwatch in 1979. The one-minute English commercial, focusing on product information, was broadcast only twice, but it produced a huge impact in China. Hundreds of people went to state-run local stores to inquire about the product in the next few days. Interestingly, the product was not sold in China until four years later, suggesting that the advertiser was initially more interested in image advertising than selling products since China had not yet developed a consumer market.
Coca-Cola entered China in 1979, and it was the first foreign brand that was sold in the Chinese market. The first foreign commercial that China Central Television (CCTV) – the only national TV network in China – aired was for Coca-Cola. It caused criticism because the product was viewed as not aimed at ordinary Chinese consumers.
During the 1980s, Japanese brands and advertising achieved wide recognition. Brands such as National, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, and Toyota became household names among urban Chinese. Similarly, Japanese advertising agencies also achieved prominence in the Chinese market largely because Dentsu and a few other Japanese agencies collaborated closely with Chinese advertising professionals and academics. However, since the 1990s, American advertising agencies have obtained a more prominent position in China.
In the 1980s Chinese advertisers used hard-sell advertising strategies, focusing on product information and production processes (gates of factories, machinery, diligent workers, their awards, etc.).
With increasing influence of foreign advertising practices, Chinese advertisers later adopted soft-sell strategies that catered to a variety of values such as family bonding, individualism, romance, adventure, love, beauty, modernity, newness, masculinity, and femininity.
Chinese ad professionals also demonstrated a strong desire to learn from their Japanese and American counterparts. Many exchange programs were established for Chinese ad professionals to learn the newest advertising practices. Professionals working at foreign ad agencies were constantly invited to give talks about foreign advertising. With various efforts to professionalize advertising, including the establishment of professional associations, the opening of degree programs in prominent universities, and the publication of advertising books, advertising gradually became an attractive profession that elevated its lowly image of puffery to a career that ambitious young Chinese were interested in pursuing.
Initially, Chinese professionals were more interested in working at foreign advertising agencies since they provided better salaries, benefits, and training. Chinese advertising agencies were generally viewed as having a lower status. In the last decade, foreign and Chinese advertising practices have converged, largely because of the constant exchange of advertising personnel, ideas, and practices.
While Chinese advertising agencies in the past offered lower pay to employees, starting in the mid-2000s Chinese ad agencies offered even higher salaries to professionals who already had experience in foreign advertising practices. Now ads in the Chinese market featuring foreign and Chinese brands look very similar. Both types of ads stress affective connections with consumers in order to generate demand. […]
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)