Advertising for the Chinese Market compared to the US Consumers Essay

Advertising for the Chinese Market compared to the US Consumers - Essay Example In China, Confucian ethics may be found intertwined with advertising messages. Chinese culture favours the Yin-Yang concept, that is, the existence of opposites by virtue of each other, and between which a balance must be attained. In the U.S., the emphasis is more on competition, and brand positioning focuses on a single core appeal, which is either one that is rational or one that is emotional (Zhou & Dou, 2007), but seldom the two together. Confucian ethics embraces the holistic approach, espousing both qing (emotion) as well as li (reason), a feature which is almost always jointly observed in Chinese advertising (Yinjiao, 2006). Advertising is often ‘complicated, cultures-specific’ and particular in politeness behaviour that impacts directly on ethical issues when the advertisers are foreigners (Zhu, 2009, p. 517). Easily, the advertisement depicted here is both emotional and informative – emotion by way of humour, and information in the slogan and the picture of the bottle of medicine at the lower right-hand corner. Confucian teaching has also always been linked to serenity and balance in life, the same attributes that are reflected in these advertisements. These are at once communicated to the viewer by the visual advertisements. However, there is a hidden piece of humour in these ads that are lost to foreigners. The product is a Sanjiu, a muscle and joints pain relief medication. The slogan, written in Chinese characters, directly translates to ‘Reverse the pain’ which would have been better translated into the English: ‘eliminate’ or ‘diminish the pain’. The word ‘reversal’ would have been proper in the Chinese language, for which the pictures... This "Advertising for the Chinese Market compared to the US Consumers" essay describes the differences between approaches to the advertisement in China and the USA. Confucian teaching has also always been linked to serenity and balance in life, the same attributes that are reflected in these advertisements. These are at once communicated to the viewer by the visual advertisements. However, there is a hidden piece of humour in these ads that are lost to foreigners. The product is a Sanjiu, a muscle and joints pain relief medication. The slogan, written in Chinese characters, directly translates to ‘Reverse the pain’ which would have been better translated into the English: ‘eliminate’ or ‘diminish the pain’. The word ‘reversal’ would have been proper in the Chinese language, for which the pictures are metaphors. For English speakers, the pictures are not so much ‘reversed’ as they are ‘inverted.’ Maybe a vis ual which would be more consistent to the English meaning of reversal would be somebody running backwards, as in reversal through time. In English, the word ‘reversal’ conveys a process, so someone doing something backward would be reversal. The inversion shown in the pictures conveys more a world out of order, an illogical or topsy-turvy affair where nothing is as it should be. From the point of view of Chinese viewers, however, the message, and the humour, is clear, that the product ‘reverses’ the pain so that there is no more pain, so the world is ‘reversed’ and the person is able to resume his/her physical activity.