Shanghai Pathways Blog

Yesterday I visited a friend and bought her 6 years old daughter an expensive Mickey Mouse toy from Disney Land.

She just looked at it for one second and then walked a way.

Branding

Why this kid doesn’t like Mickey Mouse?  When I was a kid, having a Mickey Mouse would make me feel happy for weeks. Then I realized that she probably has never watched any episodes about the mickey mouse on TV.

Her favourite Chinese cartoon episode is called Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf

Her favourite western episode is My Little Pony

Brand can get old

I made a mistake by assumming kids will always like Mickey Mouse, but it is actually not the case, people in my generation used to watch 2 episodes of Mickey Mouse everyday after school for many years.

Now Disney Land spents billions of dollars in building parks but they forgot to ccoupy the screens.

The real value is not Mickey Mouse, it is the screens and the limited attention of young childern.

Changing

P&G used to be the leader of all shampoo products, but during the last 5 years, their market become smaller and smaller.

Their competitors are no longer the big brands but a small and young company from Korea.

The Chinese consumer are shifting their interests to small brands, they are simply “tired” of the popular big brands.

P&G’s problem is not that their products is bad, it is that their target PEOPLE changed, consumer changed.

Old brand manager look at a market and think about its SIZE. Trying to find out if consumer prefer more lotions or more fagrances.

They forgot that the market is always changing, people are always changing.

No matter what you do or what you don’t do, you will lose 2 % of the market every year. While the brand followers and consumers are getting older, the brands are getting “dead”.

Young Chinese millennial generations doesn’t care about taste, price, formular, they key interests is simple:

Be different than their parents!

Why

Why young people like to change?

Why they don’t follow the old order?

Because change is the best way for them.

In terms of business, it is a fight between “new money” and “old money”. Old generations has taken the most valuable things/business in their time, so the chances are not equal.

Younger generation’s solution is to change.

i.e. if all the antiques and classic paintings are in the hands of the old, young people will go for the contemporary art.

Chinese younger generation are trying to be different than their parents to express and establish their own value.