1/ Appealing to the Chinese
A lot of the big American films are usually set in the cities of the US, but since living in China, I've noticed the increasing influence of China in mega movies. Although not entirely filmed in China, it's great to see scenes from places like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. I admit these cities do not represent China as a whole, but it does say something about the importance of China and the marketing of a movie for the writers to include something "Chinese relevant" into the script. I can think of a few of recent note, scenes from The Dark Night was shot in Hong Kong, Mission Impossible 3 in Shanghai, Mummy 3 was set in China, and from what I'm reading, Shanghai also has a scene in Transformers 2! The image above was a screen capture I took from the movie's trailer. You can see the highway sign is your traditional Chinese highway sign design. Too bad the cars are driving on the wront side of the street (China is similar to US and Canada in that you drive on the right side of the road). The above image is a small snippet and I did some additional investigating. There are hints of a Shanghai scene in Wikipedia's T2 page!
2/ GM Needs to Better Leverage Off of This in China!
I was really disappointed in how GM leveraged off of their collaboration with the first Transformers movie in China. With all the news of China's car market growing, I think that generating hype around this partnership would do more to help sell cars in China for GM. Growing up in Canada, we had a GM once. It was riddled with so many problems that we never owned one again. But I digress. I believe that GM should integrate for the following reasons:
- The rich are younger here: everything you read about the wealthy in China points to similar conclusions that the Chinese wealthy are on average 10 - 20 years younger than their counterparts around the world. The consumer will identify with the product!
- The middle class is growing: GM will never be able to compete with Ferrari or even Mercedes, Jaguar and BMW. But they don't need to, because the majority of Chinese will buy the next tier of cars anyway, and most GM cars fit into that category (if not upper middle class since it is imported). The positioning is great!
- Parents succomb to whining kids very easily: Chinese children are the princes and princesses of their families. I have watched parents and grandparents take the abuse of young children all the time here. I have witnessed parents sending thousands of dollars abroad to make sure their kids have everything they wanted. My momma used to whoop my ass when I got out of line, but a child's influence on the parent's purchasing cannot be more pronounced than it is in China. And kids LOVE Transformers! I read an article last year about a kid who rode his bike onto a highway amongst speeding cars here in China. When the police caught him and asked him why, his answer was that he saw Optimus Prime and wanted to catch up with him!
- Everyone in China will watch this movie: Okay, not all 1.2 billion people, but anyone who is the GM target market will watch this movie. They will watch it, tell their friends about it, buy the pirated DVD to own it, buy the toys, buy the video games, blog about it and dream about it. A perfect platform to advertise to their consumer, why aren't they integrating the advertising?
- Young adults here know the brand! Unlike GM brands, many here know about Transformers. They grew up watching the cartoons as a kid. If you drive around in China, you will see cars with Autobot and Decepticon insignias. Leverage off of that brand affinity!
If someone from GM marketing is reading this, listen to me when I say that all you need to do is integrate it into your advertising here. Do something like put it on a big outdoor billboard. Make sure that the models in the same colours are against the window in the showroom. Throw a viral video of the cars rolling around in China online. I see 2 scenarios. 1) Kids will see it. Their parents will be forced to go to the dealership and their kids will cry and scream until their parents buy a car. Or 2) The young 20-30 something adult will see it. And then will get it because he/she thinks its damn cool. If at the very least, you can be sure that it will do much to add to the brand awareness in China.
Even though I've never thought of buying a GM, that Bumblebee Mustang would be so dope to roll around in...
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