Small Eats

Had my first week at my new job this week and it's been pretty full on, a lot to learn but it's already pretty varied and different. So I haven't been able to keep up with much this week, but here's a little round up of a few arty/asian things I've seen.

The new London Elektricity album has been included in the ART VINYL awards. I've thought for a while that Hospital Records put a lot of effort into their album covers. Helped by Trickartt they create some pretty cool images. Of course this wouldn't be a Hot Pot post without some reference to Flickr so here is Trickartt's Flickr. I particularly like his Berocca Obama.

On the Obama theme too, a new exhibition has opened in Miami with loads of artwork covering the new U.S President elect

Following on from the Monkey - Journey to the West Opera, Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn have put together a new short film based on it. It's pretty cool I reckon.
It seems there's a lot of art stuff going on in Miami at the moment as I also found this


For more like this check these folks: Rogerio Degaki, Krampf Gallery and Tokyo Gallery
This is a pretty big post and it probably doesn't make any sense but nevermind. Oh and I learnt a random fact this week, 5000 people work at Harrods, 5000!!!

Reminded of the Power of Black and White

Having a browse through Flickr and thought I would post a few of my recent faves. I could spend hours on that site, the quality of photography from amateur photographers is outstanding. The three I have posted above were taken in Beijing and Shanghai by travelight and sakura love. It would be hard to find better examples of where black and white photography can work than the two above. As England gets colder and darker by the day as we push into winter, I can see myself turning to a spot of the old black and white photography!

Barack Coverage in China

Couldn't resist a quick China related Obama post. The story was front page new for most national media. I found this picture on a good blog called 56minus1, written by a fellow who takes a look at underground China and youth culture, especially things like Neocha and The Shanghai Beat. His videos have also appeared on Danwei.

(The original image comes from Danwei)

Shaanxi Trip Video!

Apologies for the amateur quality of my camerawork. The interesting bits are the marketplace (from about 5 minutes onward) and the tune at 10mins.

Back from Shaanxi Province China

Got back last Sunday evening from a fantastic fundraising trip to Shaanxi Province in China with Macmillan Cancer Support. Here's a few of the photos I took while I was there but more can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djkhepburn/



Everywhere we went we were welcomed by the locals. We were cycling through parts of China which are rarely visited by foreigners, so our novelty value was pretty high. So much so in fact that we were interviewed by a local tv station.



We finished the ride in the pouring rain a coal mining region, which was quite a shock to everyone involved. Video of this is to follow but the term on most people's lips at the time was, "it looks like the end of the world". It was clearly the flip side of Chinese economic development.

A Little Bit of Beijing

Images courtesy of Dan Eckstein.

Dan Eckstein has gone on a photographic journey of China, covering 10,000km in eight weeks and creating a document of China as it is from the high rises of Beijing to the Tibetan Plateau and the Yangzi river. In Beijing, Eckstein visited the 798 space art district, aburgeoning arts district in the northwest of Beijing. For a number of years, Beijing based artists and designers have made this area their home and the work being produced there is at the forefront of Chinese contemporary art. The studios and galleries are housed in old munitions and metals factories which in themselves are quite striking spaces.

Dan's Picture China photoblog can be seen here

The digital building Beijing:

The Ogilvy 8

Here's an interesting new blog that has been set up by Ogilvy in China. The premise is that the Beijing Olympics will be the first major worldwide sporting event to take place in the Web 2.0 era. 8 Ogilvy employees will contribute to the blog over the course of the games, four writing in Chinese, four writing in English.

In the first post, Kaiser Kuo points out that the 2008 Olympic Games are taking place "in the age of Internet, video sharing, citizen journalism, social networking, of microblogging". In a country where approximately 110 million people blog and 253 million are online, this could have quite big impact.

The site can be found here

TBWA's Amnesty China Adverts

Omnicom ad agency TBWA has got itself in a bit of hot water pre-Olympics. The agency has been working on two briefs according to the Wall Street Journal. One, for Adidas (see below), shows Chinese sports icons held up by legions of adoring fans. The other, for Amnesty International (see above), shows Chinese athletes being tortured under the strapline "After the Olympic Games, the fight for human rights must go on"



Chinese netizens are all over this story, proposing a boycott of all TBWA ads. The agency has tried to distance itself from the Amnesty ad, claiming that it was the work of a lone creative working on a pro bono account.

TBWA won't be the first foreign company to feel the wrath of the Chinese internet population, an increasingly potent and active community. Earlier this year, Carrefour was boycotted by many Chinese and as the WSJ points out, luxury retailer LVMH dumped Sharon Stone from it's Chinese mainland marketing campaign after she commented that the Sichuan earthquake which killed around 87,000 people and left 5 million homeless might have been karma for China's role in Tibet.

China's Environmentalists and the brands lagging behind

Anyone who has travelled to China will have seen how thrifty and resourceful the average Chinese can be; nothing goes to waste, anything that can be re-used will be. I feel this is often overlooked by worldwide media coverage.

Environmentalism is becoming more and more popular in China, the middle-class increasingly cares about green issues and protests are becoming commonplace.

China Dialogue is a great site, a forum focused on environmental issues where comments and articles in both English or Mandarin are translated into the other language.

China Dialogue's Paul French points out in his article "Why is China different for western brands?" that a number of worldwide brands which adopt green practices in other markets fail to do so in mainland China:

"• Banking chain HSBC sends its mail in Hong Kong on recyclable paper, in envelopes that note the bank is committed to protecting the environment. None of this is mentioned on envelopes sent to Chinese mainland addresses;

• Luxury retailer LVMH’s new Catherine Deneuve-led advertising campaign features a tag line that supports the Climate Project. It appears everywhere from London to Hong Kong, but not on their ads in the Chinese mainland;"

Advertising - "Buy More" vs The Planet - "Please for God's sake buy less"

I've been reading a few articles recently that have got me thinking about the role of Marketing in the future and how this potentially clashes with the way the world has to start behaving. If we need to start consuming less and advertising on the whole tells us to consume more, then surely something needs to change with advertising.

Even Martin Sorrell, the Chief Executive of WPP, one of the largest communications groups in the world, has commented recently that "conspicuous consumption is not productive and should be discouraged" (as quoted in Campaign Magazine).

So what does this mean for marketers? If, for example, the stigma related to being a conspicuous consumer grows and grows to the point that it becomes a stereotype to be avoided, in what ways will advertisers and clients for that matter have to change their game in order to appeal to the new generation of thrifty, planet-conscious consumers of the 21st century?

Well, I think the challenges that advertisers will have to face will have to answer the following questions that the new consumers will be asking themselves about the products they are researching, (some of these are extremely obvious)-

Do I really need this?
Do I have "ENOUGH" of this product already?
Will I be able to repair it/maintain it/upgrade it myself?
Will it be obsolete this time next year? If so, why?
Has it been constructed by fairly paid workers and constructed in a way that does not harm the environment?
What does this product tell those around me about my beliefs and environmental credentials?


In the same way that the internet is democratising media coverage around the world, it's also fundamentally changing the way in which people view the world and their role in it. People are now looking online to find communities to be part of and moving away from the idea that materialism is the be all and end all.

Li Wei - Dangerous

No- they're not photoshopped. Li Wei creates these "performance art photos" using props and extremely strong wires. His photos show him in precarious situations where for the viewer, the only possible outcome is disaster. These situations range from the above, to falling from the sky to having already landed, head first into various objects (cars, the ground, lakes).

His work evokes strong reactions from passers by: "The first reaction is astonishment. Some people think they are full of sense of humour. They are curious about how I did this".

It's this sense of humour, albeit slightly dark, that makes these images so striking. It's something that I mentioned in a previous post and I'm glad I've been able to find an example so quickly to illustrate my point.

Find more of Li Wei's photos here

China's Creative Imperative - Kunal Sinha

"I've learnt from my experience in China to never under-estimate the Chinese. Kunal's insight creates a compelling case that they have what it takes to move beyond the world's factory to become a force in creativity. "
— Colin Giles, President, Nokia China



Burying your head in the sand...
....if you think that China is not going to become a creative force in the future. This follows on from my last post, creativity in China is booming at the moment, especially in the fields of music and illustration/design. It's timely that a Strategy Director at Ogilvy Greater China has just published a book on the subject.

China' s in a unique position to absorb the best of all the creative talent and ideas arriving on it's shores, and to build a strong visual/design community and identity of its own. I think the next ten to twenty years will be a hugely exciting time to be involved with this kind of work in China. As the above image illustrates, the Chinese have a unique sense of humour and it will be this, combined with striking visual imagery which will hopefully provide some very inspiring work.

Nike China Advertising

Nike China is planning an advertising blitz this summer in the run up to the Olympics. As well as having the most famous Chinese athletes in their stable, hurdler Liu Xiang, basketball player Li Jianlian and the latest Chinese sports sensation Zheng Jie, the tennis player who reached the Wimbledon Ladies semi finals last week.

The adverts shown above, although a couple of years old, show how advertising should be done in China. Everday Chinese people in everyday situations show off unexpected improvised athletic skills using just what comes to hand. For anyone who has spent any time in China or watched any Chinese television, this video will definitely ring true.
















Nike 100
A few months ago, Nike took over a space in the 798 district of Beijing. While, relatively unknown outside China, the 798 area is a burgeoning creative neighbourhood in the north east of the city. It's full of old munitions factories and warehouses which are now being used by local artists and gallery owners.

The Nike 100 building showcased the top 100 innovative concepts ever created by Nike and was only open for one month. On entering the building, each guest was given an Ipod Touch preloaded with 100 tracks describing each of the innovations. Also on display were a great deal of rare exclusives. Although I wasn't lucky enough to see the exhibition, it strikes me as a great example of Nike building hype around their brand pre-Olympics.













How long before "Made in China" becomes "Created in China"?
Only a matter of time in my opinion, there's increasing focus around the world on the creative output coming out of China, eg. China Design Now at the V&A in London. From gauging reaction on various blogs, it's clear to me that the label "Made in China" is becoming increasingly resented on the mainland.

It will be interesting to see what kind of role brands like Nike will play in enabling homegrown talent to emerge, and what kind of imagery/advertising will follow. I'm not sure who was involved in the creation of the above Nike Liu Xiang outdoor advert but it's definitely distinctly Chinese in style. I wonder if this is the path Nike will go down in the run up to the Olympics.

The "Shanghai Effect" - the right place, the right time

"Because of this word, my stock goes up" - can you guess the word?

The Shanghai Diaries is an (almost) daily vlog by Aric S. Queen on Current TV. It's the insider view on what life is like right now for many foreigners based in China, the ups and the downs, the "good China days" and the "bad China days". It's not what you get to see on the BBC or CNN etc. Aric is fairly realistic in his description of the show and more specifically the reason for it's success - he's in the city that everybody is watching at the moment, and unlike the foreign correspondents sent to China by the news networks, he can choose what he wants to cover, whether it be Visa clampdowns on foreign freelancers or the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake.

So I guess, the old adage about being "in the right place at the right time" works here.