Customer Reviews

Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture

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This is a hybrid book, part academic treatise and part business report. Although her practical experience in the world of advertising is minimal (consisting of several summers spent working in an ad agency in China), professor Jing Wang has applied her academic skills to study advertising in China. Her book does not speak primarily to advertising practitioners as much as to her fellow academics. Much of her content will also interest media professionals - if they can stay the course through her interesting, but somewhat disorganized professorial prose. getAbstract finds that Wang is at her best when relating anecdotes about advertising successes and failures in the Chinese market. She also shines when providing cultural insights that show how and why Western marketers have failed in the Middle Kingdom. Wang speaks with almost glowing anticipation of what the Olympics might achieve on behalf of "Brand China." Though published in 2008, her book clearly went to press before the earthquake, the fresh controversy over Tibet and the demonstrations that brought a new kind of attention to the Chinese Olympics.

I was surprised that a cultural studies critic can produce a book that is so much fun to read and so creative in its treatment of topics that most humanities academics are not equipped to talk about. Unlike most books that recycle a single thesis in every chapter, this book grips your attention from the beginning to end. Every chapter opens up a new terrain. I learned a great deal about contemporary China (not just about Chinese consumers and advertising) from those intriguing stories and analyses. The author's attempt of breaking out of the methodological confines of his field is quite admirable. I believe that he's quite successful at that. He convinced me that pop culture studies can reinvent itself by taking the vantage point of the business world seriously. The stories in this book are playfully told, the language succinct and witty, and the analysis unpredictable but masterfully delivered. I would imagine that Jing Wang is a rebel of some kind in his field. A very smart book.

As a lay reader curious about contemporary China, I was quite surprised by how accessible this book is. Some chapters are a bit difficult to navigate, but the chapters on cell phone, the bobos (which is so much fun!), and the one about Haier are a wonderful read. It was recommended to me by a marketing friend. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The paperback listing for this book has the publish date at Apr 2010. The kindle version was published in 2008! Forever and a heartbeat ago in regards to marketing information.

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