competing images for Brand China and the numbers 08.08.08

Brand China has gone a long way. it's a super power. also a brand filled with mystery. not to mention at least 60% of everything we own, wear or use are most likely manufactured in china. and this brand is set to take the world stage today with the opening of the Beijing Olympics.

Brand China will be enhanced. that's what china wants and as a neighbor to this great country, that is what we wish for it too.

but in marketing, as in country brand imagery, there will always be competing brand images.

fate will have it that just a few months before the Beijing games, we saw the competing images of Tibet and mother nature in action in china. unlike in marketing, both, well at least one of them, brand china could not do anything about.

it's debatable whether Tibet was preventable. but as things go in china, preventing Tibet from occurring would have meant going against their very nature and that is an impossible task.


country brand building is never easy. it's too complicated and too many factors that shape it other than your own strategy and plans.

mother nature took a stab at brand china as well. but in that one china responded extremely well. they acted swiftly and massively. and more importantly, allowed the rest of the world to help them, in stark contrast to another asian country that suffered in the hands of mother nature at around the same time.

we can only imagine the atmosphere in china right now. giddy is probably a good word .

i remember the first time i went to beijing. i was very awed by that city. there was something very different in that city and i felt it the first time i set foot even just at the airport. i did not just know it, i FELT it was a great city. the air was different. the feeling overwhelming. it was the same feeling i had the first time i set foot at washington. your whole body knew you were in the seat of a global power.



so on this most auspicious day, 08.08.08 - we wish our neighbor all the best. it's a day that is meant to be china's. the number 8 is the luckiest number for the chinese. china made sure if there is a day it will hold the olympics, it needs to be today as this day happens only once in a century.

and for good measure, so that this wish of WAWAM! takes a more cosmic good luck, for the success of Brand China, it is being posted on 8:08 am, today at 08.08.08.