International Law

China, Luxury Brands & Tattoos

By Stan

This will be my last post of the night as Google Reader is having a series of seizures on me, and I can’t get at my RSS feeds. Damn technology. What’s the tech equivalent of an anticonvulsant drug? (Before I motivate anyone to write me an email, please don’t tell me to restart my PC — I’m not that bad.)

I would like to direct you to a nifty post by Rand at Little Red Book about luxury brands in China. The post starts off with a comparison that I’ve never heard before:

The way Chinese relate to luxury brands in many ways reminds me of the time I was in LA; seeing a lot of tattoos of Chinese characters, many of which were misspelled, or phrases that had no meaning in Chinese. Yes, I am comparing tattoos to Fendi, but bear with me as I attempt to make my point.

When these people were getting their tattoos, the first thought that went through their heads was ?wow that looks cool?. However, if you?re Chinese and you?ve been staring at these characters every day of your natural life, the cool-factor tends to wane, and the meaning of the phrase take precedence.

It?s the reversed situation in China, brands that have that ?cool? look; determined by money/status elements; are perceived better then those that ride the ?Western history, character, etc? strategy.

Like most of you expats (or foreigners) out there, I have seen people back home (for me this is LA as well) walking around with Chinese character tattooed on their arms, legs, who knows where else. Always thought it was stupid, definitely pretentious, and done out of profound ignorance, which is the worst sin of all.

Nice that Rand is able to use this insipid practice for a good end, although I’m not sure what he means when he says that a character tattoo was “misspelled.” Anyway, the comparison to foreign luxury brands is appealing.

The rest of the post is worth a read as well for the suggestion regarding foreign brand owners not merely using a luxury brand’s trademark in the China market but actually attempting to recreate the brand for Chinese consumers. I have had clients in the past who steadfastly believe that their trademark/brand has intrinsic value in China just because it is famous in other countries — they refuse to believe it is worthless because no one here has ever seen it before.

Good stuff. This is one of those times where a trademark lawyer’s experience is way too limiting, and you need the services of a good ad man.

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Full post as published by China Hearsay on April 07, 2009 (boomark / email).