But over the past few years, advertising's star, at least in comparison to those of various high-tech fields, hasn't been shining quite so brightly.
The China Times Advertising Awards, which are highly regarded in the industry, had their 20th anniversary this year, and in celebration, the award ceremony was held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in a banquet room with 50 tables. Virtually all of the industry's senior executives and up-and-coming young guns were in attendance.
Yet despite the stage, the snazzy awards, the raucous applause, drinking, feasting and sartorial splendor, despite all that razzle-dazzle, one could detect strains of dejection.
"The market situation isn't good, and it's getting harder and harder to do business!" "When client businesses move from Taiwan, their ad agencies must go with them, turning ad men into 'semigrants' forever shuttling between Taiwan, mainland China and Hong Kong."
"The feeling is very somber, because the Taiwan advertising industry is facing a pile of problems never faced before!" says Wu Chin-chiang, general manager of Michelangelo Graphic Design.
Fortunes tied to the general economy
The ups and downs of the market, of course, have the single largest impact on the industry's economic prospects and morale. And for the last 20 years Taiwan advertising has had a remarkable run of success.
"Economic development has provided fertile soil for the advertising industry," notes Hsu Chia-shih, a journalism professor at National Chengchi University who has long served as a judge for the China Times awards. On the one hand, the industry has benefited from the booming economy. From 1978 to 1987 Taiwan was averaging double-digit economic growth, and the companies that flourished with it became advertisers.
In the early days many agencies were set up by consortiums to advertise their own products. For instance, in an earlier incarnation, Ogilvy and Mather (Taiwan) was Cathay Advertising, set up by the Cathay group to handle its own advertising needs. Back then, all the firms under the Cathay umbrella, including Cathay Life Insurance, Cathay Construction and the Cathay Investment and Trust Bank, had their advertising needs handled by the agency, making it one of the ten biggest in Taiwan.
On the other hand, people in Taiwan have become much stronger consumers, which has sparked interest in investing in advertising so as to push sales. From 1988 to 1996, economic growth slowed, though still a consistent 5% to 8%, but per capita income rose from US$6000 to US$12,000, causing domestic industry to switch from being purely export oriented to pushing their products domestically. The resulting fierce competition fostered advertising industry growth.
The sunny prospects for advertising in Taiwan attracted a flock of foreign advertising agencies, each trying to make deals with local firms or set up their own branches here. These foreign firms brought investment capital, know-how and foreign clients, helping the industry here to really take off. Of the ten biggest firms now in Taiwan, nine have some connection to a foreign firm, American, British or Japanese.
These factors have combined to bring Taiwan's advertising companies average growth of 10% a year, and in boom years over 20%.
Integrated media marketing
But in the last few years the overall economic environment has changed, and this has had a major impact on the advertising industry. "The advertising industry is, in fact, more vulnerable to economic change than other industries," notes Raymond Su, who heads Northeast Asian operations for J. Walter Thompson, an American agency that had the second largest total accounts in Taiwan last year. The stock-market drop, the stalled real-estate market, the flight of industry. . . all have hurt the advertising industry.
What's more, Taiwan has recently experienced many unforeseeable events, and the advertising industry is the first to feel their effects. "Last year, the Chinese communists used missile tests to threaten Taiwan," Su recalls. "For the half year that followed, virtually all domestic firms froze their advertising budgets." Su is worried that the storms that have rocked the currency markets, causing the NT dollar to slide and the stock market to drop, will also hurt the advertising industry.
Because foreign agencies have the support of international clients, they are less affected by domestic economic problems. Sung Chih-ming, who heads up Greater China operations for the US agency Ogilvy & Mather, notes that most foreign firms follow a system of allocating a set percentage of the yearly operating budget to advertising, meaning that there won't be sudden changes of course or pull-backs. "Local firms, on the other hand, are much more flexible with their advertising expenditures, supplementing or cutting back as the situation demands," Song says. This puts more pressure on the small and medium-sized agencies that serve domestic clients.
When clients cut back, advertising agencies are forced to expand their areas of service in their struggle to make ends meet. They open up more channels to consumers, taking on such tasks as public relations, direct marketing, print-media design, and sales promotions, becoming "integrated media marketers."
These developments, combined with the great changes that have rocked Taiwan's media environment since the ban on new newspapers was lifted-including such developments in electronic media as cable television, more bandwidth available for new radio stations, and the Internet-have had effects of unprecedented magnitude on the industry. "Different media have different characteristics and audiences, resulting in a highly segmented market," notes Su. The state of affairs is a great test of advertising personnel's professional abilities.
Some people describe these market changes with this metaphor: "There used to be a lot of birds on the tree, and you could bring several down with one blast of a shot gun, but now there aren't so many birds on each tree, and you've got to aim carefully with a rifle."
Moving with the clients
Apart from the problem of domestic companies cutting back their advertising budgets, more than a few Taiwan companies have moved their operations abroad, causing the agencies serving them to expand operations overseas as well, particularly to mainland China. Many international agencies wanting to expand into the mainland market have used Taiwan staff to open up offices there in the belief that the mainland and Taiwan share language and ethnicity and that Taiwan staff should, therefore, be their best communication bridge to the mainland Chinese. High-level executives in particular will often find themselves shuttling between Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.
Their biggest complaint is that although both sides are indeed Chinese-language markets, different political systems have resulted in vastly different societies and cultures, making the mainland market a new world. Taiwan staff must start from scratch, learning things all over again and adapting what they already know. In order to understand mainlanders, who have been exposed to Marxism-Leninism for a long time, many middle-aged senior advertising personnel have had to embark on their own educational revolution, studying hard the "communist bandit books" that were banned here in their youth.
"At first, I went to bookstores all over mainland China to find books like Quotations from Chairman Mao and The Complete Works of Mao Zedong," says Shen Lu-pai, president of Interface Communication Company. "It came as a surprise when the sales clerks told me that these books were no longer popular, and asked me if I was from Taiwan because only Taiwan compatriots were interested in Mao's work." After he read several of Mao's books, Shen changed his focus to read some of the books now popular in the mainland. "Looking at it positively, this was a challenge that could help me get through my mid-life crisis."
Merchandise magicians
Amid the ups and downs of the economy, advertising agencies can rely on international firms and adjust their lines of business. But the lifeblood of advertising lies on the creative side. How do these various market phenomena affect the creative output of domestic agencies?
Plowing the soil of a fertile market for two or three decades, agencies here have reaped a bountiful harvest.
Take, for instance, television commercials. In the early days most of the advertisements focused on the products themselves, such as those with jingles like this one for Tatung appliances: "Tatung, Tatung, Taiwan born and bred; Tatung, Tatung, its quality is way ahead." Or this one for Green Oil, a menthol medication: "Green Oil, Green Oil, everyone wants the oil that is green; the whole family loves its fragrance, so fresh and so clean."
Such commercials directly told people to buy these products. They weren't terribly sophisticated, but they had catchy jingles, and with only three television stations in Taiwan, broadcasting these commercials over and over again would ensure that the product would stick in people's minds.
Over the last two decades, in step with social change and fierce competition within the industry, there has been a growing variety of advertising methods adopted, and the content is improving and growing more true to life. By looking at the commercials that won its advertising awards, the China Times has been able to detect four different eras, which provide an outline of advertising's creative development here in Taiwan.
The years from 1978-1982 were the age of the pioneers. The advertisements from this era were beginning to have an idea about creativity, but as they were in the early period they were still groping around a bit, and advertising creative work consisted largely of slogans that were easy to understand and remember. For instance, a paint commercial used the phrase "two brushes" (saying that someone "has two brushes" means that they are very skillful), a commercial for an acne medication used "take the youth without the sores" (the Chinese for pimple is "youth sore"); and milk formula commercials played on parents' hopes for their children: "Child, I hope you'll grow up to be stronger than me."
What can't be denied is that the level of creativity in that period was lower, and that the advertising agencies, both in production techniques and management methods, were, like many of their client firms and industry in general, following the Japanese lead. The advertising industry here copied advertising in Japan, and some commercials were unabashedly modeled directly from Japanese examples.
Technical mastery
The years from 1983 until 1990 could be described as the "era of technology." With computerization and the entry of foreign firms, the techniques used in advertisement production entered a new era. Like magicians, ad men and women learned how to conjure up a product's charm. From a creative standpoint, Taiwan's commercials were making great strides.
Ogilvy & Mather provides a good example. Sung Chih-ming, who personally oversaw the firm's transformation from what was little more than an in-house service department of the Cathay group to a branch of the US agency, says that at first the ads from Cathay companies were enough to keep the agency going, but because there were no restraints placed on hiring, it was overstaffed and lost money as a result.
To put their house in order and become more professional, Sung, apart from cutting back and reshuffling staff, also changed the agency's business strategies and management organization, and went outside for professional knowledge and training resources.
"Back then we were making ads without any resources, and we were completely relying on our previous experience. But after the market competition grew fierce, it became impossible to rely entirely on experience, so we began to consider going to Japan or America for resources." Sung says that whereas in many professions you first get the techniques before forming more complete systems, and thus gradually gaining knowledge of the field, the advertising industry is just the reverse. There, it is necessary first to have knowledge, which serves as a foundation for developing everything else.
He chose to work with the American firm Ogilvy & Mather, which is the sixth largest advertising agency in the world, and then went on to form a joint venture with them. "I had been coming in contact with Western thinking, culture and art ever since I was very young, and I didn't know much about Japan," he recalls. "At the same time I figured that over the next ten years Western firms would be flooding into the Taiwan market, so I selected an American firm for the joint venture."
Sung points out that at that time they had an international client, Korean Air, so they grabbed at an opportunity to have contact with the American company Ogilvy & Mather, paying a hefty NT$2 million a year to receive training from them. Then in 1985, the two companies formally embarked on a joint venture, and the agency changed its name to Ogilvy & Mather, Taiwan.
Good things should be shared
"Training can help develop your staff, and that's the best way to improve creativity." Sung holds that the decision to stress training is why the agency has met with such success in Taiwan.
Several successful advertisements, such as "Expand your horizons" for Giant bicycles, a series of ads for small Philips appliances that focus on the small modern family, and those for Mr. Brown Coffee whose main theme is environmental protection-have helped to vastly increase the sales of their products and have earned the agency frequent China Times awards, increasing its renown and business.
The "sharing" advertisements for Maxwell House Coffee have been particularly outstanding. They invited actor Swun Yueh, who has an image as a warm person who enthusiastically participates in public-service activities, to be spokesman. In particular, the scene of Swun Yueh, holding a steaming hot cup of coffee and saying "good things should be shared with good friends!" has been widely echoed in society, and is still used today.
Liu Te-ching, creative director for J. Walter Thompson, Taiwan, whose "You love her" campaign has beat the drums for Ford's Liata (which sounds similar to "you love her" in Mandarin), originally worked for the domestic Taiwan Advertising Agency before moving to a Western agency in 1987. The advertising industry was invented in the West, where it has developed for over a century, and he found that the Western agency had better models of thinking and that the staff there was more attentive to detail. Its management systems were also very clear, its salaries reasonable, and there were opportunities for advancement and further study. What was most important was that "creative ideas were given more respect and support, and there was a more professional attitude." As a result, many young people in the field were attracted to the company.
From a production standpoint, he remembers that when he first started, television commercials were filmed on 16-millimeter film, and were easy to damage when handling. After they had been shown for a long time, they accumulated scratches that would give them a grainy appearance. Foreign companies were the first to use 35-millimeter film, which were then transferred on to cassette tapes for broadcast, and the foreign agencies were willing to invest a lot: For a 30-second spot they could spend anywhere from NT$1 million to NT$10 million.
"Back then they were attracting a lot of production people from abroad, which greatly improved domestic directing techniques, lighting, editing and the whole production process," says Liu Te-ching. This caused the commercials to be technically superior to Taiwan cinema films, and so the quality of the finished product naturally rose.
A crowded field
Since then, the style of Taiwan advertising has been even more dazzling and diverse. From 1991 to 1994, advertisements went the direction of "the new new marketing age." With products aiming at individual market segments and the media growing increasingly diverse, advertisements began to pay more attention to the specific characteristics and needs of different groups, hoping to be at the leading edge of lifestyle trends with such affirmations and declarations as "the new, new youth" and "the new good man." Among these, the advertisements for Kaihsi Oolung Tea's "new, new youth" most caught people's attention, and the term is now part of the common vocabulary.
The era from 1995 to the present has been termed the "era when all the heroes strive for supremacy," like the Warring States Era. There is a heavy fin de si鋃le air to things as retro merges with avant garde to create a self-reflective, futuristic, and frenetic creative style. A representative commercial is one promoting a music video station.
In a traditionally decorated old Taiwan home, a man wearing shorts and a T-shirt picks his ear at the dining table in front of the ancestral altar. Suddenly rock music blares, and the man starts dancing like a young Taoist jitong exorcising ghosts. Using traditional spirit possession and mixing it with rock music might seem contradictory, but it does in fact create quite a lot of resonance, interesting associations and opportunities to show technical skill, and the result is that viewers can't help but crack a knowing smile.
"Bold work, innovative, with courage and wisdom," is how Wu Chin-chiang, the general manager of Michelangelo Graphic Design describes Taiwan's advertising creativity. The truth is that this creative strength is domestic agencies' biggest asset. Small and medium-sized advertising firms lack the support of big international clients, and they don't have adequate manpower to expand their marketing efforts or the scope of their services, so they have no choice but to rely on their unique creative showing in order to attract attention and clients.
New enlightenment movement
"Taiwan's advertising industry has ended up becoming a kind of new folk enlightenment movement," says Hsu Chia-shih, a professor of journalism at National Chengchi University. The industry excels at using sentimental appeals, Hsu notes, and is full of topics of social concern, such as public-service advertisements, environmentally conscious marketing, commercials aimed at bolstering a company's image (rather than pushing its products), etc. These have a good effect on social morality, and it's worth continuing to make the most of them.
Tsai Yuan-huang, a professor in the foreign languages department at National Taiwan University, points to the work of the Ideology Advertising Agency, which shatters the forms used in stereotypical product advertising, as representing the most outstanding example of the work being done in the current advertising era and as best being able to reflect the mood and psychology of society.
"When you mention 'ideology,' many people think only about political thinking; but the broad meaning of ideology includes the values shaped by and contained within such systems as religion, ethics, and education. For instance, in the society and families of a earlier era, male chauvinism was also a type of ideology," Tsai once wrote in an essay. "When there is a system of values that has the clear upper hand in society, it necessarily causes certain people to be psychologically repressed, and people will resist this ideological hegemony."
Ideology Advertising made a series of commercials for Stimorol gum, which develop along these lines:
In the earliest "There's something I want to say" commercial a burning match lights up the worried face of a high-school boy, who yells, "I have something to say!" At this time, from off screen, comes the voice of his father: "Don't say anything. Where's your report card?" This is followed by his mother's plea: "I beg you-pass the college entrance test, then we'll talk." The phrase "I have something to say" came to represent the inner feelings of youths facing the pressures of Taiwan's exam hell and wanting to communicate with their parents.
This opposition to the status quo has continued to be developed, most recently in a Stimorol orange-gum commercial aimed at junior-high girls, which even more directly tackles the hot issue of corporal punishment in the schools. The screen shows the powerlessness and terror expressed in the gentle, youthful face of a girl in junior high experiencing corporal punishment. It serves as a silent accusation about the authoritarian educational environment and has stirred up quite a lot of sympathy, taking top prize for food commercials at the China Times Advertising Awards this year.
Emotional appeals outstanding
"This all goes back to the transformation and liberalization of domestic politics and society," reckons Shen Lu-pai. After the end of martial law, the opening up of travel to mainland China, and changes in government regulations which-among much else-made it no longer necessary for commercials to get prior government approval, the advertising industry was free of its old binds. And as the people began to get more power and the social reform movement grew more influential, the sensitive advertising industry was able generate creative sparks.
Eight years ago, when it became legal to broadcast commercials in Taiwanese dialect, a vast new creative space became available. Take I Mei Foods, one of Shen Lu-pai's accounts. Because I Mei largely sells traditional local foods, Shen's advertisements for them use a lot of Taiwanese dialect to make them stand out. It's because of these advertisements that many people now use the Taiwanese term for peanut popsicle even when conversing in Mandarin.
The creativity shown in Taiwanese advertisements is remarkable not only in the context of Taiwan, but even when compared to other Asian nations.
Raymond Su, who is very familiar with developments in TV and radio advertising, says that in comparison with Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China, Taiwan's outstanding feature is in dealing with sentimental subject matter. Homesickness, nostalgia, and adolescent crushes are all staples in the creation of commercials in Taiwan.
As for as those other places, Su, who serves as a selector for the China Times awards, says the commercials in Singapore and Hong Kong have a strong Western orientation, and put a strong emphasis on production skills. Correspondingly, the appeal of the content and the thinking behind their central themes are weaker. The mainland got into the game late, he says, and the advertising industry isn't well enough developed there. Although they may have an outstanding film industry to draw on for support, with production skills that are up to speed, the long-term exposure to communism has stifled their creative sensibilities.
In Taiwan, creativity represents the advertising industry's greatest asset. As a result, people in the field have high expectations and aren't fazed by short-term economic woes.
"Raising the level of advertising makes it more than just a business; it turns it into a professional discipline." Hsu Chia-shih says that when Chengchi University first decided to establish an advertising department, there was a great dispute between its schools of business and journalism. The business school believed that advertising was a business service and so fell within its scope, but the journalism school successfully claimed the field for itself with the argument that "advertising is a broadcast and communications profession that is social and cultural in nature."
Su reveals that in the Asian economic map in his mind, "Taiwan is the center of Chinese advertising, the leader in the field." He notes that advertising is growing everywhere in Asia. Each nation has its strong suit, and with greater cross-fertilization, skillful use of the combined resources of the whole region could raise standards everywhere. But among the different markets, "the related skills, training resources and creative personnel are best and most abundant in Taiwan, which makes advertising people so ambitious here."
The best is yet to come.
p.102
(courtesy of the China Times)
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Ideology's CEO Cheng Sung-mao (left) helps Ogilvy & Mather's creative director, Wang Yi-hsing, to make a stronger impression, as Shen Lu-pai, chairman of Interface Communications, looks on. The China Times advertising awards had their 20th anniversary this year, and in one of the activities held in celebration, famous ad industry figures made hand prints for eternity. The ad execs, who are merry pranksters by nature, had fun. (courtesy of the China Times)
p.106
Reflecting their age or even leading it, advertisements expand our scope of vision. Metaphysical Punctuality's "New, New Youth in China" series won the China Times' top prize for television commercials in 1993 (left). This year, the winner for print media advertising design was Ideology's "Little Red Riding Hood" series. Its main theme is modern women's quest for self-fulfillment and physical safety. (opposite page photo courtesy of Metaphysical Punctuality Company, left photo courtesy of Ideology Company)
p.108
"Resources are limited, creativity boundless." In today's affluent society, car companies are the biggest advertisers. The fierce competition offers a look at the genius of ad creators and the great variety of styles, from conservative to stream of consciousness.
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Advertising channels are growing more and more diverse, allowing ad people to transcend the limitations of print media and television. Hitting the streets to give the public a chance to meet famous endorsers is now a popular method. (photo by Vincent Chang)
Reflecting their age or even leading it, advertisements expand our scope of vision. Meta physical Punctuality's "New, New Youth in China" series won the China Times' top prize for television commercials in 1993 （left）. This year, the winner for print media advertising design was Ideology's "Little Red Riding Hood" series. Its main theme is modern women's quest for self-fulfillment and physical safety. （opposite page photo courtesy of Metaphysical Punctuality Company, left photo courtesy of Ideology Company）
Advertising channels are growing more and more diverse, allowing ad people to transcend the limitations of print media and television. Hitting the streets to give the public a chance to meet famous endorsers is now a popular method. （photo by Vincent Chang）
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