Tom Doctoroff

Do we need Confucius to sell aftershave in China? – The WTO column

(later at Chinabiz)
I’m trained as a historian, not as a Sinologist and that might explain why, very soon after I arrived in China, I felt this strange urge to doze off when speakers at conferences started to talk about Confucius.
Things have improved since those early days, because after a few years I could afford a mobile phone and join the Chinese participants who went to the back of the hall to call the home front. Nowadays you can actually pretend you are interested in the marketing bullshit while you are in fact chatting with your hot date. Or answering your email of course, depending on who is setting next to you and checking what you are doing.
Important publications, including the Harvard Business Review, found Confucius as a useful tool to frame the market for American business people. It never convinced me. It creates the illusion that there is one driving force in the Chinese market you can use as a beacon in an often chaotic situation. Again: it never convinced me, and bored me to death.
Confucius has become for me a kind of symbol: when somebody needs the Chinese sage to explain the Chinese market, you know this person had no clue. I found the Shanghai-based marketer Tom Doctoroff, China CEO of JWT, always a refreshing speaker. Alright, like every popular speaker he did repeat his most successful one-liners a bit too often, but he was knowledgeable, funny and had always enough stories to make an evening both educational and entertaining. And he – as far as I noticed – avoided the name Confucius in his presentations.

This week I got a press release. Tom Doctoroff added his book on the Chinese consumer to the pile that is growing too fast. Now, writing a book on the Chinese consumer is a forgivable mistake. Putting ink on dead trees is a tradition that might still work, if you pick the right angle. Unfortunately, Doctoroff picked Confucius as a way to confuse his readers, as Danwei puts it very eloquent. Is the business of JWT going that bad? Doctoroff calls the Chinese consumer the “Confucian Consumer”. Better not tell this the average Chinese consumer. Some quotes:

"In China "fresh" means "alive." Daoism is still a force in the People's Republic. Daoists believe our natural state is the only "balanced" state. Therefore, Chinese have a deep aversion to manmade preservatives. For that matter, Chinese women get prickly about chemicals in shampoo.”

I thought people liked living animals because they were fresher compared to the dead ones. Prickly about chemicals in shampoo? What an amazing nonsense.
And a very funny one:

"More than 80 percent of Shanghai couples now get married with an engagement ring, up from practically zero a couple of years ago. In an unsafe world, men have to demonstrate -- not talk about -- their love. Women are suspicious of guys who say, "I love you."

Damned, if you do not repeat you love them on average three times an hour they get suspicious. They might not believe you, that is true, but you still have to repeat it.

Why is somebody like Tom Doctoroff sinking to such a low level? I can only think of one explanation: he is going to retire to the US. He cannot tell the real and often confusing story of the Chinese consumers. Only the simplest message can get across. It might not be true, but then, who cares about that?

Fons Tuinstra

PS: Of course we do not need Confucius to sell aftershave. You do not sell aftershave in a country where men do not need to shave.