crap?, originally uploaded by Kelly Hyde.

One of my favorite artists of all time! Probably why we need more language exchanges in the world. It’s like saying “this thing” in mandarin to a black guy. If you know what I mean.

It was an early Sunday morning and my buddy Simon told me there was hockey on Pearl TV. I told myself this could not be, the NHL season was a month away and Pearl TV certainly wasn’t going to show preseason hockey. But curiosity convinced me to hit the power button on the remote. Lo and behold it was hockey, but not the NHL. It was Beijing Vs. Canadians, a televised game from the 2009 HKAHC International Amateur Ice Hockey Tournament.

Hockey is not the first sport that comes to mind when thinking of Asia. Badminton, cricket and even football or basketball would be higher on the list of sports expected to find in Asia. So how did this come about, an amateur hockey tournament in Hong Kong? What kinds of questions can this raise in terms of the way culture is spread? How can we generate value in something that was previously non-existent in a region?

Asking these questions brought me back to a book I read not too long ago. “The Culture Code” written by Clotaire Rapaille, a well known marketing and cultural imprint expert, talks about how each person has a cultural imprint that is generated from birth to present. As cars and automobiles can have different connotations in the United States compared to Europe, Clotaire Rapaille explores these cultural imprints in his book.

The story of Nestle is presented early in the book. Actually it’s presented within the first ten pages of the book, pages 7-9. Rapaille recalls being approached by Nestle, the mega food conglomerate that owns brands such as Nestle Milk and Chocolate, Purina, Powerbar and Perrier and many more. The company had been trying to introduce coffee into Japan in the 1970′s. However Nestle could not find any success with any of their marketing campaigns. At the time, the campaigns consisted of trying to convince the Japanese consumer to switch from drinking tea to coffee, in a tea rich culture.

According to Rapaille, this sounds like an illogical idea for the present day observer with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but at the time it did not appear obvious. Knowing tea’s importance in Japan, Rapaille moved to explore what the Japanese and people from the culture truly felt about coffee and what emotions they had attached to it. What Rapaille discovered is as expected tea had a strong cultural imprint. However what was surprising, coffee had barely any emotions attached to it. It was practically non-existant in the Japanese culture.

Here is an excerpt from “The Culture Code” describing Rapaille’s process and results.

“I designed this process to bring participants back to their first imprint of coffee and the emotion attached to it. In most cases, though, the journey led nowhere. What this signified for Nestle was very clear. While the Japanese had an extremely strong emotional connection to tea ( something I learned without asking in the first hour of the sessions), they had, at the most, a very superficial imprint of coffee. Most, in fact, had no imprint at all.”

To combat this, Nestle took a different approach to marketing coffee in Japan. Instead of convincing people to switch from tea to coffee, the campaign switched to creating a coffee imprint in the Japanese culture. The method was creating coffee flavored ice cream so kids can begin to taste coffee at a young age and grow up with a positive taste of coffee. Though coffee will probably never reach the impact of tea, Nestle now has grown the Japanese coffee marketing from non-existent to half a billion pounds annually.

This leads me back to hockey, sports and introducing cultural/social activities to new markets. Recently Major League Baseball opened a training center in China to try and find and cultivate new talent. The idea is to create training centers and develop talent. However, it must be noted baseball, even though initially introduced in the 1860′s, is not a popular sport in China; far behind basketball.This is  a long term development strategy for Major League Baseball, making the investment worthwhile.

Obvious to everyone, developing talented players is important, especially at a young age, a concept similar to Nestle introducing coffee tasting ice cream. But what is lacking is the developing the social network of these young players and future stars. Currently China already has a seven team baseball league that is barely heard of. But the social clique of someone is not just the team the player plays for. How about the parents? How about the family members and friends? How about competition among family and friends? In a once child society like China, the parents tend to dote and worry about their children more than what is accustomed to in non-single child families. Developing the personal social networks of these players should be as important as their own talent. This will grow the support group that reinforces the interest. Imagine growing a new generation of Chinese parents taking their children to little league.

mag1, originally uploaded by andrew.lau.

A pretty blatant attempt at bastardizing President Obama’s campaign slogan and then turning into a way of selling yourself as a tutor. I must say. Pretty Lame. Though nice picture @flickr andrew.lau

Residents in Nanao, originally uploaded by Kevin Lau.

One of my favorite photos I took while visiting Nanao Island. Nanao is off the coast of Shantou, China. A bridge connecting the island to the mainland was originally planned, however it has been shelved for now. One would wonder, if the bridge was built, how would their lives change? Would this man be living in a different house?

Is this how we tell the world what we watch?

I’ve been watching this live for the past 30 minutes. Living in Hong Kong, this is one of the few ways I can stay on top of what happens. But this fascinates me. What fascinates me isn’t the potential conversation through Facebook. People rarely use their status as conversation items with stranger and looking at the postings, people are not generating dialogue. However they are using demonstrating to their friends through Facebook that they care about the country. Strangely this can also cause people to express their political views to their friends, a topic usual taboo for friendly dialogue.

I commend CNN for doing this and it seems interesting. But I wonder if this is the way to make TV interactive. However for networks, I think this is a good way to promote what shows are being watched through interactivity. Letting my friends know I still care about the country but watching CNN is a great way for media to piggy back on people’s desire to express. But this is the surface of what interactivity can be.

“Tweeting” or status updates are only the beginning. I’m hoping someone will come up with an even more creative idea. Maybe someone will come up with a game. Maybe a community game about using the stimulus, or balancing the budget. That would be more interactive than just a status update.