The Three “Be” Themes Used By Today's Businesses

Today's businesses operate in a fast changing world and one within which they have increased accountability to their stakeholders, such as customers, local communities, employees and the media. The days of strictly controlled corporate public relations and marketing have surely passed by and now the social media allows more scrutiny and cricitism of the biggest brands. I feel there are three "be..." Themes that have been increasingly adopted by the vast majority of corporations today all are friendly, fun or caring images to portray to these stakeholders, to make them appear more down to earth and in touch with reality.

1. Be lighthearted and use childish humorous

This is being taken to new heights in recent years. The straight forward self explanatory advertisements have gone, and in its place has come humorous brand values, and content. It seems to have largely come from new young brands that have encouraged fun in their marketing communications, such as Innocent Drinks, but it has impacted on even the most straight laced of corporations too.

Although humour in marketing is certainly nothing new but the way it is now being used in every official and unofficial communication with audiences in this rather silly "immature" fashion is something I feel has really emerged over the past few years. It seems to have seeped into the culture of company's communications almost unconsciously.

2. Be a little more culturally aware

This is another theme that is increasingly being seen. On my way back to London from Rome recently I saw a sign in the airport Cafe in Chinese only stating "hot water provided free here" a good bit of culture knowledge, as Chinese habitually choose hot drinks and food in their diet, and snub cold snacks. The selling of Halal meat is a common theme too, labelling on products in British supermarkets is increasingly common in respect to Muslims beliefs on how meat they eat is slaughtered, although it has been a controversial topic too, as some non-muslims do not approve of this method of animal slaughtering.

Cultural awareness is demanded more and more by the diverse range of customers businesses seek to satisfy and the businesses in turn who are realising the profit potential too, are more than happy to oblige.

3. Be environmentally friendly

Every business no matter it's size, whether international, national or local seem to be picking up the importance of being "seen" as environmentally friendly. I recently jested on my Facebook about WHSmiths charging a penny for a bag, then giving a generous amount of receipts and offer to each customer which has been going on for many a year! But there are some serious attempts. For instance companies using biodegradable bags in an attempt to use less paper, such as puma recently instead of using cardboard boxes for their trainers.

Starbucks came up with the idea of using their recyclable plastic cup and offering discounts for customers who brought their own cups to their stores. Although there will always be cynics who say they don't do enough, and the demand for more environmentally concepts continue. Nevertheless it is a theme which is increasingly prevalent today.

Why speaking with the correct tone is so important for foreigners in China

Foreigners coming to China, if you wish to impress the locals with some simple Chinese words and phrases, the most important factor, I would recommend is to get a basic understanding of the tones!

In my experience of meeting foreigners in China and through my process of learning Mandarin Chinese, I have commonly come across many who have a fantastic grasp of the language. Their grammar, sentence structures, all sound fantastic, but their tones and pronunciation is the only factor that prevents them effectively sounding like a native speaker.

It is a factor in my view that is very much underestimated, after working so hard to get to that level; it is sadly a little bit like painting a beautiful photo, and spending hours on every stroke, only to then choose an ugly frame to put it in. In fact, Asian languages in general are largely dependent on tones to be understood correctly, it is a fundamental part of the language, and by omitting this it is a failure to comprehend what the language is all about.

However, it is understandable why many foreigners fall into this trap unconsciously, European languages in particular do not make such strong use of tones, they have more words and more syllables than Chinese and therefore can be understood more easily in this regard, even if some words are not pronounced quite correctly. However, Mandarin Chinese has a limited number of sounds, and words are comprised in pinyin of no more than three or four letters. It actually does not take too long (roughly a year of hard study, to be able to pronounce almost all the syllables in Chinese), and therefore it actually makes the process of learning Chinese in some ways easier than European languages where we have words that can span up to 25 letters (for some of the unusual and seldom used ones).

The truth is that pronouncing the tones takes time, and it is a slow process at the beginning, as well as the fact it sounds completely alien to foreigners from the west. Mandarin Chinese consists of four tones as well as a fifth tone which is short and lacks the strength in sound of the other four tones.

l  1^st Tone: flat first tone

l  2^nd Tone: a rising low to high second tone (like when one asks a question),

l  3^rd Tone: that starts high, drops low and rises again (definitely the strangest tonal sound to westerners)

l  4^th Tone: which starts high and drops abruptly (like when you command a child to STOP misbehaving)

But as well as this, there are tones that change depending on the tone that precedes it. The common ones are two fourth tone words like 不在（buzai）or 不是 (bushi) where 不(bu) changes in both words to a second tone sound. Learning a little bit of knowledge like this at the start will take time and perhaps create an uneasy feeling, but will speed your learning up in the long term and make it easier to understand native speakers as well. All these tones are largely neglected by foreign students of Chinese.

At the start, I felt strange to be emphasising all these tones in my sentences, it was purely noise, nothing more and I felt quite uncomfortable. Only after spending time in China speaking and listening intensely that I lost that uncomfortable feeling, and began to understand that the tones were less of a noise and actually a tool for communication in my second language. Now I can unconsciously use tones in Chinese without thinking of them in an English way with embarrassment.  Just like some things we follow subconsciously, it is necessary sometimes to fight against it.

Five years of learning Mandarin has gone by already, and now my basic understanding and communicating with native speaking Chinese people is completely fine and I believe a lot of that has come from my work on my tones and pronunciation, and I believe other foreigners who use this will equally make progression towards as close to a native level (or however close you want to get to it) a more seamless process than without it.

Adam Horton 31/05/2014

How does the media’s propaganda influence your view of China?

When considering culture and the way cultural barriers impact communication and relations between China and the west, it is especially important to consider the ways in which these cultural misunderstandings are bridged, and how efficient the bridges are. Are they build of a solid foundation that is clear to comprehend or is it more of a very frail old crossing equivalent to badly informed misconceptions and stereotypes. How did we get to understand all of what we know about another country and its culture, history and language? The truth is, unless you are intimately familiar with the country in question or have an interest, your opinions and stereotypes may be influenced by propaganda delivered by television, newspapers, or the internet for instance of which make up some of the counterparts of ‘the media’.

The media is a powerful medium of communication that is able to influence the minds of young and old in such a subconscious way that it is scary to comprehend. We all need information to form opinions and those sources of information are fundamental in creating our attitudes and feelings towards something. The media in any one country can ultimately result in a country’s population with misinformed opinions and beliefs towards any issue, and especially one where language and culture make it difficult to amend by individuals themselves.

On the one hand, the influx of Chinese that have moved to study and work in the UK has allowed a better understanding and more direct opinion formation for both British and Chinese citizens towards each other based on personal experiences and thus there is now more direct communication between Chinese and British citizens than ever before. However, there is still a degree of separation of our two cultures too, that encourages the misinterpretations that have existed from days past. Moreover, there is a large amount of scaremongering that goes on from the media, to portray a negative image towards China, that as it gets more developed and more influential in the world, it will be negative for the western world, such as spying on foreign countries, concerns over national security, and the fear that they will try to force communist values onto other countries around them as they get more economic power, much in a similar way to how the Soviet Union was portrayed by the media during their heyday.

UK citizens views on the Chinese?

In the Chinese context, there have been several stereotypes that have built up and been maintained since. Although it is unsurprising that misunderstandings can occur between two countries that are geographically far apart, such as the UK and China, but even simple objective information is often not correctly understood either. Most westerners would be surprised to learn how large and diverse China is. Geographically, China experiences polar opposites in different regions of the country. The climate in the north part of China has intensely cold weather during the winter, but the South part of China never experiences any snow for instance. Other areas of difference include different builds and diets. The Chinese people in the north tend on average to be taller and enjoy saltier and spicier food than their contemporaries in the south whom also generally enjoy sweeter food than in the north. Whereas most westerners would identify rice as being a fundamental part of the Chinese diet which eaten every day, noodles and bread are just as common depending on which part of China it is, sometimes rice is not eaten at all in certain areas. Another example is, contrarily to popular belief, there is no language called Chinese. Instead, China is made up of hundreds of local dialogues; however Mandarin which is taught across all schools in China is commonly spoken across mainland China. The second most popular language in China is Cantonese which is commonly spoken in Hong Kong and the south providences of China. A lot of impressions British people have towards the Chinese language in tonal form is derived from Cantonese, which is where a large part amount of Chinese immigration emerged in the UK during the 1960’s, whereas contrarily due to the Chinese government’s encouragement of using Mandarin in schools across China since the 1960’s, Mandarin has become the most commonly spoken language in China.

Is democracy alone enough to improve understanding of cultures?

These are just some examples of an overall lack of knowledge towards China that highlights the difficulties in forming such basic stereotypes but understanding them would at least minimise basic misunderstandings.

I believe one of the benefits of living in a democratic country, is the opportunity and ability to access streams of information from a variety of sources, whether it is state organised, privately or through charitable organisations, for those who wish to seek the information, it is readily available. However, not everyone can be so active in seeking such information and processing it to understand other culture’s in such a democratic manner. The opinions of others, who are more passive towards this subject and wish to rely on news that is easier to digest, will rely on the typical mainline media to understand what is going on. So the result can often be that despite the ease of getting more accurate information and not having to rely on mainstream news, a large percentage of the population of a democratic country may still hold views that can be arguably ethnocentric, outdated and possibly dangerously controversial. It is this side of the argument that relies on accurate and fair media coverage of other cultures to improve relationships with other sovereign states.

The answer I have always felt lays in better education from the beginning of people’s lives, encouraging more understanding among different cultures and with the democracy we enjoy in the UK, ensuring that politicians that we are represented by, lead us in a way that encourages more equality and non-biased information to exist here. The consideration of better and more accurate information could focus on basic objective facts to contribute towards an improvement in international relations with China. We are not born to hold prejudice views towards others; we simply learn them as we pick them up from others around us, and that includes the media’s propaganda too.