夜迹晨拾

新华网2007年01月30日转载央视《中国财经报道》文章：中国80后消费调查：消费与收入不协调引发担忧。图片由本网转载时加入。

央视《中国财经报道》2007年1月29日播出节目《”80后”消费调查》，以下为节目内容。

2004年2月，当《时代》周刊亚洲版将一位叫春树的，酷酷的中国少女作家搬上封面，”80后”这个概念也第一次出现在了主流媒体上。然而从当时人们热烈讨论的话题来看，大家似乎并没有发现其中可能蕴藏的商业价值。不过此后仅仅一年， 当这本杂志再次将李宇春作为中国”80后”的代言人，推上封面的时候，所谓”80后”，也就是中国1980年以后出生的这代年轻人，已经俨然成了一座巨大 的商业金矿。尤其是最近几个月，一些世界知名品牌开始加快了他们开掘这座金矿的速度，有人甚至预计，2007年将是”80后”商业概念大行其道的一年。到底”80后”是怎样一个人群，他们真的能在某种程度上影响甚至改变整个市场吗？

一、”80后”消费与收入不协调引发担忧

2006年，中国市场上为一个叫”80后”的群体而刮起的年轻化风潮，似乎是以往 任何一年都无法比拟的。为了这个年轻的群体，一些世界知名品牌不惜放下更为广大的客户群，转而针对”80后”一代，重新制定在中国的市场策略。虽然世界某 时尚腕表品牌(SWATCH)将消费者圈定为8岁到80岁的整个消费人群，但它在中国地区邀请的首位形象大使，还是选择了”80后”偶像李宇春；而全球某 著名饮料品牌(可口可乐)也选择了与时下最受”80后”欢迎的一家网络游戏合作，拍游戏广告，搞互动活动，一时间该品牌备受”80后”追捧。

与此同时，国内一些商家也开始以明确的姿态向”80后”消费群体招手。2006年12月，联想专门针对”80后”人群推出的”粉时尚”系列手机大规模上市。联想手机第一次放弃了它一贯使用的商务形象，主打时尚概念和网络娱乐概念。

联想集团高级副总裁兼联想移动总经理刘志军：”能不能很好地能够服务于这一代 ‘80后’这一代的年轻人，实际上很大程度上，能够影响了这个手机是不是能够流行。所以我们就是，要针对这一代的年轻人来做这个非常好的设计，在时尚的外 观、在这种娱乐的功能上来做设计。”

联想集团总裁兼CEO比尔·阿梅里奥：”由于他们对消费有如此高的要求，所以可以在这个产品创新上为他们进行服务，把最先进的技术放到这些产品当中来。”

“粉时尚”的名称来源于”80后”惯用的网络用语，”粉时尚”就是”很时尚”，而联想的整个营销策略也完全针对”80后”年龄层实施，他们不仅要求产品设计和营销人员全面体验”80后”生活，其广告投放也更集中在网络上，宣传重点也不再选择公共卖场。

联想集团副总裁兼联想移动营销系统总经理毛智慧：”我们在这个，校园，就是年轻人非常集中的这个地方，就全国有15个城市，175所高校，也进行寻找’粉时尚’的这样一系列的活动。”

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Browsing randomly on the net, I came across this interesting piece of writing:

Paul LaFontaine left Bertelsmann Music Group in March 1997 to advise other businesspeople about radical honesty. He has lots of work to do. “There are as many lies in business as there are people in business,” he says. Here are his nominees for the five most common lies:

Lie: “People are our most important asset.”
Truth: “People are our most worrisome and unpredictable asset. Our most important assets are really our financial assets.”

B.S. Detector: This may be the leading lie of our times. “When management starts talking about how important people are,” LaFontaine says, “you can bet there is going to be an unpopular human resources decision coming soon.”

Lie: “This was a rational decision.”
Truth: “I wanted to do this.”

B.S. Detector: People “want what they want just because they want it,” says LaFontaine.

Lie: “We judge people by their performance.”
Truth: “I judge your performance based on how much I like you.”

B.S. Detector: “Why do most people who keep their jobs keep them?” LaFontaine asks. “Because the people they work for like them. And you get fired when the people you work for don’t like you anymore.

Lie: “This is business, it isn’t personal.”
Truth: “Everything’s personal.”

B.S. Detector: “As people, we get mad at each other,” says LaFontaine. “Attempts to avoid it are cowardly. So get mad. Then get over it and move on.” LaFontaine believes that any disagreement can be handled with an honest conversation.

Lie: “The customer comes first.”
Truth: “I come first.”

B.S. Detector: “More often than not, ‘the customer’ is an abstraction,” LaFontaine warns. “People take care of customers when it benefits them and ignore customers when they can get away with it. Nobody says ‘I come first,’ which is what’s usually going on.”

On April 12th, Google announced its Chinese name - Gu-Ge (谷歌), which literally and officially means ‘harvest song’. But if one does not know the official definition, and just by looking at the two Chinese characters Google has picked out, the new name could also be interpreted as ‘song in the valley‘. ‘Harvest song’ or ’song in the valley’, those who applauded for it would tell you how ‘romantic’ this name is as it gives you ‘the sense of a fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way’ as Google says, while others might explain to you with a frown how ‘old-fashioned’ it sounds, since it reminds one of a slow and remote agricultural scene.

Some Chinese media and internet users have in the past merely used Google’s English name, while others have nicknamed it as “Gougou” and “Gugou”, meaning “doggy” or “old hound”. Literally, the new name GU-GE does bear some extent of poetic and melodious tones, and is certainly better than those unofficial alternatives in the past. But interestingly, this new name of the world’s second most populous internet search company does not actually lead you to think in the least of an internet search.

Names are not mere codes in Chinese. Each character of Chinese language has its own meaning but when two characters come together to make a phrase, it very often becomes more meaningful. Two character phrases are most common and easy to remember.

Translating names into Chinese can be tricky, particularly so with alphabetic languages. In most cases, translation of a name is in fact a conversion of the sound. So as Google did this time. But since all Chinese characters have its meanings, the selection of the characters can be very crucial. The story about the Coca-Cola’s translation would tell a bit about the tricks:

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means “bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax” depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, ko-kou-ko-le, which can be loosely translated as “happiness in the mouth” (from Funny Translation Errors)

Google will also be known as Gu-Ge in China. No matter what people would say about the new name itself, Google seemed to have made the right move in terms of pursuing its long term goals in China. With its new Chinese name, Google wants to be as ‘culturally-friendly’ as its major local competitors like Baidu, whose name was in fact also taken out of an ancient poem. And with this new name, Google manifested its strong hope for further development in the local market by the local ways. At least Google demonstrated its ‘intercultural’ efforts, despite all other controversies. Its new Chinese name would certainly help it to take more roots among millions of the internet users and in the general public where not all are willing to learn English, and some perhaps even dislike it for reasons that it has ‘corrupted’ the Chinese language. There are people who are still taking a closed view and simply feel uncomfortable with anything that is foreign.
Google might have learnt from the strategies of McDonald and KFC that localization of these two companies have both emphasised the importance of the cultrual impact to the extent that you can even buy noodles and Sichuan flavoured food at their local stores. It is perhaps right to say that in terms of marketing what matters is if it would eventually help to sell.

Browsing the Google Chinese page, you will now see the two characters of the new name crouching below the big colorful Google logo. ‘Harvest Song’ should really mean that only when users enjoy ‘fruitful and productive search experiences’, Google then could celebrate its harvest by singing pastoral poetry in the valleys!