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Tinless in Wuxi by Martin Smith

1: A Night Out in the City: An
unexpected academic discovery
My American colleagues invited me out the
other night, and I was able to visit the New
District of Wuxi.
It did not look any different to the rest of Wuxi
or the the rest of China but we visited a
bar full of French people where some very
loud music was played.
I eventually escaped, but the lady I shared a
taxi with gave me a City Guide for Wuxi.
If this had not happened, I would never have
realized that Wuxi has International Schools,
Korean, Japanese and Chinese restaurants,
gyms, bookshops and more.
But the impression is very confusing.
If it had not been for the map at the back,
showing Lake Tai actually very close to
Jiangnan University I would never have

guessed that we are close to a beautiful

inland lake.

Now it was interesting to look at the photos

in the Guide.
As you would imagine, they were photos of
organizations in Wuxi which wanted to catch
the attention of readers or what in business
slang we call punters that means gamblers
really, people in a casino or at a horse race;
and it is an ironic way of talking about
consumers.
Here are some examples:

The Blue Marlin Restaurant showed pictures of

guests partying and Chinese Food.
These are not exactly the same images as
those in the guide, but very similar ones.

People partying and dancing.

Items of food or drink which they provide.

There was also an advertisement for a

bookshop, Obido Books. Their photos looked
roughly like this:

Next, there were advertisements for two

International School, the International School
of Wuxi and Eton House International School.

Next came Shane English school and our own

Jiangnan University .
Jiangnans picture was not exactly this, but in
the same spirit:

while the Shane English School showed five

smaller (not very easily decodable) images of
activities at this English Training Center as it
is called.

Finally two large buildings were featured: the

Chiangjiang International Graceland Service
Residence and the Ascott Hotel. Here are
pictures very similar to those in the Guide for
each:

2: The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan
Giving a Misleading Message - 1
What may not have struck you about all these
images and the messages which they

convey is that they are all very conventional

and uninteresting.
OK, so there are plenty of tall buildings, some
of which are hotels (the Chiangjiang
International Graceland Service Residence
does not even use the word hotel but hotel
it is!) there is a big emphasis on education:
books, schools, a university; and you can
party and eat...
Sounds a bit boring, yes? (I mean, looked at
with the eyes of foreign tourist... He might go
elsewhere. We have to be here...!)
And yet Wuxi is not really boring at all.
I would say Wuxi is a bit like Manchester: an
old, and indeed historic national city; but
famous only in the last hundred or two
hundred years and known chiefly for
industry, not tourism, literature, the arts or
anything soft.
Manchester is ninth in the UK, just after
Edinburgh and Liverpool with a population of
about 450,000 people.

Wuxi is thirtieth in China, with a population of

6.5 million.
For comparison, London has just over 7 million
inhabitants; Greater London 8 or 9
depending on how you count.
But you have to look at the cover of the
guide, which beguilingly shows a temple and
a pagoda in the mist buildings apparently
related to Wuxi (and there are some old
buildings in the shot as well) to get some hint
that there might be more to Wuxi than meets
the eye.

But the Wuxi Guide photo showed the roofs of

each building in their cover picture; and
between them, a mysterious blanket of mist,
along with one or two traditional Chinese
houses.

This is in fact the Tianning Temple a new

structure whose nearby pagoda is the tallest
in the world. It is in fact newly built, exactly
like Tbilisis Sameba Cathedral...

(Temples and pagodas should, it seems, go

together a bit like Christian church and
separate bell-tower which can be found in
Europe, the Baltic, Russia and Georgia....)
But the Tiannang Temple is very close to
Changzhou !

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and one hour and twelve minutes from Wuxi.

Giving a Misleading Message 2
The Ascott Hotel is the only business in the
Wuxi Guide, to which I am referring, which
does more than show pictures of what people
are doing, and enumerate facilities and
services on offer.
It says, Luxurious living in the heart of scenic
Wuxi on its publicity photograph.

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Looking online, this description, and

especially the word scenic would seem to
have come from Marketing Executive at the
Wuxi Ascott, Donna Dou.
http://inside.capitaland.com/escape/201604the-wonder-of-wuxi
She begins by mentioning that Wuxi was
originally Youxi, meaning, having tin but
then continues:
Over time, however, its tin resources were
depleted, prompting people to rename it Wuxi
to not have tin.
Today, the city I was born and raised in may
not be blessed with tin, but it is certainly well
endowed with natural beauty, culture and
history. To say that Wuxi is a scenic city would
be quite an understatement. It hugs the
coastline of Lake Tai, the third largest
freshwater lake in China, and is surrounded
by imposing mountain peaks. While enjoying
natures embrace, Wuxi also delights in
modernity. Dubbed Little Shanghai, it is a

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key economic centre in the region with a

lively city centre.
As a Marketing Executive with the new Ascott
Central Wuxi, I am excited to share my citys
charm with guests through the Ascott
Lifestyle programme. Launched globally in
April 2015, Ascott Lifestyle offers customised
itineraries to help guests experience what
each city has to offer.
What we see here is Donnas enthusiasm for,
and love of, her native city but is it really
good marketing?
The trouble with marketing is that it is, in the
end, tested by each customer.
If you make claims which are misleading, you
may disappoint and even earn the hostility of
future customers.
*
For example, I was interested in the Samsung
Galaxy Note range of phones as I liked the
idea of making notes on the screen of a phone
with a kind of electronic pen. I thought it

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might be good for drawing Chinese

characters.
But two days ago executives in the University
village showed me the phone, as one of them
owned it.
The default nib was too fine, and threw a
strange shadow due to the pen working even
in the air and before touching the screen (it
works off an electromagnetic field). To me,
quite unacceptable. Nothing like writing at
all...

Now we hear that 72 of the latest Samsung

Galaxy Note Phones the Galaxy Note 7

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model have caught fire while charging,

leading to the recall of the product and its
being closely monitored on aircraft, costing
Samsung millions of dollars, and giving the
mobile phone market lead to Huawei;
probably allowing also the more basic touch
capacitance screen stylus (which I favour
and hope to use with a Huawei phone) a
chance to become the next big fashionable
article.
So Samsungs claims about its note-taking
pen are what we call advertising hype from
a Greek word meaning too much.
Donnas claim that Wuxi is a scenic city is
comparable.
First, what does scenic really mean?
We can go to the root of the word and we see
that its primary meaning is a scene on a stage
in a theatre: our Greek ancestors acted in
plays far earlier than English people went to
Italy to look at the scenery, thus defining the
word.

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The Online Etymological Dictionary is always

great for understanding the different groups
of words in English and as you will see,
excitingly, they are often related to many
other languages both old and new. Jjust as
Chinese is the parent language of aspects of
Korean and Japanese.

So, from about the middle of the 19th century,

the word has meant, offering fine views...of
natural scenery.
Another useful resource, the Visual Thesaurus,
shows us the words near in meaning to
scene/scenery/scenic:

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But Wuxi, although vibrant and modern and

beautiful in its way, is not, by any stretch of
the imagination, scenic. It is not an
understatement to say it is scenic; it is an
overstatement.

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All the attractions Donna lists: Lake Tai, Turtle

Head Park, the old village of Huishan and the
wonderful night-lit canal at Nanchang Street
(Huishan) and Mount Lingshan they are all
between half and hour and an hours drive
from Wuxi itself...maybe even a little more.
The publishers of the guide book make the
same mistake: Tiannang Temple is not a
feature of Wuxi and thus does not in any
way define Wuxi, and therefore should not
feature on the cover of the Wuxi guide book!
it is an excursion from Wuxi, a day trip.
When Donna refers to natures embrace; and
imposing mountain peaks; and Wuxis
charm she is going way too far in her
enthusiasm for the place, and in the process
distorting the marketing message.
A place within natures embrace might be
Lake Windermere in Englands Lake District.

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As you can see, it is 97% nature and 3%

settlement; while imposing peaks (near a
city centre) is certainly the case in Almaty in
Kazakhstan (where apples originally come
from)

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while charm is more obvious in the case for a

sleepy English historical town, like Stratfordupon-Avon, than here. in Wuxi.

For, to be charming there has to be

something unexpected going on. In Stratford,
the unexpected thing is the presence of the
old, half-timbered (that means half made of
wood) preserved city centre buildings from
about 1600 (the time of Shakespeare) and
another unexpected thing is that Costa Coffee
Company have a cafe in one of the old houses
creating a harmonious blend of old and
modern, and of useful (a cup of coffee) and
nice but useless (a pleasant and refreshing
view).
*

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Finally, Donna talks about customized

itineraries for her customers which should
mean asking them what they would like to do
and see. In practice, who decides? I guess she
does.
This is of course in a way good: but it could be
dangerous.
It is dangerous only if you have decided in
advance on the China you want the tourist to
see: rather than trusting China in all its
magnificence, splendour and brilliance to do
the job for you.
The moral of all this perhaps is be truthful
in marketing and do not falsify what the
product can deliver simply because you are
over-anxious about attracting customers.
From this, very easily, we come to place
branding. The whole issue of brands is a
common one in marketing: and to imagine
Costa Coffee or Starbucks Coffee or Tsingtao
Beer as brands is easy for all of you.
Mobile phones? You think about nothing else!

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But nowadays, place branding, a new

movement with profound implications for the
tourist industry which remains a great
growth area for China these days has come
about.
(Out of interest, China as a successful brand
is fourth in Asia behind Hong Kong, Macao and
Thailand at present, and ninth worldwide; but
this high ranking may have more to do with
the strong Chinese economy than with native
skill in welcoming tourists. The Bloom
Consulting report from which I take these
facts is worth looking at, as it is interesting
an example of a business report...)
http://www.bloomconsulting.com/pdf/rankings/Bloom_Consultin
g_Country_Brand_Ranking_Trade.pdf
Great Britain is in fact in the lead in place
branding. The cultural features of each area
now come together in a brand. For example,
in the Midlands, where Shakespeare lived,
there is a new idea, Shakespeares Country
and the approach here is that all the local

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industries and municipal organizations should

co-operate to bring together an inclusive plan
for the region.
This means that one player must not do
something which does not work for the plan
as a whole.
In Wuxi terms it would mean accepting,
perhaps, the dangers of polluting Lake Tai and
getting local industries to create suitable antipollution plans; and maybe getting night tours
by bus to take tourists to see Nanchang Street
in Huishan with the illuminated canals; and
doing a deal with the local restaurants there
as well; maybe introducing a City of Wuxi
Tourist Pass with 10% reductions on a
variety of events organized by the
stakeholders involved.
Developing such strategies in China a less
centralized, less literal and more fantasybased tourism is exactly the work of your
generation, and within the ambit of your
marketing and business specialization. In the
next part of the lesson we will listen to an

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inspiring talk about brand marketing for

places and how it has developed in the UK,
from one of the people who more or less
invented it.
Although the speakers ideas are maybe not
as explosive as a Samsung Galaxy Note 7,
they are useful, I think, for China; and show
British prgamatism and co-operation at their
best.
Thank you very much.