Our lecture on PR and brand management had gone down a storm with our audience in Shanghai. My business partner, Wahida Ashiq, and I were presented with flowers. They were loving us. And, better still, they were getting the message we've been bringing to China for the past five years. Keep your branding clear and consistent; become famous for one product, not a gamut of unrelated things; and spend money on cost-effective PR and talking to the media rather than on expensive, splashy advertising.
The middle-aged man rose from the audience to thank us and say how much he agreed with us. So what business, I asked him, was he in? "Educational software," he replied. "And courier services. And hats."
"Are these different companies?" Wahida asked. "No," he said. "One company. One brand. Consistent, as you advised."
He wanted, he continued, to get in on the massive bowler hat market in Britain. He wanted us to handle the PR for his attempt to get his bowler hat business listed on the AIM market. We explained that nobody in the UK has worn a bowler hat since 1960, but he clearly didn't believe us.
Doing business in China is not easy for foreigners. Capitalism is in its teenage years, vibrant, but on the wild side and often completely off piste.
The new Chinese entrepreneur doesn't lack ambition, but reality can be in short supply. Everything is done at the last minute. Business deals are forged based on friendship and trust — the famous guanxi — rather than who offers the best product or service. And few of the usual rules apply.
Take contracts, for example. The first time a Chinese client asked us for a discount hours after signing an agreement, we thought it was one rogue business. But no, in China, a contract is considered the beginning of a negotiation, not the end.
Then there's the tricky matter of English. Chinese businesses are well aware how important getting their English right on websites and written material is. The problem is, they often believe their English is better than ours.
One big Chinese company asked us in our early days to write a key speech for its chairman to deliver in English for an international audience. The phone rang red hot all night from Beijing. They were furious. The speech we had written lasted only three minutes. What were we thinking? And our English was apparently all wrong.
The chairman duly delivered a 20-minute drone in incomprehensible Chinglish — oh, and the company bosses were so delighted with us that they took us on for several bigger projects.
Not for the first time, we shook our heads in bafflement — most foreigners working in China spend a lot of time shaking their heads, although most become addicted to the adrenaline of working here and the strange combination of scorching dynamism, charm and eccentricity.
Everyone says that the only way to survive is to expect the unexpected — and even then you'll get some surprises.
None more so, perhaps, than one British friend who devoted three years to developing a product. He had been having difficulty sourcing one part, and finally found a reliable manufacturer in a provincial city. The company flew him and his business partner there first class, put them up in a five-star hotel, put on banquets and karaoke evenings for them and promised the prototype of the part would be ready the following month.
On the due date, he called from London to find out when it would be despatched. The Chinese CEO they had spent three nights carousing with strenuously denied he had ever met him or knew anything of the product or the component they had agreed to make.
They would, however, be delighted to meet with him to discuss it...
Jonathan Margolis advises Chinese companies on PR
Read Chris Torrens' guide to doing business in China
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