Sean Kim & Kerrigan Kilpatrick

Quarantine continues, but this class is sadly coming to an end. We will not forget our virtual memories made through Zoom. The class has been a great experience for each of us, despite the internet issues that have plagued our classmates. In this blog post, Sean will be giving updates on the Tik Tok group and Kerrigan will be covering the Shein group.

Tik Tok – covered by Sean

The Tik Tok group made up of Callie, Jay, and Keegan began the week of June 1st, with a quick analysis of all their primary sources and drafted a rough thesis. After meeting with Professor Sheehan, they created an outline of their paper that divided Tik Tok advertising into three stages. The first involved Snapchat and Tik Tok’s connection to musical.ly, the second consisted of the “New Year New Me” campaign, and the last one focused on the idea of “Real People and Real Videos.” The Tik Tok group then proceeded with dividing the three stages among themselves in which they were all tasked to write a thesis for their respective stages. Once complete, they went back to their rough draft and revised it to fit with what they each wrote. On June 6th, five days from the start date, they cut down on the paper length and are working together on their presentation. Here is a Tik Tok (zoomer app) ad they used to analyze the similarities between Tik Tok and musical.ly (RIP):

Tik Tok Ad

Their final product will be in the form of Tik Tok videos which should make for a very interesting and entertaining watch.

Screenshot of Tik Tok Group’s own video

Shein – covered by Kerrigan

After several weeks of hard work, our classmates, Victoria, Sarah, and Sophie, have just wrapped up their research project on Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion company. Throughout their project, the group has been looking at the marketing tactics used by Shein to appeal to consumers. Overall, the group has found that Shein largely hides the Chinese origins of the brand and instead goes for a more Western-style of branding. In their papers, the group addresses the disembedding methods used by the company to appear more Western.

Victoria, Sarah, and Sophie found that one of the company’s greatest advertising tactics involves using social media and, more specifically, Instagram influencers to connect to consumers. In many of these advertisements, Shein pays popular Instagram models to engage in various activities while wearing their clothes. Our classmates found that these advertisements tend to appeal to those who desire a certain degree of individuality, instructing their followers to find the “perfect fit” for themselves. Our classmates noted that individualism is a trait more prominent in Western cultures, and these advertisements are likely intended to appeal to younger audiences as well as foreign consumers.

Another interesting way the group discovered how Shein markets its products is by appealing to a European aesthetic. The group noted that Shein makes quick cues towards romanticized European aesthetics in order to suggest an elegance or lavishness associated with older European styles. The group also pointed out that the ability of European culture to pop up through quick tropes as a selling point for Shein proves the dis-embeddedness of global consumer culture. Therefore, the group believes that Shein’s awareness of the evolving tendency of global consumerism has allowed the group’s branding to be so successful.

At the time of this post, each group is finishing up their research projects and the class is coming to an end. We would like to thank all who have made this Global East Asia class possible and wish all our readers a great day!

Sarah Kim & Keegan Smit

Hey y’all, it’s Keegan and Sarah here to give an update and overview on how the League of Legends (LoL) and Moutai group have developed their final research project in the past week. Each group has experienced very different journeys this week, so we’ll discuss each project separately:

League of Legends – covered by Keegan

After finishing presenting their research design to the class, and taking a much needed weekend rest, Sean and Garrett decided to focus on three cinematic worlds of LoL, those from 2017, 2018, and 2019.

For those unfamiliar with League (as the kids call it), it is an online, battle-arena strategy game that connects gamers from across the globe. At the end of the year, LoL hosts a world championship game. Leading up to this event, the company releases a cinematic advertisement to hype up the competitors and game enthusiasts, as well as attempt to advertise the product itself.

The group’s initial question focused on themes between these worlds (the video advertisements), but Sean and Garrett ultimately chose mid-week to revise their question to analyze the storyline and narratives, rather than just the themes. From this new question, the team drafted a rough thesis: “Riot owned business, Tencent, uses engrossing cinematics and evolving storylines inspired by the classical story of achieving greatness to immerse their audience while integrating themes of hardship, adversity, and individuality through the usage of their in-game character.” Although this was a great start, the group saw that the thesis they had drafted did not necessarily align with the entire scope and direction of their paper after meeting with Professor Sheehan on Friday. Their thesis required some rearrangement for clarity, specificity, and to best match their already written analysis. The final thesis they developed states, “Riot, owned by Tencent, uses engrossing cinematics, integrating themes of individuality and overcoming hardship and adversity to achieve greatness while simultaneously developing these promotional videos to include the evolution and history of LoL and its global consumers.” This new thesis gave them the last building block to push forward with constructing their paper, which the group expected to have finished on the 6th so that they could have ample time to revise their work and finish their presentation.

I know I speak for all of the Global East Asia China class when I say we really look forward to seeing how their final project turns out in their recorded presentation. Best of luck, Sean and Garrett!

Moutai – covered by Sarah

I should warn everybody reading this blog post to not be too shocked by how put-together this group is. But before I get into Katina, Kerrigan, and D’Angelo’s progress, here’s a little bit about Moutai, which is probably much less known than League.

Moutai, or more specifically the company Kweichow Moutai, is “the world’s most valuable Chinese liquor company and manufacturer of one of the most popular alcoholic drinks, Moutai baijiu,” as the Moutai group explains in their paper.

Their research question is an interesting one: “We are studying how the Moutai brand, a product so integrated into Chinese culture, orients its marketing to appeal to an English speaking audience to understand the international marketing of brands with heavy cultural connotations.”

The other groups in our class – TikTok, League, and Shein – all have marketing that isn’t clearly culturally tied to China, which makes Moutai really stand out as a company that seems to embrace and take advantage of Chinese cultural attributes.

On Monday, Katina, Kerrigan, and D’Angelo had already composed an outline and were in the process of creating a rough draft to present to Prof. Sheehan for our Tuesday calls.

As you can see, the draft is composed of fully paragraphed analyses, thoughtful headings, and formal citations!

Throughout the week, there were two calls with Prof. Sheehan where the Moutai group discussed their thesis statement and adding a “so what” component. After much deliberation, Katina, Kerrigan, and D’Angelo decided on this thesis: “By analyzing advertisements intended for a Chinese audience besides those intended for a global audience, we have found that, while Moutai appeals to national pride when dealing with a Chinese-speaking audience, Moutai instead appeals to a desire for exotic experiences and an association with Chinese culture.”

By Friday, the Moutai group had the larger part of their essay finished, but they wanted to further examine what stereotypes were being used in the Moutai advertisements used in China vs those intended for a global audience.

We will be able to see all of their work in the form of a presentation in the next few days!

Sophie Sinclair

你好！Today was our sixth class on Tuesday, May 26th. There are three more classes in the course and we are now working extensively on our research projects. 

Some exciting GEA news from today’s class: Happy-birthday-weekend to Garrett’s mom and Professor Sheehan’s sister. We also found out Garrett supports both UCLA and USC within the confines of his bedroom. Keegan has promised the exercise class dance routine will still happen. We celebrated Keegan, Kerrigan, and Callie for great quiz one responses. We also found out a large majority of us prefer to “couch” than to do cardio or strength training and Sean has offered to watch everyone exercise from the comfort of his couch. 

Today’s class was split into three parts: lecture, discussion of readings, and sharing research findings thus far. During the lecture portion, we learned the last part of the 20th century is considered the new golden age of globalization and is characterized by the re-division of world labor forces, the spread of consumer products, increase in trade and capital flows. We also studied a map of greenhouse gas emissions within a conversation about globalization as a means of sharing the air and planet. 

Globalization as sharing the planet.

We read two readings for today’s class. The first reading was about the international marketing strategies of Chinese enterprises. This reading discussed why and how Chinese enterprises are participating in international marketing strategies. We learned export is the most common entry strategy, strategic alliances are beneficial, and about the strategy of mergers and acquisitions. The second reading is about Chinese fashion brands increasing presence internationally.

We reflected on our research thus far, and five members of the class shared their findings: Callie discussed her findings on TikTok’s collaboration with Amazon to encourage Amazon users to download TikTok as well as shift their marketing from a quirky and artsy platform to be more mainstream social media focused. Callie also concluded that social media (especially TikTok) has two purposes: to capture memorable moments and to express individuality.

Sarah shared her findings on a fashion brand, Shein. Sarah analyzed Shein’s focus on western trends, specifically Eurocentric beauty. She found that many of Shein’s advertisements show trends that are associated with European fashion, such as ruffles on the clothing which are associated with European beauty. As well, Sarah found that many of the models in the advertisements fit stereotypical European beauty standards.

Keegan shared his findings on TikTok, focusing on the videos on TikTok’s website. Keegan discussed TikTok’s role as an outlet during this pandemic. Videos on TikTok serve as a reminder of things we enjoy and the interconnectedness we had before COVID and will hopefully regain after!

I (Sophie) shared my findings of Shein, as well. I focused on the background and setting of Shein advertisements to analyze themes that Shein marketing might have strategically putting into the advertisements for western millennial populations.

Sean shared his findings on League of Legends and discussed the video’s diverse settings and characters that increase the game’s influence around the globe.

And now, an update on everyone’s lives outside of class:

Katina Yong

Hello! Today was the 5th session of Global East Asia China. We’re almost done with this week and are ready for the long weekend.

We started this class off with listening to Keegan’s music pick, 曲婉婷 – 我的歌声里, Wanting’s You Exist in My Song. There was also a reminder to take our first quiz on image analysis, a skill that we have been practicing for the past week on various advertisements.

We jumped straight into lecture on the end of WW2 and subsequent rebuilding of many countries. It was great to learn more about the framework used after WW2 as it mostly focused on the context of the Cold War and the US and USSR as the two opposing forces. This struggle was reflected in the upheaval that took place in China afterwards with the Chinese Communists and Nationalists. China was largely isolated from the world during this time and Taiwan represented China in various international organizations. This was a turbulent time for China with mass starvation and famine. There were also conflicts between landlords and peasants and land distributions. One interesting fact was that Mao tried to get peasants to start manufacturing and refining steel, a completely fruitless venture because the peasants didn’t have ore or hot furnaces for the process.

Village Steel Refining

After this lecture, we had a discussion on the reading assignment, chapters 6 and 8 from Brand Breakout, on the Cultural Resources and National Champions routes. There was a lot of discussion on the cultural resources chapter and how companies market themselves on the basis of culture. Professor Sheehan mentioned how companies might not even market themselves on “authentic culture,” but on a preconceived image of what a culture should be like with the Shanghai Tang example. For the national champions chapter, the discussion centered around Chinese natural resource companies and their lack of transparency. Since this was the last Brand Breakout chapter we discussed what we thought about this book overall.

Shanghai Tang Store

From the discussion we moved to status updates on our group projects: we all identified several advertising sources and settled on a company that we would like to focus on. It was interesting seeing how the advertising differed depending on the industry. We received several pointers on how to further refine our research question. After this discussion, we broke into breakout rooms for individual group questions.

See everyone after the Memorial Day Weekend!