 excited to be here today. I'm Yvonne Tao, and I teach graphic design at Texas Christian University in Forest, Texas. As a type nerd or type lover, we all know that getting distracted by logos and typeface becomes part of our daily life. As a type nerd, knowing two languages, English and Chinese, the experience is even more fun. Whenever I return to China, the logos I've seen in the U.S. are now turning into another form, the form of Chinese characters. So making that visual connection becomes the natural next step. So when I see a very good matches, a matches like these, I will get super excited. I'll try to document them, photograph them. I call them good visual translation. But sometimes things don't always go the right way. Like for these brands, Subway, Garfield, Kodak, well, I probably will give them, give their Chinese logo an aqua face. And then as a type nerd, I could not resist to dive into those cases and try to fix them. And these are my approach to them. And then I'll shamelessly give myself a smiley face. Well, occasionally I will get hired to do some of these logo translation for some brand who wants to enter Asian market. The more I was exposed to the global branding process, the more I learned that it takes more than just a look to make a successful cross-cultural branding campaign. And then when a brand first into a new market in another culture, they're facing a lot of new challenges. They have a lot of decisions to make. But ultimately the question is whether to keep or change. This is a dilemma here. Sometimes you want to keep the things the way it is for the originality and authenticness. But sometimes you want to make changes to adapt to the new market. These changes can be applied on package, price, place. Sometimes it's the promotion or product itself. And then these decisions are influenced by various factors such as demographic, economy, culture, or communication. So here's an example for Microsoft. When they're launching their search engine being in China, in China the regulation requires all foreign brand to translate their brand name into Chinese characters. So I'll let you guess what being translating to Chinese. I'll reveal that with a fortune cookie. Disease, disease like a virus on a search engine or something like that. I don't think I want to click on that. So in 2009 Microsoft launched a Bing in China but they don't want to be called Bing. Instead they modify the spelling into two characters, B, E, which has a very nice meaning, respond with no fail. So the look, the sound, and the meaning represent what the brand is. Another example is by McDonald's. Entering India. Should they keep all the marketing mix the same way it was sold in the U.S.? If you look at different factors in India, soon you will find out that more than half of the population in India are Hindu who worship cows and they don't eat beef. So McDonald's introduced chicken Maharaja Mac as their star product in India. The next example is Adidas. Adidas' new designer Winterline achieved great success in 2011 in the U.S. So they can't wait to bring it to China. So they kept everything the same but just to translate the language. Sadly it did not meet the expectation. You might have guessed while they probably should have changed the model. That's really not the main problem here. We actually used to see in Western models everywhere. The main problem is we don't ski. Ski is limited by Chinese geography and it was never one of our mainstream sports. So the ads did not make the connection with Chinese girls. And not only that, they find out girls in China would rather watch in TV series or do online shopping over then go into the gym. So next year they decided to on target of encouraging more sports among Chinese girls by launching this campaign. It's called All In For My Girls. As you can see here what they're trying to do is to steer sports into a young social lifestyle, an opportunity to hang out with your girlfriend. It was immediate success. Not only boost up the sales by 60% but also the campaign has won a Golden Effie Award, which is like the Oscar in advertising. So after all these case studies you make at the point, research is an important step. But it seems like every case is so different on what to keep and what to change. So what do we research on? Is there a systematic methodology or how do we embed that in our classroom or education? With all these ideas in my mind I approach Dr. J in strategic communication department at TCU and proposed a experimental interdisciplinary project. Dr. J's class is called Global Strategic Communication. It's a graduate level course with the 11 students enrolled. What they do for a semester-long project is to develop a multimedia communication campaign for a U.S. brand that wants to enter Asia market. My class is called Computer Application, which may be called Web Design in Your Department. So it's a junior level technology class and my main task is to teach technology that helps students to build online presence for business. A typical assignment would be student building a website for a business that they choose to do. And then you could imagine what they would like to do, little cafe or flora or ballet dance studio, something I would say a little boutique-y. So I thought this interdisciplinary project would be something out of their comfort zone. Global branding project is divided into two phases. It started with phase one, the graduate students doing research on the mom. Meanwhile, our graphic design students are busy learning how to build websites. The 11 graduate students are divided into four groups and given the assignment. They were each group where to nominate a U.S. brand that is not yet available in the foreign market. So Dr. J has limited their choice into consumer boards because consumers are heavily bonded by culture. And after they bring back the product, they were to do background research and their marketing potential analysis using SWAT analysis. Looking at what's the strength, what's the weakness, is there any opportunities or threats? Moving right along, they would do research on Asia countries and find out where they should sell this U.S. product. To support their recommendation, they were to provide data on demographic, economy, communication, culture, and etc. Moving to phase two, that's where our graphic design students hop on board. And unlike the grad student had a whole semester to work on this campaign, we have only three and a half weeks. When I assigned the project, I divided my 12 students into four groups as well and asked them to build online presence for this campaign. So prior to their meetings, I would give them the 20-page research analysis paper written by the graduate students as their weekend of reading assignment. They were definitely a little surprised to see how much work they have done for each project. So my thought process is instead of having our graphic design students just being the executing hand for this campaign, I want them to be more involved in the decision-making process, giving them the opportunity to offer their professional creative suggestions, learning new cultural factors, and bounce some design-thinking ideas. They may need to learn how to persuade non-designers on the team or deal with different personality, but I think that's all part of great learning experience. So I will use rebranded Laura Bar in Malaysia as one example. Laura Bar is an energy bar based in Denver. Together, the team have decided to do some logo modification. In Malaysia, they didn't need to translate the language, but they decided to remove the dots on the logo because they find out the dots on the regional logo, the dots are added to make the logo look a little bit more exotic or authentic. But in Malaysia, their branding has been repositioned. They actually want people to know that it's a brand from the U.S. So they remove the dots to make it more Western. And in Malaysia, the regulation requires all directory symbols on all packages. So my students spend a lot of time looking at symbols and its relation with health benefit and religion. Even though it's for a brand that is far and far away, but they don't want to feel distanced. So they introduce the new flavor using local ingredients. And trying to portray that idea as being fresh, as well as offering options that locals are already familiar with. As they're brainstorming how to associate Laura Bar with something that is healthy and full of energy. One of my students was actually a soccer player on TCU team, read on the research that soccer being the number one sports in Malaysia. So she saw the opportunity and proposed the idea of launching this campaign at an important football league game and having a well-known player as their spokesperson. And they come up with this tagline, feel for your football. I thought it was pretty clever. But we all know that mistakes are more valuable lessons we can learn from. And let's see this case for rebranding Boon Chikapa in Singapore. Singapore is a multicultural country with four official languages. Our Singapore decided to do to keep the English version but to add Chinese characters right next to it to make sure the small group of non-English speaker can still read it. They also decided to change the local color from hot pink to red, which is favored by Chinese cultural. And it is 74% here. On their type heavy package, they've decided to add a small illustrative pattern to help the non-English speaker to identify the flavor a little quicker. They also decided to add new flavors such as curry shrimp or ginger lime because they find out that in Singapore, people prefer salty flavor snacks over their sweets. So as them putting all the pieces together for their website, email newsletter and social media ads, I noticed something on their main image on the landing page. Let's zoom in and ask them what is that? They say, well, it's crush it. It's their tagline. They wanted to portray the idea of Bung Chik Pa coming to Singapore. As you may see here, well, Singapore's skyline image by itself doesn't have any problem. And the tagline by itself doesn't have any problem. But when you put them together, be careful. You don't want to portray an idea of terrorism. So quickly they fixed it with a more appropriate approach. Another mistake is by China team. They wanted to rebrand peeps. And we all know peeps, it's a traditional marshmallow candy that is usually shaped in little yellow chicks. Like I mentioned before, Chinese government requires all foreign brands to be translated. So one day I saw China team working on the logo modification translation. Well, first of all, I gave them a smiley face for the visual translation. I think they did a pretty good job keeping the essential of the letter forms. However, there's something. Ask them what is that? Then they know that I speak Chinese. So they start to lose confidence. Is Chinese for peeps? So I asked, have you double checked? They quickly typed in online translator and this is what pops up. And they say, well, look, those strokes and characters look the same. Well, first of all, we don't use traditional Chinese anymore. We use simplified. And that is something they already find out in their research paper. But they didn't connect the dots. But that's just a minor problem here. And then I asked them, well, if you trust online translator that much, how about you copy paste those two characters and click on image? This is what pops up. Yes. The English word peeps have to double meaning. It could be peeping, peeping Tom, or it could be peeps, like what the little sound, what the chick makes. I believe letter is really what the brand meant. If as a Chinese young mom, if I saw that brand on in China, I'll probably turn my kid away from that marshmallow candy. So I didn't know wanted to hand over the answer, but asked them to research again. And later they came up with this correct translation, which I'm pretty happy with. And asked them, what's your resource? They told me, well, they find out there is a Chinese version of Oh, my Donna had a farm. So the last team is wants to rebrand a kind bar in South Korea. kind bar is a New York based snack bar with a mission of creating communities that is healthier, with more empathy and kindness. So for their campaign in South Korea, it revolves a lot of creating movements and activities for charity. For their final presentation, all teams like to put their design on the digital mockups. We all know that student love digital mockups. They put their social media ads on a little phone case to make it look more realistic and professional. So when they're presented to the client, they usually have a whole collection of it, they just pull from it from without thinking. And this time, it reminded me of something. When I visited SOAR a couple years ago, I would say 90% of the cars on the road are either Kia or Hyundai. That must mean something. It really shows they like to use their own brand. So let's do a little bit more research. We find out that only 14% of smartphones are iOS. The majority use Android system. And if you were to pitch an idea to people from South Korea, wouldn't make it more sense to use a Samsung mockup? And so in this case, it's really we learn about attention to details. In conclusion, we learned a lot from this project. Before every decision is made, there is so much time and effort that goes behind the scene, the research, the analysis, the strategic planning, to support the idea of what to keep and what to change. And for this project, I wanted to create an opportunity for students to open their eyes to be a little bit more curious about different cultures from different part of the world. Because maybe someday when they get a chance to work on a project like this, they will learn how to make research on their own instead of relying on stereotype or making assumptions. Thank you so much. And if you have any questions, comments or ideas, please email me. Seriously.