Week 6 - Shannon Trinh

In this week’s reading, “Search for the Real China”, it was interesting to learn about the importance of framing in the media when it comes to branding of a nation. The Beijing Olympics was an incredible opportunity for China to reintroduce itself as a thriving and “remodeled” nation. Those who spent efforts to make China look as rebranded as possible, were criticized for trying to hide the negative, corrupt side of China: “…this included countless stories on air pollution, forced evictions, human rights campaigners and dissidents corruption, heavy-handed security, political crackdowns in the capital” (31). This is one of the first times that I’ve heard of a major backfire and controversy in re-branding, and learned how careful one must be with marketing intentions. Re-branding can help a nation tremendously with economic and social standing, but can also be perceived as “fake” or “corrupt” or “too polished”: “…how the Chinese authorities were overly concerned about image, and the lengths to which they were willing to go to ensure that their portrayal of a perfect China will prevail” (32). 

This got me thinking about how I would want to frame my start-up (wellness mobile application) in order to get funding. I think it’s important to make our idea as straight forward and articulate as possible, to avoid false branding and assumptions. If our solutions to the problems that we are trying to address seem too unrealistic and “too good to be true”, no one would believe in our idea. If too real and honest about the reality of the term “mental illness”, one might feel uncomfortable and even marginalized by the controversy. For example, I would not want others to frame our start-up as the “last resort” or a desperate call for help when suffering with physical, emotional, or mental health. I also don’t want others to frame our users as, sad, helpless people sitting in the corner. I think that for a mobile application like ours, funding from venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley and perhaps organizations that promote wellbeing will be the most appropriate way to start out. Before reaching out to these groups of people, we would need to know what we have to offer to the community, the profits that we will be able to make, and how this investment would be different from our competitors. We would probably need the starting money to hire some developers for the app, advertising the idea to potential healing/wellness organizations, and for resources to possibly research further about these topics.

Question: We learned that branding depends on government, the industry, and the nation's people. Do international relationships play an even bigger role than these 3? 

Kevin Latham. “Media, the Olympics and the Search for the “Real China”.