As Charles Caleb Colton once said: “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery”, and in China, the world’s largest manufacturing plant, this adage is adopted wholeheartedly… and literally to build brands. Drawing inspiration from the myriad of global brands that have made a name for themselves, and ones that understandably doing well in China, and have a strong brand recognition.
As demonstrated impeccably by Chinese-made car brand: BYD, aptly spelled out as “Build Your Dreams”, impeccably capturing China’s zest for learning the art of car-making fast… wait! Make that super fast! All it takes is, tinker with the original model, BMW, and tinker with the logo design a bit and… presto!! You’ve got yourself a brand. Well, not so fast!
After all, imitation is one of the oldest tricks in the book! In our recent modern history of industrialization, it was the underlying force that drove countries like Japan to rise from the ashes of Post-World War II and innovate their way into global dominance in electronics and automotive, among other economic sectors. Stories of Toyota engineers shipping in American-made Chevrolets, Buicks and Cadillacs by the boatload just after the war, abound. Dismantling the precious cargo, down to the minute nut and bolt, to understand what made these cars tick. Determined to use them as a blueprint and find innovation to make better cars. Fuel efficiency and smaller sized cars are probably the two innovations they introduced early on to the global stage.
The little Tiger Economies across Asia (starting with South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong) followed suit, manufacturing everything cars and computer mouse, drugs to detergents, and refrigerators to roof shingles.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to box all the newly industrialized countries as imitators. But to a degree, all countries, at some point in their “building-its-foundation-of-an-industrialized-nation” stage, were culpable of copying something. It could be argued that perhaps this was all done with a certain elegant aplomb. Comparing this to what is happening in China is quite another story.
China is literally twitching with international brands, and adopting them for their own domestic markets. Unfortunately very little adopting is done, except make everything from cheaper materials, keeping the look of the product, from the brand name to the physical appearance. China likens it to the fast route to brand building, in what they believe is “borrowing” the positive attributes that are intrinsincally attached to major global (read: Western and Japanese) brands. And voila! … Puff! A Mercedes Benz look-alike magically appears… fooling the eye!
Nowhere is this more evident than China’s Automotive Industry. The need to provide cars fast to a huge domestic market of car consumers who’ve evolved from bicycle to bike to car, faster than the time it takes most countries to clear land to build roadways!
So, welcome to the new world of imitation, China style. Which is more in-your-face, sheer “copy and paste” mentality. Ridiculously silly, its almost seems like an art-form. Enjoy the visual ride of the many examples in this blog.
Inspiration: Friskodude
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