Brand Asia? Busting Asian Culture Myths | Andrea Ng, Canvas 8 | Tank Talks Asia

MANISHA: 10 years ago, would you have imagined that K-Pop demon hunters would be a thing and that they would be recognized at the Oscars in Hollywood? Would you have thought that a Labubu, a furry character from Asia would rock up at the iconic Macy's day parade in New York? Probably not, right. In a hyperconnected world, Asian culture is booming and today's guest thinks it's just the beginning.

Hi, it's Tank Talks Asia. I'm Manisha Tank at AsiaWorks Studio in Singapore. From me and the rest of the team, a very warm welcome. On this show, we are plunging into the fascinating realm of Asian consumer culture. Andrea Ng is a myth busting historian who spends her time helping brands understand the truth about Asian culture. She's the insights director at Market Research Firm, Canvas8.

Andrea, it's so good to see you.

ANDREA: Thank you for having me.

MANISHA: I think it's a bit strange for you, isn't it, to be on the opposite side of the table, because normally you are the one going around asking questions, right?

ANDREA: Yeah. So it's a little bit strange to be on this side, but a good experience as well to see what, you know, usually my interviewees would experience and I've been doing and going around Asia interviewing people for more than a decade now, and basically as a qualitative practitioner, my job is to go down to the grounds, having focus groups or doing ethnographies to kind of really understand what people are doing in their lives, what they're looking at, what they really want, so that I can bring that information back to our clients and to the brands that we are working with to help them understand what products to make, what campaigns to create, and what kind of marketing campaigns really resonate with the people out there.

I have a background in cultural history. Actually, when in university, I was trained to do history and kind of used that experience and that knowledge to kind of segue into understanding societies and kind of bring in a lot of cultural knowledge and cultural understanding of the region.

After all, Asia is so huge and so big, and there's a lot of mysteries around it as well. And I'm still learning every day, every job, every project that I take. So I'm looking forward to see what else I can unravel of this region and bring that back into what I do on the day to day as well, is that we work with brands and businesses to help them understand people essentially.

MANISHA: All right, well let's get into it.

ANDREA: Yeah.

MANISHA: We're gonna do some myth busting today. I love a bit of myth busting and let's start with the big picture stuff. Everyone always says that this is gonna be Asia's century. Is that necessarily true when you look at it from a cultural point of view?

ANDREA: Well this term, Asian century, I've been hearing it since way back when I was a student in university and I think they've been throwing this around, whether it's Asian century or Chinese century, whatever term you call it, I think it's been further popularized as well on platforms like the World Economic Forum.

So when you think about Asian century, it always comes in from a geopolitical lens and very much about economic dominance, rising income, so on and so forth. But very rarely do we actually look at that from a consumer culture lens as well.

You know, there is this veteran diplomat in Singapore where he was talking about how the Asian century is a myth, and rightfully so as well. The region is so complex, it's so hard to compress that into a single narrative. But if I kind of take a step out and look at what we do, from a consumer culture perspective, I can almost say that maybe the Asian century is almost here, actually.

When you think about this. Who is the world looking towards when it comes to what to buy, what to eat, where to go, what to consume, what to watch, so on and so forth.

MANISHA: You're saying people are looking east to understand that?

ANDREA: Yeah. Your studies see that's coming through, coming over to the Asia side. One of the things that we've seen as well is the rising global soft power from Asia as well.

You think about Korean films, they’ve been winning a lot of prestigious international awards. You think about Korean beauty, Chinese beauty, making headways in the US markets, for example, really fundamentally changing the beauty industry essentially. You think about toys like Labubu, blind boxes as well. All these are making headwinds globally and they're all originated from Asia.

MANISHA: I'm not gonna reveal how old I am, but I do remember watching, you know, Bruce Lee movies when I was growing up. So it's not that Asian stars, for example, haven't been seen by the rest of the world, they have. But there's obviously been an acceleration in recent years. So what's driving that?

ANDREA: The scale of it is driven by digitization as well. And the fact that social media is driving us a lot more connected globally.

And think about something, think about Hello Kitty versus Labubu, for example. The reason why Labubu can actually scale so rapidly and so quickly is also very much driven by the fact that we are so much more interconnected today with social media.

MANISHA: And Rihanna having a Labubu.

ANDREA: Exactly. And the fact that it was, it started out in Hong Kong, it's made in China, it's ignited by Lisa, who's a Thai celebrity, who's actually a K-pop star.

And then it goes all the way to the US where I dunno if you've seen last year at the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, they actually have a Labubu float.

MANISHA: Right.

ANDREA: And right now Sony Pictures are in the talks of creating a Labubu movie. So you start seeing all these connections coming together and converging together, very much also driven by the fact that the digital network and infrastructure has created an environment that allows us to scale at speed and at scale.

MANISHA: Okay. Alright. Let's get onto myth number two. Is there such a thing as an Asian consumer and, you know, who is that person?

ANDREA: I think the Asian consumer is a very misleading concept in marketing, and I like to think of it as the way we look at generations, you know, generation Alpha, Gen Zs, and millennials. I dunno how much you identify with any of these labels at all?

MANISHA: I don't even understand half of them, let's be honest. But anyway, go on.

ANDREA: But all these labels exist for a reason. And they help us understand very complex situations or complex groups of people into something that's more manageable as well. But to really understand whether there's an Asian consumer or not is to really understand the textures behind it.

And the reality is this, like we've been talking about right from the start, that Asia is so complex. There’s what, 4.8 billion people. There's so many different languages as well. This varying progress and growth as well from different markets. So to say that there is one singular Asia is very challenging and I think one of the things that we also need to look at, something that we often tell businesses and brands as well, is we do want to look for affinities. We do want to look for synergies and cultural synergies across the markets.

But what's really different or what's really meaningful is when you start looking at a global level. You start understanding people at an individual and a human level as well, because every market is different. So maybe, let me give an example. Let's look at demographics.

MANISHA: Okay.

ANDREA: Let's look at demographics. Let's look at Japan and South Korea. They are now tackling one of the world's biggest challenge, which is rapidly aging population.

% of all households by: 2035

That is gonna be a society and individuals that are going to be optimizing for something very different. They're gonna be optimizing for longevity. They're gonna be optimizing and deciding what to consume to help enrich the single life, single experience.

It's gonna be a very different experience there compared to if you look at markets like India or Indonesia, for example, where you are very much powered by a very tech native youth buzz that's full of energy, that's really looking forward, looking to the future as well and they're gonna be optimized for a very different reason.

They're gonna be looking for access. They're gonna be looking for status. And you think about access as well. They're gonna have a lot more accessibility than the previous generations ever did as well.

MANISHA: I found that really intriguing how McDonald's has been tackling that.

ANDREA: Yeah, so McDonald's partnered with a brand called Carrot, and it's a local, secondhand marketplace app, and created this, I believe it's called French Fry gatherings or something like this where you kind of invite 50 people. And you just have limitless fries and you just get there and kind of connect with each other as well.

And you also start seeing things, like running clubs in South Korea, booming. And there's a really interesting dynamic here. I think one of the sociology professor in South Korea talked about how in South Korea there's a lot of societal pressures with hierarchy as well. There's a lot of unspoken social mannerisms that you kind of have to be mindful of, and it creates a lot of social pressure. And this is also a reason why people potentially are retreating as well because there's just so much additional pressure or friction there.

So running clubs and all these different little gatherings that brands are doing are trying to create informal networks and spaces that's really light touch so that people can come out of their shell, connect and then go back to wherever they are essentially. So I think there is a really different dynamic there in South Korea compared to, say in more communal spaces and communal societies like Indonesia, for example.

MANISHA: Alright, let's talk about consumption behavior. Is there going to be this booming middle class that everyone is talking about and, and frankly, a lot of brands seem to be banking on?

ANDREA: Well, I think aspiration is universal, right? And what is different here is the how aspiration is expressed as well. And one very careful thing that we have to be mindful of in Asia is that aspiration is not uniform. It's not uniform across the markets, and we start seeing this slightly differently.

A lot of the young consumers there, their aspirations will be very much vertical, which means they're gonna kind of look for signs of progress, they're gonna consume things that help mark their signal and their arrival as well. Versus in places like I would say Singapore or even South Korea, for example, where it's really a little bit more developed as well. Aspirations may not necessarily just be vertical. It could go sideways as well. And you start seeing things like popup experiential events. All these different experiences, it's going to signal taste, it's gonna signal different expansion of experiences as well, which is also part of aspiration.

Then you're gonna look at markets like China, for example. You start breaking it down by the generations. You're gonna have different layers of expressions, of aspirations. You're gonna have a generation where it's still all about the logos and the flashy icons.

MANISHA: I was dying to ask you about that. Just explain that whole dynamic to me for a second.

ANDREA: I think when we look at flashiness of logos, we are talking about a generation, and especially in China for example, that's quite above us, above the millennial generation, for example. It's a time that coincides with the ascent of China at a time where China was opening up. There was kind of that growing middle class that we've been talking about as well. And therefore, the way to signal arrival is to buy into logos, is to buy into flashy brands as well, to signal that you are here, you are there.

But what we're also seeing quite interestingly with the younger cohorts right now in China, is that they're moving towards the global movement of quiet luxury. Or actually they're kind of looking for other ways of expressions, of aspirations as well.

MANISHA: Like what? Like what's quiet luxury?

ANDREA: So it could be things like buying into a local brand, for example. So instead of buying a Louis Vuitton, you might be picking up a Songmont, for example, and local brands in terms of the ideas and the values of craftmanship, for example heritage storytelling, all these little new values of what makes a brand a brand is gonna be really important to some of these younger consumers as well.

Very much on the same time it's also because they don't necessarily have sufficient disposable income as well to be spending at that level. So we're gonna have to see that some of these consumption behaviors and values gonna have to recalibrate and evolve because of the unemployment, the uncertainty of the economic world, and so and so forth.

MANISHA: Does everyone really love a bargain?

Okay, Andrea, I'm really excited to talk about myth number four. Is it true that Asian consumers always wanna bargain?

ANDREA: Don’t we all love a bargain, right? We all do, we all love a good deal. But I think the other way to kind of flip, look at this as well is that, to chase a good deal is also for someone to say you're looking for price. The Asian consumers are very price driven.

Now that's too simplistic a way to kind of say it. And actually what we are seeing here is Asian consumers are so savvy that it's actually all about the value proposition. It's not about the bargain, it's not about the discount, it is about the value proposition that they get.

MANISHA: Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Explain, explain. Because value proposition. These are just words, but what do you really mean?

ANDREA: I was just about to get to that actually. So values are really important when it comes to what consumers consider is a good deal. Now that comes in many different dimensions and let me kind of break it down for you as well.

So I was just recently in Shanghai actually, and I was just doing some field work and I was just on the streets kind of looking at what's changing in the city. And I came across a really interesting phenomenon. I noticed that a lot of the consumers there are aggressively trading down on certain categories that they're buying and actually trading up or buying up, or paying more for other categories as well.

And it's a really interesting behavior that we are seeing in China right now, and actually not just in China, I would say across Southeast Asia. A lot of this is driven by the economic pressures, right? Uncertainty of the economic world, what's gonna happen. It doesn't necessarily mean that when economy is bad, that people stop spending. They just reorganizing and redirecting their spending.

MANISHA: So what is it that they're trading up and what is it that they're trading down?

ANDREA: That's a really good question. So what they are doing actually, it really depends on the individual and what that value comes from is what that value means to the individual as well.

So say for example, I value luxury products so that I might trade down all my essentials, for example, to make sure that I have sufficient funds to then spend on the things that I enjoying. So when it comes to, when I talk about value, what we are also seeing emerging is that value is being placed on the softer metrics, on softer things like emotional value, softer things like social utility, for example. What kind of joy it brings to you as well.

And there's a reason why blind box is trending as well because it just brings so much comfort and joy in the time and people are willing to spend on those little comforts and joy. So it really depends on what the individual's value proposition is and what matters to that individual.

So we are saying that they are kind of recalibrating their funds to do that and it’s a really intelligent way of doing that. Another way of kind of looking at a good deal or even just looking at value is the double digit events. I don't know if you joined the whole Shopee, Lazada 9 9 events.

MANISHA: 9 9, 1 1.

ANDREA: Almost every month now there is something, right? But there's a really interesting phenomenon happening. Shopee last year, when they did a nine nine event, I can't believe this, but they made 18 billion baht sales for that year, and they made 1 billion baht of sales in 18 minutes. That's how quick it was. It's mind blowing.

MANISHA: I've heard that people actually line up their shopping basket just before midnight.

ANDREA: Yes.

MANISHA: And then they hit the button.

ANDREA: Yes.

MANISHA: And off they go.

ANDREA: Now if you kind of read that behavior on its own, you can just simply say, okay, these consumers, they are just discount hunting. They're just looking for the cheapest price, and therefore they're doing that.

But if you kind of understand the behavior slightly behind it, is that these are consumers who are so savvy enough that they are budgeting, they are managing their budgets across the year, across the months as well, kind of trading up, trading down, making sure that they're getting the best deal before they buy it on the Shopee deal itself.

Now the other thing that Shopee did really well in those events as well, is that it's no longer just about spending or buying, it turns spending into a celebration. It's a ritual every time a double digit month comes along, it's a ritual. You kind of do it for fun. And we see that a lot of people are participating in it and it's giving rise to this phenomenon called shop attainment.

MANISHA: Coming up, Asia loves convenience, true or false?

Let's jump on to myth number five, and we still have a bunch to get through, convenience. So this is all about the idea of convenience. What does it really mean to Asian consumers and is it the driver of Asian consumer behavior?

ANDREA: Let me break it down in three spaces or three parts here, and this is where I get really nerdy and excited about the history part. So I think we cannot talk about convenience if we don't look at convenience stores. We have to look at the physical manifestation of convenience.

MANISHA: So like your 7-Elevens?

ates here, I think around the: 1970

And if you think about convenience stores in the States, for example, it's like a pit stop, right? You need something, you drive there, you pick it up, and then you go, it's done. Very linear, very simple, but when 7-Eleven was imported into Japan, it kind of took on a social meaning behind it as well. It became an infrastructure where you can pay your bills there, you can get a hot meal there, you can get printing done there, you can print all newspapers there as well. You can do a lot of things in there, and became an infrastructure to support the changing society that we are seeing in Japan.

What's really interesting as well is, several years ago I was in Indonesia doing a few work, doing some ethnography, and I was on the streets and I noticed that a lot of the urban youth were actually flocking to 7-Eleven and hanging out there.

MANISHA: Oh really?

ANDREA: And it became a cool thing for young Indonesians to be, Jakartans, to be hanging out at 7-Eleven. Of course, 7-Eleven has closed down now. But at the time it was really interesting because I saw the parallels between Japan at the time when it was developing, and Indonesia now, when it's developing as well, is that 7-Eleven became this living room that's air conditioned in the city for people to come in together. A third space, essentially, where Starbucks was too expensive, but 7-Eleven, you've got snacks ready there, you've got a lounge chair that you can sit there. And convenience stores took on a slightly different meaning as well.

So it's not convenience for convenience sake, but it's also convenience the fact that it has turned into a sense of belonging. So that's a physical manifestation of how it kind of creates cultural meaning

MANISHA: It's quite intriguing because recently I was with a family member traveling in Europe and this family member had recently been to Japan. We saw a 7-Eleven and the family member said, oh, I really wanna check out the 7-Eleven because I wanna see if it's like the ones in Japan.

ANDREA: Yes.

MANISHA: I think that's really fascinating.

Later in the show, anyone for a Labubu?

Do you think that we can jump onto myth number six?

ANDREA: Well lemme add one more point to myth number five then.

MANISHA: Alright, go for it.

ANDREA: It is, you can't talk about convenience without talk about super apps.

MANISHA: Yes, this is true.

ANDREA: Yeah. We have to talk about super apps because super apps is so ingrained in our way of life here in Asia that it's now, in the West I know they're trying very hard to kind of identify what that could be.

MANISHA: So you're talking about sort of the WeChats, the Grabs, this kind of thing?

ANDREA: Yes, the Gojeks and everything. And what's really interesting is, if I touch on Gojek, is that they didn't invent convenience in any way. They kind of took what was already there.

Gojek was already in the Jakartan streets and there was already an informal network of convenience there and kind of scaled it and they kind of put it together all in one app and scaled it so that everybody has convenience readily on an app itself. So you can't talk about convenience without super apps. So that's definitely gonna be a really important point here.

MANISHA: Alright, let's park that. We've gotta go on to myth number six, Asian consumers and whether or not they actually follow global trends. This is a really interesting one. So who's driving the cultural agenda?

ANDREA: It's already there. You think about BTS dominating the charts as well. You think about Korean food, like I think there was a Korean instant noodle brand that kind of grew over like 200% over a couple of years as well, just because the interest in Korean food just blew up because of Netflix, essentially with all the street food documentaries and whatnot.

So there's definitely a lot of trends and movements that we are seeing happening in Asia that's actually now trending in the global west essentially as well. So I would say definitely the directions and the tides have changed a little bit. I'm really excited personally to see Southeast Asian trends really pick up on a global scale like Thailand T-Wave, Thailand Wave is growing and it's really big in Southeast Asia right now, so I'm really excited to see that actually growing and booming across into the western markets.

MANISHA: Yeah. Bubble tea.

ANDREA: Yes.

MANISHA: Bubble tea. Such a good example of a, sort of an Asian product that's gone global. Amazing. All right, myth number seven. Asian consumers are passive followers of authority and brand heritage. Oh, this feels so wrong to even say it, but anyway, go for it.

ANDREA: Well, this was a really interesting question that I was discussing with my team as well, and one of our analysts, Ali, kind of mentioned that we need to talk about this, it's important. And it's also very much because the idea of the differential Asian consumer essentially, loyal to those big brands, swayed by celebrities and whatnot. It's actually one of the most commercially costly errors of mystic or myth out there.

What we have is the opposite. A lot of Asian consumers are what we call co-creators of brands as well. They're very vocal about what they want to see from brands and businesses and what they consume essentially.

We talk about how earlier Asian consumers are one of the most savviest ones out there. They have a lot of networks and communities set up to study the brand to kind of discuss and interrogate the brand itself. You've seen, like in Indonesia for example, they're very quick to boycott a brand based on geopolitical reasons or ethical reasons as well. So there are actually a lot of Asian consumers, or consumers in Asia, who are actually really vocal about what they're consuming or wear, and what kind of brands they are buying into as well.

MANISHA: There is no one Asian consumer because there's so many markets, different languages, different cultures.

ANDREA: Yeah. I think in some ways there are definitely affinities across the markets, Singapore and Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, or wherever not. There are certain behaviors, certain interests or certain taste and aspirations that is quite common and there's affinities around there, but there are also the differences as well.

I think one of the big challenges that Asia is gonna have to see is, while community is growing and you start seeing running clubs, hyrox clubs and all these things booming and growing and kind of going, you know, cross borders as well, you're gonna also have to start seeing a lot of isolation as well, a lot of loneliness issues that we talked about earlier as well, that it's gonna be like this twin engine that we're gonna have to try and navigate what does that mean?

So like we talked about McDonald's, for example, trying to resolve that on a brand level as well. We've seen how Heineken, for example, created social rooftops, social spaces as well to bring people out of their shell. So we're gonna start having to see how brands are gonna help tackle some of these demographics challenges.

But at the same time, we're kind of leaning on some of the regional knowledge and regional growth as well to understand how can we actually grow our societies in each different markets.

MANISHA: Okay. For everyone who can't see it, we have a rather intriguing looking box on the table. We ask our guests to bring a memento for the Tank Talks Asia shelves, tell us a little bit about what I can only see as a white box that has a bit of writing on it. I'm intrigued. What have you brought for us?

ANDREA: Well, I brought you a Labubu.

MANISHA: Ooh, oh of course.

ANDREA: Of course, I mean, we started out talking about Labubu, we have to end our conversation with Labubu as well.

MANISHA: So I get to turn this over and see what we’ve got here.

ANDREA: Yes, this is a blind box and hopefully it brings you as much joy as it should. And I think the phenomena of Labubu just taking off is just such a quintessential example of just the soft power that we've been talking about in Asia and just how things are just going viral from the markets here.

MANISHA: I feel like I have to just rip it open.

ANDREA: Go ahead.

MANISHA: I’m gonna rip this open and I hope that, you know, all of our listeners can hear me opening this box up.

I've never opened one of these blind boxes before. Here we go. Should we open this up and see? So it's in this lovely packaging, big into energy, it says on the front with all these pictures of the Labubus.

ANDREA: Now I wonder what you got.

MANISHA: Oh, isn't that cute?

ANDREA: Yeah, that’s really cute.

MANISHA: I got a lovely, rather fierce looking, Labubu in a lovely teal turquoise color, thank you.

ANDREA: I wonder which one you got? It's Serenity.

MANISHA: Serenity, that sounds right up my street. I'm gonna go and be a bit serene now that we've had this very exciting conversation.

ANDREA: Thank you for having me.

MANISHA: Andrea, it was great to see you. Thanks for coming.

ANDREA: Thank you.

MANISHA: It was so clear to me that Andrea absolutely loves what she does, and I think you could tell as well. Thanks from all of us at the AsiaWorks team for making it to the end of this episode. There's plenty more in our show notes, so have a look in case there's something there you'd like to follow up on and maybe like and subscribe to Tank Talks Asia. That way you'll never miss an episode. I'm Manisha Tank. Bye for now.

Tank Talks Asia is an AsiaWorks production and the views and opinions shared by our guests are their own.