Status of Our Tik Tok and Shein Groups

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!

GEA China May 30-June 6 – League and Moutai

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!

GEA China May 27-29

Image

Jay Lee & Victoria Alexis

Hello everyone, thank you for keeping up with our blog for the last two weeks! It’s a bittersweet moment to think that this week was our last zoom class meeting. From here on out, we will be meeting with our individual research groups and Professor Sheehan. 

Our last few days of synchronous classes, however, were full of enriching discussion and preparation to really get started on our research projects. Following our last lecture on Chinese history on Tuesday, we read a piece about hybridization. One of the examples provided was the Disney film of the Mulan story, so we started off Wednesday’s class watching the Chinese dub of “Reflection.” Something interesting that Keegan mentioned in Wednesday’s class was that the song is not a direct translation of the English lyrics, but rather has its own lyrical identity, reflecting on how in hybridization, the blending of cultural aspects can create a new product as well.

Photo: A snapshot from our Classmate Sarah, for the beginning of Wednesday, May 29th class, started with a video from “Mulan.”

Professor Sheehan’s Wednesday lecture wrapped up our continuing discussion of China’s history, specifically its appearance on the global stage in the late twentieth century. The lesson spanned from China’s industrial rise to its modernization that led to its place in the world now. We learned how globalization helped mainland China gain presence in the global market, and using what we learned we can infer the different methods that Chinese companies use in relation to their culture and the world.

Following the lecture, we began a discussion on our readings on hybridization. By looking at the different facets of how culture manifests as different aspects of products, we added to our toolkit different approaches to looking at cultural products. The liger was used as an example of how two different entities can blend to produce an entirely separate entity with its own unique features. The Prius was used as an example of how one thing can have the features of two ideas.

We spent the next days of our remaining synchronous class time cementing our research projects. We worked in our groups and with Professor Sheehan to fine-tune the questions that would guide our research. In the TikTok research group, we looked at different primary sources and secondary sources that we thought may help us in our research on how Tik Tok’s marketing operates in the US.

Photo: Our classmate Callie working on their group project on Tik Tok

While our current circumstances gave us a class very different than what we anticipated, everyone could agree that we gained a lot from Professor Sheehan’s efforts. Our research plans are much more solidified and we are all excited to do our work in the following week and present our findings to each other.

Photo: Some last final thoughts from our classmates about how they are feeling about the end of class.

Thanks again for reading! We are all excited about finishing and getting our results for our research questions. So be sure to tune back in and see what we concluded in our research!

Photo: Professor Sheehan and the rest of our class, on the last day of synchronous class.

GEA China 2020 Day Six: May 26, 2020

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:

GEA China 2020 Day Five: May 22, 2020

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!

GEA China 2020 Day Four: May 21, 2020

Garrett Penderghast

Hello everyone, thanks for keeping up with our online adventures! Now for our fourth day of class we started off with listening to an incredibly peppy song called “Little Apple” by the Chopstick Brothers. Keegan said that he knows a workout routine to this song and he would show us in class sometime soon, so be on the lookout for when that happens! As we moved into the lecture portion of our class, we also had a much deeper introduction to Professor Sheehan. He told us about his life and the winding path he took to become an accomplished and active member of the USC community. I am sure that we all have a deepened appreciation for Professor Sheehan now as we move forward with our studies in the program!

The song “Little Apple” by the Chopstick Brothers

Transitioning into the information phase of the lecture, Professor discussed the global issues of the 1920s to the 1940s and how these events affected China’s international footprint during this time. Major highlights of international events included the Great Depression, the growth of the Japanese Empire, and World War II. Then after receiving a recap of the international contexts, we dove into China’s domestic history in this period! This was mainly characterized by the development of major party influence by both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party (GMD). Very interesting!

Artist’s depiction of The Long March, undertaken by Mao Zedong and the CCP

As we finished our historical lecture, Keegan shared with us the long-awaited dance routine for “Little Apple.” This proved to be a great pick-me-up as we continued into our discussion of the readings. The first chapter focused heavily on the idea of brand acquisition while the second chapter discussed the importance of overcoming negative country stereotypes and building positive national associations to certain brands. Our post-reading conversations were fairly interesting as we were able to bring real-life examples to help us understand the readings. One specific instance was when Sean talked about how his mother used to boycott Japanese products because of some tensions between Japan and Korea at the time. This situation is a real-world example of how negative country associations can affect the market, and this allowed us to see how these associations have a significant impact on international brands.

Photo of Korean efforts to boycott Japanese products

Now as we began to wrap up the lecture, Professor Sheehan split us up into our research project groups to establish what we want to pursue in our projects. The groups that have been formed so far have been focused on discussing TikTok, Fast Fashion efforts, Snacks/food, and Tencent! My specific group is looking to research how Tencent is advertising its product, League of Legends, to an American population. At this point, we are still trying to figure out exactly how we will analyze Tencent’s advertising of League of Legends, but we want to focus on the cinematic videos that have been published by Tencent and see if there are common themes being presented that may be appealing to an American audience. Progress is being made on all fronts and I am sure that all of our projects will turn out amazing!

Here is the beginning of research on TikTok advertising! Way to go Callie!

Thanks again everyone for stopping by and I look forward to more days of interesting discussion and learning as we continue with our EASC China course. Be on the lookout for our research projects at the end of this course, I am sure that you will be blown away by what we find! See you all again soon!


Here is an update from the class:

GEA China 2020 Day Three: May 20, 2020

D’Angelo Diaz

Dr. Sheehan with the cover slide of his awaited third lecture.

Dr. Sheehan with the cover slide of his long-awaited third lecture.

Ni hao! The third day of class kicked off to the rhythm of Chinese singer Rosie’s “Zen Me Hai Bu Ai (Why Not Love?)”. Two of our fellow classmates – Sarah & Kerrigan – are in the middle of traveling back home this week. The main topics for today were dissecting a marketing research report on Chinese brand power & understanding how the world shaped China (and vice versa) during the 1800s and early 1900s.

The “BrandZ 2019” report provided a list of 50 Chinese brands that are well-known throughout the world, from Alibaba to Zenjoy. This list will prove helpful for the class with selecting a Chinese product to research! The report also highlighted a few key themes that brands will need to focus on in the future, including drawing in local business talent & leveraging transnational partnerships to better convey a company’s mission.

The top 50 Chinese global brands - how many do you recognize?

The top 50 Chinese global brands of 2019 – how many do you recognize?

The lecture delved into the rise of colonialism, and how China was impacted by these changes. An example mentioned in class was the tale of the British opium trade with China. This supply of opium was made possible due to colonies in India controlled by a British corporation, the East India Company. The flow of opium into China severely impacted the country’s public health and economic prosperity and would lead to the Opium Wars between Britain & China during the mid-1800s.

Dr. Sheehan also discussed the expansion of the Japanese Empire, as this was an important factor that influenced Asian globalization. One of the many interesting anecdotes he shared about this time is how Qingdao’s famous beer has Germanic roots since Qingdao (Tsingtao) was previously a German colony.

An geographical overview of China by 1925 CE.

A geographical overview of China

After the class discussion concluded, it was time to assemble our research teams! With the majority of students interested in technology, Dr. Sheehan created a few breakout rooms for students to parlay with one another over possible research topics. What Chinese brands & products shall we choose? Stay tuned for future updates…


And now for an update from our class members:

GEA China 2020 Day Two: May 19, 2020

Helena Lu and Callie Truong 

Hello everyone! Today was the second day of class for the 2020 Global East Asia program. We’ve started to become more familiar with one another and adapt to the online format of the class!

Today the professor played the classic song “月亮代表我的心” (The Moon Represents My Heart) by Teresa Teng, the most famous Chinese pop singer in the 1970s and 1980s. We then dove into our discussion of globalization and its many facets and practiced analyzing images. Everyone had really insightful analyses of the Haier advertisement we looked at. It was beneficial to see how we could apply what we learned about globalization to pictures we see in real life. Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to develop our image analysis skills and apply them in our own projects!

A Haier advertisement that we used for practice

Professor Sheehan then gave us a lecture on globalization before 1850. Globalization, far from being a new phenomenon, has been around for about as long as humans have. The professor urged us not to think of globalization through a Eurocentric perspective, and discussed the Silk Road and the expeditions of Zheng He, whose global expeditions had tens of thousands of people and ships exponentially larger than Christopher Columbus’. It was really interesting to see how global connections functioned throughout history in ways we don’t typically think about.

Part of today’s lecture

We then held a discussion of the reading and its significance in understanding Chinese brands’ perspectives in marketing before beginning to split off into different groups based on our research interests. We have a ways to go before we can really start our research projects, but everything is starting to come together!

The professor then shifted his lecture to Chinese history before 1850. This was very interesting because we learned about the different global connections that were already influencing China much before the years we typically think of as “globalized”. The Ming emperor, for instance, had a palace modeled after Versailles, and some wealthy Americans owned Chinese porcelain with American motifs on it. Chinese and Western markets have influenced each other for a long time.

We closed off the class today with a fun poll of everyone’s favorite Chinese foods. We saw an interesting range of answers!

Our classmates’ favorite Chinese foods!

Though COVID has limited a lot of what we can do in this class, hopefully, we’ll work together to continue our research and have productive discussions in the coming weeks!

GEA China 2020 Day One: May 18, 2020

Callie Truong and Helena Lu

Greetings everyone and welcome to the 2020 Global East Asia China blog! Today marked the beginning of the first-ever GEA China online non-travel version. Although we could not meet in SOS 250 and travel together to China this summer, we are still excited to dive into our research projects and work with our classmates and Professor Sheehan.

GEA China 2020 Class

Each day, the professor begins the class by playing a Chinese music video from YouTube. Today he played “漂向北方 Stranger in the North” by Namewee and Wang Leehom. Then he described how the class will run for the next two weeks. We will primarily focus on building our analytical toolkit, which we will utilize when researching Chinese global brands and their international marketing campaigns. We began constructing this toolkit with a class activity on analyzing images. Students volunteered and shared an advertising image that they analyzed. This was a fun and interesting part of the class because not only did we get to practice the tools, but we also got to learn a little about our classmates’ interests.

GEA China Students’ Selection of Advertisements for the Analyzing Images Activity

After the activity, Professor Sheehan gave us his “Quick and Dirty Guide to Globalization” and emphasized how globalization is multi-faceted and can be characterized in several different ways. We also will be using primary and secondary resources in our research, so the professor provided us with a worksheet on how to read secondary resources in a non-linear fashion because it will be easier to understand the content and save time. We divided into breakout rooms to apply the worksheet to our day one readings that focused on globalization key concepts and the idea of invented traditions. Overall, day one was full of great conversations and I am excited for the next few days as we begin to navigate our toolkits and potential research topics!

Shanghai – 6/6 – Last day in China

Jerry Slocum & Michelle Truong

Pudong airport in Shanghai

Marissa left to Disneyland, Shanghai at 7AM. Megan left to Hong Kong at 10AM. Connor stayed back at the hotel to bowl because his flight to Thailand was at 8:30PM. The rest of us headed to a Dim Sum restaurant in a hotel located not far from where we were staying. Shout out to our TA Jeremy for recommending the place as it was some of the best food we had in China in my opinion. It was also my first time having Dim Sum. I’m sure I speak for everyone by saying we couldn’t have had a better last meal.

Afterwards, we took a walk back to our hotel through a scenic park. A few of us who weren’t feeling like walking took a cab. Then we all took the bus to the airport. Jeremy and Professor Sheehan dropped us off and we said our goodbyes. After the main group arrived in Los Angeles, each of us slowly took off. Jasmine, Matt, Mikaella, Clarence, and Michelle took a Lyft back to USC. Mikaella, Clarence, and Michelle had the final GEA meal together at Trio House.

The end of GEA 2019! It was a pleasure spending the trip with such a great group and making memories that will last a lifetime. Keep in touch <3

The ride home from the airport