{"id":8618,"date":"2011-05-01T03:05:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-01T03:05:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-01T03:05:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T03:05:05","slug":"In-China-Art-Is-Making-a-Commercial-Statement-","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=8618","title":{"rendered":"In China, Art Is Making a Commercial Statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

In China, Art Is Making a Commercial Statement. NeochaEdge Artists at the NeochaEdge agency help advertisers lure China’s vast market of young adults. In Shanghai, Absolut vodka bottles became illuminated paintbrushes for a streetlight graffiti show. It isn\u2019t the familiar Adidas look \u2014 that bold and basic three-stripe logo. Instead, it\u2019s a design meant to evoke blowing wind, flowing water and flapping wings. Hurri Jin, known as Hurricane, was among NeochaEdge artists involved in the Shanghai light graffiti show. The tricked-out design for new T-shirts in China was created by Chen Leiying, a 27-year-old artist known as Shadow Chen who lives in the coastal city of Ningbo. She is not even an employee of the company, but multinationals like Adidas are beginning to turn to young creative types like her to dream up images and logos for the under-30 set in China, a group that is 500 million strong.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Call them China\u2019s youth whisperers. From Harbin in the north to Guangzhou in the south, young artists, musicians and designers are being tapped to make companies\u2019 brands cool. Like its counterparts elsewhere, this arty crowd sometimes looks and acts unconventional \u2014 but it\u2019s not with political ends in mind. These young artists tend to set aside politics for commerce, and the promise of attractive paydays from foreign businesses. At the center of this experiment is NeochaEdge, the first and only creative agency of its type in China. It was started in 2008 by two Americans, Sean Leow and Adam Schokora, to showcase the work of illustrators, graphic designers, animators, sound designers and musicians from across China. It now has 200 member-artists; NeochaEdge pays them per project to work on campaigns and product designs for brands like Nike, Absolut vodka and Sprite. Adidas wants to be cool, \u201cand the only way to be cool is to appeal to young people,\u201d says Jean-Pierre Roy, who until recently helped oversee product development in China for Adidas. To help enhance that image, Adidas selected four Chinese artists, including Ms. Chen, to design 20 graphics for its new T-shirts. <\/p>\n

Over the last year, members of the agency have also produced a soundtrack and a streetlight graffiti show for Absolut, designed sneakers for the Jimmy Kicks shoe company and created content for an e-magazine for Nike about basketball culture in China. And by the end of this year, NeochaEdge will also become a virtual art gallery, selling artwork from its artists through its Web site. \u201cYou can\u2019t just stroll into China and see who is a hot artist,\u201d says Mr. Roy (who now works for Oakley, the eyewear company, in Shanghai). \u201cIt\u2019s all still a little underground.\u201d So Mr. Schokora, 30, and Mr. Leow, 29, have become trusted category_ides. \u201cThere are not many young Americans who speak fluent Mandarin and are as much at home talking to chief marketing officers as they are talking to graffiti artists in Guangzhou,\u201d says Paul Ward, head of operations for Asia at the advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in Shanghai, which has collaborated with NeochaEdge on projects over the last year.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

SOURCE<\/a>
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