Moutai and the Emotional Marketing

Standard Bottle of Moutai

What do you know about the Moutai? It is a chinese sorghum-based white spirit fermented several times and 60° distilled.
Our ignorant western palates regard it as a “rotgut” but, in its country, the Moutai is considered as a delicate beverage with a rich bouquet. Anyway, being today the most famous and drinked white spirit in China, Moutai has invested in an intense media policy with the aim of conquering more and more new market shares.

“Moutai, the national drink”. At first and from an occcidental point of view, this slogan seems rather standard and institutional but, in its country, it looks extremely subtle and makes every Chinese people’s heart pound with emotion..
So ok for “the national drink”, but what about the Nation in question? It is a modern notion for, if China has been a vast Empire until 1911, the Chinese Nation as we, westerners, mean did not exist yet. It is Mao Zedong who has created this Chinese Nation, a Chinese State as we understand it. Mao Zedong is and will always be considered as the modern Chinese Nation’s Father.

Maotai Gift Bottle given by Mao to Nixon

From the chinese point of view, Mao has cleared his country of all the humiliation suffered under the Concession’s regime and has saved the face of China by creating a sovereign entity able to join the entente between the Nations and especially the United Nations Organisation where it is regarded as one of the world’s leader States. This is the reason why the Chinese people is so grateful to “Chairman Mao”, as they call him, and maintains this very special emotional relationship with his memory. Huo Datong, the unique psychoanalyst in China and the sinologist Cyrille Javary both consider this relationship as a prototype of the relation to the father, with all  the emotion it can generate. To be a “national drink” means that this drink is addressing the heart-strings of the Nation, this emotional relationship with the Father of the Nation.

Define a drink as “national” also could mean that this beverage might reach the status of symbol next to Mao’s Red Book and, in any case, summons up the strong chinese patriotic feelings. In this way, Moutai practises an emotional marketing on a 35 to 50 years old age group, the same that we, westerners, consider to have no feelings at all.

Moutai bottle for the 60th anniversary of the Chinese State

Last but not least and according to Moutai, the “national drink” would have contributed to the Chinese State’s integration (nothing less…). Actually, in 1949, during the meeting preparing the proclamation of the Chinese State, Zhou Enlai decided that the Moutai will be served to the Party officials when they will drink to the Chinese State accession. So,  as Moutai took part to this birth, Moutai is worthy of it.  It should be remembered that Zhou Enlai has been one of the irreprochable and mythic figures that took part in the coming to power of Communism, Mao’s unfailing friend, pure-intentioned.

Drink the Moutai is then, above all, being a good patriot and glorify China… Which goes to show that a banal advertising slogan can have very different meanings in Paris or Beijing.