Marketing 102: How I would spin the China Wine story

Thanks to Sun Ho, I am enjoying another major spike in traffic to my blog today. In my previous post that went viral, I discussed how Kong Hee and CHC's team is putting up a very poor defence in court because their entire argument is based on what they would have been able to achieve if China Wine had been a commercial success.They conveniently ignored the fact that China Wine was not a commercial success and despite having spent over S$24 million on Sun Ho's career, her foray into the American market turned out to be a major loss-making exercise.

It is astonishing that they can try to present this kind of defence in a court of law - look, you can tell yourself whatever you want in private, you can justify it in any way you want to yourself in private. But when trying to convince a judge in the court of law, under intense public scrutiny, they are still sticking to their story that China Wine was "deemed a success" in spite of the total absence of any form of commercial success. Now it is so easy to pour scorn on Sun Ho short lived foray into the American market - but I have been issued a challenge. Zhao asked me on Facebook, "If Sun Ho were to employ you as her PR consultant, how would you try to spin this to make Sun Ho look good or limit the damage? Maybe their current approach may seem rather self-delusional, but what is the alternative? What kind of statement would you issue if you were Sun Ho's new PR manager?"

Is it possible to put a positive spin on the Sun Ho story thus far?

Alright challenge accepted Zhao. May I state a disclaimer please - whilst I have worked in marketing and PR for many years, I am not approaching the issue from a legal point of view. I have no legal background or training. What I am proposing is no more than an alternative way to present Sun Ho's career in the last few years to try to make her look a bit better in the public eye, this in no way constitutes any kind of legal defence that can be used in court. Furthermore, from the amount of scorn I have poured on Sun Ho's career, you do know how I think her music is one big joke - however, as I do like a challenge and I shall attempt to justify Sun Ho's career. It is too easy to kick a man (or a woman, in this case) who is already down. So please bear this in mind - I am treating this as an academic exercise, I am no fan of Sun Ho, okay?  In the next few paragraphs, I shall pretend I am Sun Ho's new PR spokesman and how I would respond to current criticisms about her music in light of the ongoing court case. There will be some geni.us links in this article - they will take you to your local iTunes store where you can preview and purchase the tracks mentioned in the article.

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"Firstly, thank you very much for your interest in Sun Ho and her music. With regards to all the criticism about her single China Wine, please let me be clear: we are not pretending for a moment that China Wine and Kill Bill were successful - the lack of commercial success was disappointing to say the least. Sun Ho worked extremely hard in America with Wyclef and his team on this project and no one is more disappointed than her, because she didn't want to let anyone down. However, we are not sorry that we took a chance to work with Wyclef Jean - he had just been working with Shakira on the global hit Hips Don't Lie and if China Wine had been half as successful as Hips Don't Lie, then all the hard work would have been worth it. Sun Ho did learn from her mistakes and her follow up single Fancy Free demonstrated just how versatile she was and she was able to reinvent her music, image and style altogether.

Sun Ho has had a very long music career starting way back in 2002 when she started her successful career in Mandopop, since then she had produced hits in both Mandarin and English, including a number of dance hits like Where Did Love Go, Ends Of The Earth, One With You, Without Love and Gone which proved just how versatile Sun Ho is as an artiste, moving between different styles of music for different markets as diverse as the Mandopop market in China to the Eurodance market. Very few singers demonstrate such versatility, crossing these many genres the way Sun Ho has - she is constantly challenging herself to break into new markets, learning about different styles of music. Most other singers and performers would gladly just stick to what they do best and perhaps it is Sun Ho's ambition that had ultimately worked against her. #ironicbuttrue

Many singers do try to reinvent themselves during their long careers - it is necessary to refresh their image, try new musical styles, collaborate with different people in order to reach out to new audiences, win new fans and surprise old fans. Madonna had experimented with fusing Indian music in her album Ray Of Light - the result was the haunting yet beautiful album track Shanti Ashtangi. The song wasn't a commercial success as it was never released as a single but it does prove how versatile Madonna is as an artist taking on a completely different and unfamiliar genre of music and creating a fusion track like that. Kylie Minogue is another artiste who has experimented with various genres of music - from pop to indie to rock to dance. Not every one of Kylie's reinventions have been huge successes - she has had singles which have flopped. None of her singles from her indie album Impossible Princess (1997) made top ten in the UK or even back in her native Australia. I still think that is one of Kyle's best albums despite the lack of commercial success - the music on that album just wasn't quite what the public had an appetite for at that time.

Peter Gabriel (formerly of Genesis) is another great musician who has done his fair share of experimenting with different genres of music in his time - he isn't that bothered about achieving commercial success. Indeed both with the group Genesis and as a solo artiste, Peter has achieved more commercial success in his career than most other singers alive today! Take the track While The Earth Sleeps from the 1996 soundtrack for Strange Days - he collaborates with Deep Forest, two French producers who sample native music from exotic places like Cameroon, Gabon and the Solomon Islands. It wasn't a commercial success, reaching only #27 in the Italian charts and neither charting in the UK nor the US, but have a listen to it, it is a stunning if not somewhat unusual piece of music. 

Does the lack of commercial success mean that this song was a complete failure? I challenge you, watch the music video below and you be the judge. Why does everything have to be judged by commercial success? Justin Bieber has achieved a huge amount of commercial success, but many people simply can't stand his music (I swear I literally ran for cover the last time I heard the song Baby when it was played in a shop!)  - I prefer music like While The Earth Sleeps by Peter Gabriel and Deep Forest which has far more depth and character despite lacking commercial success. 

Is Peter Gabriel's collaboration with Deep Forest unusual, even strange? Yes it is. But it is hardly the only unusual collaboration in this industry: Run DMC and Aerosmith collaborated on the 1986 single Walk This Way fusing two very different genres: hip hop and rock. Don't forget, back in 1986, hip hop was not mainstream like it is today. Did it work? Yeah, in a strange way, even if the rock + hip hop pairing may seem odd at first but the single did achieve top ten success in many countries including the UK and US. Another unusual pairing came in the form of Swedish-American hip-hop artist and rapper Neneh Cherry and Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour on the hit 7 Seconds which went to number one in four countries (Finland, France, Italy, Switzerland) and top ten in many countries  (#3 in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, #2 the Netherlands, #7 New Zealand, #8 Spain) in 1994. This haunting and beautiful song sung in Wolof, French and English was a fusion of traditional Senegalese music, trip hop, soul and R&B was a winning combination - it topped the French charts for 16 weeks and was a record then in France for the song that spent the longest at the top of the French charts. 

And perhaps the strangest, most recent such collaboration was on Psy's 2014 single Hangover where he teamed up with Snoop Dogg and G-Dragon in a K-pop meets black American hip hop fusion. As interesting an experiment as it was, the single Hangover's performance in the charts was disappointing - reaching 26 in the US and it didn't chart at all in the UK but more significantly, it failed to chart in Psy's native South Korea as well. Compared to Gangnam Style and Gentleman, these results were very disappointing given how Snoop Dogg has had five top ten hits in the US including a huge number one Drop It Like Its Hot (2004). So as you can see, such collaborations can yield poor results for a global superstar like Psy. Such is the nature of such experimental collaborations - there are no guarantees of success. 

Sun Ho's collaboration with Wyclef Jean was her experimentation with reggae - it didn't produce great results. Should she be crucified for that? So many other artistes like Kylie Minogue, Psy, Neneh Cherry, Aerosmith and Peter Gabriel have all experimented with different styles of music, worked with different people, yielding mixed results. Such is the nature of experimentation - the music scene would be a lot less interesting if musicians didn't have the guts to try unusual projects. Over time, their fans will remember them for their greatest works and their less successful projects will simply fade into the background and be something only the really hardcore fans will remember and like. Such will be Sun Ho's brief experimentation with reggae - she tried, she gave it her best shot, it didn't really work, she moved on.

We are not trying to pretend for a moment that Sun Ho's China Wine was a qualified success - we are only too aware of the public's reaction to it and yes, we have read the comments left on her Youtube page. All I am saying is that singers like Sun Ho have to reinvent themselves and try new things - she could have been quite happy singing Mandarin ballads for the rest of her career but that would have meant never expanding beyond the East Asian Chinese market. In hindsight, we do realize that working with Wyclef Jean was probably a mistake and if we had the chance to do it all over again, we would have chosen a different producer and avoided reggae altogether, but hindsight is always 2020. Sun Ho had the ambition and the talent to try to break into the American market, but unfortunately her career suffered because of some poor decisions that were made. Should she be crucified for trying? That seems rather harsh. 

The music industry in America is harsh, very harsh. Many of us are fans of the great Whitney Houston who had so many big hits like Where Do Broken Hearts Go, I'm Your Baby Tonight, Saving All My Love For You and I Will Always Love You. She is undoubtedly one of America's most successful female recording artistes up till her recent death - but did you know that the last time she had a top ten hit in America was in 2001 with a reissue of her version of The Star Spangled Banner which reached #6 in the US charts? Despite the fact that she went on recording between the period 2002 to 2009, the highest position she could managed in the US charts was #70 with her 2009 single I Look To You. Some argue that her lack of commercial success later in her career was because her musical style didn't evolve sufficiently with time and thus she failed to connect with a younger audience as her older audience in their 40s and 50s lost interest in pop music and were no longer rushing to download her very latest singles. 

So, what can we learn from the case study of Whitney Houston? The key lesson is that singers have to take risks, innovate, reinvent themselves, keep themselves  interesting to a new, younger audience in order to remain relevant in this industry or risk slipping into oblivion. Whitney Houston may have had a string of number ones back in the 1980s and 1990s, but she was unable to sustain herself in the 2000s and in spite of her earlier fame and success, did just that - she slipped into oblivion later in her career. It was only with her untimely, unfortunate death at the age of 48 (in 2012 when she drowned in her hotel room bathtub) that rekindled a fresh interest in her music, but once again, the interest was in her earlier hits from the 1980s and 1990s, rather than her later work. If even someone like the great Whitney Houston can slip into oblivion, then that shows how important it is for singers to try to reinvent themselves and create fresh material to continually woo new audiences in what is an extremely competitive industry. 

Thus you can see why it was necessary for Sun Ho to reinvent herself and try new music projects by working with people like Wyclef Jean or risk becoming irrelevant like Whitney Houston later in her career. So you see, Sun Ho didn't have much of a choice - she had to innovate or risk becoming irrelevant and obsolete in what is a fast evolving industry. Did she make some bad choices along the way? Of course she did, we are not denying that - but I am just pointing out that she is doing what any other singer in her position would have done: she was experimenting, she was trying something new. It takes guts to try something new, to venture way out of your comfort zone and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In this case, no, we're not pretending that it worked. But she did what she had to do. 

As for the ongoing trial involving Kong Hee and another members of CHC, we cannot comment on it as it is an ongoing case - we just want to clarify that Sun Ho has not been charged with any crime and thus is not directly involved in this case. She is an artiste, a singer, a musician and for the last few years has been very much focused on working on her music rather than all the paperwork that goes on behind the scenes - that does not concern her at all. 

I'm not asking you to like Sun Ho's music, I'm not even trying to convince you that China Wine or Kill Bill was any good. I know many of you hate those tracks and personally, I agree with you and think they are the two worst songs that Sun Ho has ever done. However, I am just asking you to look at the wider context of this industry and the risks that Sun Ho has taken in this context. Let us just focus on her music - Sun Ho has had a very long and interesting career in what is a cut-throat, highly competitive industry and she has achieved what no other Singaporean artiste has done in terms of proving herself as a versatile, innovative and experimental artiste creating new music. Thank you for your interest."

Yours faithfully, 
Sun Ho's imaginary new PR manager who doesn't exist. 

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Please note that I have treated this blog post as an academic exercise in marketing & PR - the piece above does not represent my personal opinion even if I did use my knowledge of the media & music industry to craft the statement above. I am not a fan of Sun Ho and I can't wait for Kong Hee & gang to be sent to jail for a very, very long time. So you see, that is how I would defend Sun Ho's career - I acknowledged the mistakes she has made, explained the context of the industry and celebrated the things she did right. Her current approach of complete denial to the point of being self-delusional is laughable at best and that is why she has been mocked to no end by Singaporeans on social media. A slice of humble pie and a far more PR-savvy marketing manager would be exactly what I would prescribe Sun Ho now.

As usual, please feel to leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Many thanks for reading.