Steve Rhea, Rhea & Kaiser Marketing Communications, is seated on the right here at the China Marketing Summit. I’m going to interview him about this trip for next week’s ZimmCast. I hope that he remembers how to speak English or I’m going to have to brush up on my Chinese.

Brand globalization is a hot topic, but U.S. companies looking to expand into China must understand some stark differences between the economies, including the distribution of wealth in China vs. the United States. “The majority of wealth in the United States is concentrated among older Americans, which is very different from China where the most prosperous – the country’s first generation of entrepreneurs – are under the age of 35,” said Steve Rhea, president of Rhea & Kaiser Marketing Communications, who recently returned from a five-day summit in Beijing and Shanghai. “Understanding this is imperative to building the right relationships and marketing strategies necessary to break into the burgeoning Chinese marketplace.”

Rhea & Kaiser was one of six U.S. agencies that participated in the China Marketing Summit, which took place Nov. 5 – 9. Participants represented the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, India and France, and a wide range of Chinese businesses including mega-retailers, Internet service providers and hotel chains. “We became immersed in the everyday world of Chinese business,” said Rhea, who also was a featured panelist during the summit. “We walked away appreciating the dichotomy that still exists in China – modernization vs. traditional values, consumerism vs. ideology and individualism vs. collectivism.”