To Whom It May Concern: My name is Nathaniel Hillard. Perhaps you have heard of me — I really am quite the celebrity in the Xi’An Community Access Channel circuit. You might well have seen my special on American colleges, in which I lecture to a half-filled auditorium of controlling parents and pre-teenagers about the importance of the SAT.

Being such a distinguished personage, I thought it appropriate to offer commentary on the current advertising trends of the mainland. Not to mention, I hail from America, the land in which advertising knows no limits.

Allow me to say right off the bat that I love what you’ve done with the city of Shanghai. Neon really is the light of the future, and your efforts to literally paint the town red (albeit with a sickening glow of unnatural light) seem to be paying off. In America, we have the phrase “burn into your memory.” You take this to new levels.

Your talent for turning night into day is apparent in Shenzhen, as well, though to a somewhat lesser degree. I worry about a pesky thing called “discretion,” which should of course be avoided at all costs in the advertising world. Turning the lights off at 10 p.m. may well be a way to appease the grandmas of the world, but you are missing out on valuable advertising time. The hours from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. are golden, and can help you capture the drunkard, pervert, and drug addict demographic — a largely untapped goldmine of consumer buying power.

But I think I should move on to what really amounts to an “elephant in the room,” the issue of cartoon spokespeople. I must say that this is the area in which we part ways. I am frankly quite disappointed with the number of products marketed by cartoon characters in China. Simply put, this number is too low. We need to take a page from the book of our neighbor to the east, and expand the cartoon mascot market to literally include everything with some sort of visible surface.

Sadly, China is in such a state that only public utilities, beverages, meat products, toiletries, paper products, cigarettes, books, video games, websites, greeting cards, maternity wear, children, home decor, garden and patio furniture and (last but certainly not least) diabetic supplies feature cartoon-themed packaging.

If there is anything the Japanese market has taught us, it is that cuteness sells — everything. Don’t be discouraged by what we call GT, or “Good Taste.” GT may be appropriate for such extreme circumstances as, say, the marketing of cancer therapy drugs, but I see little need to hold back from selling everything else with the aid of large-eyed, macrocephalic mascots. Our ideal model here is of course that of Hello Kitty.

Perhaps some tips are in order to ensure maximum cuteness. Though doubtless you already know much of this, perhaps the reason for your dearth of cartoon advertisements is that you have never seen cuteness codified.

An important specification to keep in mind is “The Golden Ratio.” This refers to the mathematic ratio of the diameter of an effective mascot’s head (in centimeters) to its eye size and its body length. This proportion should roughly be 3:2:1. Implied here but not explicitly stated is that all three of these regions should be as circular as possible.

Remember as well to create friends for your mascot. Your box of denture glue simply wouldn’t be complete without a whole cast of characters, and even a storyline. Let’s create a hypothetical mascot and call him “No-Teeth.” He is a comically elderly man, surely nearing his end but still genial, with unnecessarily puckered lips and oversized glasses. No-Teeth’s problem is that his dentures keep falling out of his mouth, and various animals keep getting a hold of them.

Luckily, No-Teeth is friends with one of the animals, a boa constrictor snake named Skanky. On every box, Skanky helps No-Teeth find his dentures by fatally wounding and then slowly digesting whatever animal has happened to pick No-Teeth’s teeth that day. This need not be gruesome — simply comically exaggerate the resulting lump in Skanky’s body.

This brings up a related point, and surely one that you well understand, relating to age, gender, and cultural sensitivity. Yesterday, while out shopping, I found a product entitled “HeiRen YaGao,” or “Black people toothpaste.” Its mascot, Darlie, is an African American man wearing a tuxedo and a large top hat, smiling widely to show off his white teeth.

Products such as this let certain members of your constituency know that you haven’t forgotten them. It is the politically correct way to say: “I appreciate your race and its people, and recommend in light of this that you purchase this product.” While surely, you are making great strides in this area, I would recommend that you expand this practice as well.

In closing, you have done a very good job, but you can certainly do better. When it comes to marketing your goods to the greatest possible number of people, let the words of the Great Sage Hello Kitty be your guide: “You can never have too many friends.”

Sincerely,

Nat Hillard