Hard sell of tough old hand

What's the difference in expat life in China over a span of 70 years? Well of course everything, you might say.

But if you listen to Paul French, the Shanghai-based founder and director of Access Asia, an independent provider of market intelligence to companies worldwide, the changes are not all that much.

The writer and market analyst bases this conclusion on his research into one particular man - Carl Crow.

Arriving in Shanghai in 1911, Crow founded the first American-run English-language newspaper, the China Press, in the summer of that same year, before setting up the first China-based Western advertising agency Carl Crow Inc, eight years later. In 1937, he published a collection of essays titled 400 Million Customers which is arguably the best-selling book on China ever.

"Carl was a real Old China Hand," says French, about the man who is the central character of his book Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand - The Life, Times and Adventures of an American in Shanghai, published by Hong Kong University Press. "What Carl achieved in advertising was an authentic form of homegrown art that spoke powerfully to the consumers of his day."