Great Chinese Names for Great Britain

Visit Britain, the national tourism agency, hoped to attract more Chinese visitors to the UK. The Chinese, however, preferred visiting the US and Europe, both of which outspend Britain and offer more attractions per entry visa. Our insight was that Chinese names were important to this group and helped shape perception. British landmarks either didn’t have Chinese names at all or had meaningless phonetic translations for names. So our idea was to invite the Chinese to coin their own names for British landmarks. In effect, we gave present-day Chinese tourists an opportunity to make history.