Yesterday's IHT had a story about Maurice Lévy, chief executive of the Publicis Groupe which, along with WPP, Interpublic and Omnicom, is one of the Big Four that own almost every marketing communications agency on the planet. In the article, Lévy discusses his company's strengths:

Because Publicis Groupe is "genuinely European in our genetic code," Lévy said, with the ability to understand other cultures and languages embedded in its DNA, it is better-placed than its rivals in London and New York to thrive in an increasingly complex marketing world where "you have to think and act globally and think and act locally."

The importance of understanding local sensitivities, Lévy said, was illustrated by the difficulty that Nike got itself into in China recently with an ad campaign in which the American basketball star LeBron James fought a kung fu master, women in traditional Chinese outfits and a pair of dragons.

China banned the ad after complaints from viewers.

"If you want to go deep into a country, you have to understand the local nature," he said. "You cannot use a shoehorn."

Publicis Groupe's deep understanding of the local culture was on display earlier this year when Publicis Groupe subsidiary Leo Burnett was forced to apologize to the Chinese public for a Nippon Paint ad that was deemed offensive (on Danwei here).

The same deep understanding was first noted by China's advertising community in December 2003 when Toyota was forced to apologise for an ad that showed a Chinese-made Dongfeng truck being towed by a Toyota (on Danwei here, Chinese sources here and here). The Toyota ad was made by Publicis Groupe subsidiary Saatchi & Saatchi.

You just can't go wrong with that European DNA.

The IHT story is here.

UPDATE: Several readers have written to complain that the comments above are unfair to the agencies involoved. To clarify: Danwei is not in any way blaming any of the agencies for their work but only noting that Maurice Levy's comments are pompous and display a lack of knowledge of China and of the the agencies owned by Publicis Groupe.