From the category archives:

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Guinness; Tapping the androgynous market?

12.22.2009 Guinness
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When I think of the brand Guinness, I think of dark, heavy frothy beer; perfect for a late night drink, perhaps in a semi-modern, upscale bar; usually during a causal business meeting; “business drunk” (which I’m told is similar to “rich drunk” but have yet to verify personally). Now I know that I’m not like you, [...]

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Domesticated Ancient Chinese Warriors.

12.16.2009 Print
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I picked this one up from LRB forums. It’s  campaign for YangHe, a famous alcoholic spirit in China.
What’s interesting? Looking online many non-Chinese think this campaign is great; but to a local Chinese it looks totally ridiculous. The campaign depicts several ancient heroes including Zhang Fei, a warrior general of the Three Kingdoms period (around 200 A.D.) in [...]

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Associating “Volkswagen” with “Pee”.

12.14.2009 Print
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Ah yes; the holy grail of advertising is to somehow link your brand to urine. Wait; that doesn’t sound right…
I’m not sure what the thinking behind this one was; I guess they were able to check the “catch attention” box; but whether they got the “memorable brand message” is something else altogether; cause in this [...]

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Fear & Loathing in Chinese Advertising.

10.21.2009 BWCDF
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Here’s a cute campaign, excellent art direction and visuals tie together a memorable piece, sort of like a knife wrapped in hello kitty pajamas. Pretty universal in message: parents be paranoid; the message is communicated through a typical landscape of childhood dreams, which upon closer inspection reveal dangers such as eating pins, stepping on mines, [...]

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Audi; Copycat Campaign, Awful Tagline.

09.21.2009 Audi
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Audi’s recent campaign is interesting, albeit a semi-copycat of an earlier 2008 VW campaign; it features a mud splattered into traditional Chinese painting on their off-road Q7. So ya ok; we can check the appropriate boxes:
1. There is a car in the ad? Check. 2. There is something off-roadish about the ad? Check. 3. There is something [...]

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DHL; Awesome China Magazine Advertising.

09.21.2009 DHL
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Here’s a cool magazine ad from DHL; simple, clean, and effective. The main communication here is you can “instantly” send a package from China to Japan. Unfortunately the imagery that represents China is pretty similar to the imagery that symbolizes Japan, so at first look, it seems like the two recipients could be down the [...]

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Mengniu; Celebrating adolescent superficiality.

09.02.2009 Mengniu
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I picked up this from LRB’s forum. These ads for Mengniu (a major China dairy giant) launched in early 2009; the product is fruit yogurt drinks that combine fruits, vegetables, milk and nutrition targeted to Chinese teenagers.
This is a great example of empathizing how Chinese kids really feel, and their uncontrollable desire for simple indulgence. [...]

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Ariel; Food that bites back.

08.25.2009 Ariel
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I picked this one up from LRB’s forums. It’s an Ariel washing detergent campaign that looks visually striking, which is great; but whether it pushes sales at point of purchase is another thing. It’s easy to get lost in the creative – it really jumps out at you; but I had a hard time remembering [...]

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Adidas; Beautiful ads that say nothing.

08.19.2009 Adidas
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I picked this up from LRB’s forums; this campaign features very beautiful imagery – and a message that’s a bit off from what you’d expect – “everyone has their own reason for running”. What the ad doesn’t really communicate is what the reasons are – rather there are just nice shots of people running.
You really [...]

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Selling scissors the old fashioned way.

08.19.2009 Print
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This is a pretty cool campaign for scissors; replacing the widely recognized (in China at least) art of paper cutting, with “iron” cutting, the ad hits on Chinese traditional values, while also stating quite clearly that the scissors sold are sharp, tough, and can cut accurately.
Now whether or not you can actually cut images out [...]

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TianTian; Fart jokes + Air Freshner; classic Chinese humor?

08.17.2009 Print
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Here’s a pretty gross ad. At first I thought it was kinda funny (which it still is), but then I thought, “Well shouldn’t it also take all surround odors out of the air, rather than contain the one shooting at your face?”. But then this is sort of like dissecting a “knock knock” joke, ie: [...]

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Volkswagen; Zodiac Beetle posters give imagination a good workout.

08.11.2009 Print
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Here’s something interesting from the LRB forums: Volkswagen hired renown creative designer Li Ming Ming (李明明) to design posters for the Beetle. Based on the 12 animals from the Chinese Zodiac, Li created an engaging series of ads – though they do seem to miss a key element: comprehension.
To further the mystery, the Chinese characters used on [...]

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To make troubles disappear: put face in noodle bowl.

07.31.2009 Print
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Jalen recently posted an interesting entry in LRB’s Forum; it shows a series of pretty crazy/shocking images of Chinese culture in “comic book” art fashion – it empathizes with white collar workers, little princesses (spoiled daughters), menial workers, “Mah Jong” women, and internet junkies.
It’s a funny campaign and gives light insight into the minds of [...]

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Sunlife; Strength avoids danger?

07.28.2009 Print
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This recent campaign by Sunlife, created by JWT Guangzhou, is a bit of a puzzler. It won the bronze at Cannes, and at first glance it’s a bit difficult to figure out why. The first impression I had when looking at the child avoiding danger, along with the name “Sunlife”, made me think of an [...]

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LiNing; Basketball Kungfu Demon Killer.

06.22.2009 LiNing

As seems the trend in China’s youth marketing; messages tend to focus on super-fantasy elements (check out a full article on this here).
So are these ads done well? I would say yes, when we consider our target audience: teenage Chinese boys. Basketball/hiphop is popular the world over, and mixing pop culture with ancient warfare [...]

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DHL.. I mean Jie Yun; express déjà vu.

06.17.2009 Jie Yun

Jie Yun’s latest print ads – I guess they get the point across, but it all seems like something we’ve seen before. I guess having the Jie Yun Logo a pretty close straight knockoff of DHL’s logo doesn’t help the overall “déjà vu” of these China ads.

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Metersbonwe; Bringing a broadsword to the apocalypse.

06.12.2009 Metersbonwe

Never bring a sword to a helicopter fight.
Nothing sells in Asia like mixing World of Warcraft with a Transformers inspired apocalypse… so it would seem. At first glance I thought to myself: “what in the world is this steaming pile of shi- oh wait, consider the target audience”.
Yes, always the caveat in any discussion about [...]

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Guangzhou I/E Fair; I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a banana today.

06.05.2009 GZ I/E Fair

Sometimes it really pays to be a monkey.
This series of ads is for the 104th Guangzhou Import/Export commodities fair. Very cute campaign drives home the idea that no matter what you’re looking for, you’ll certainly find bananas at the fair.

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SG Auto; So powerful, its print ad can pickup an entire newspaper column.

06.04.2009 Print

Excellent example of print advertising; upon closer inspection we see the pickup “picking up” a newspaper column. Eye catching, and very witty.
On a side note, if you click the “read more” link and then click to enlarge the pic, notice the article on some Japanese technology on the left page, upper middle… wtf is that? 

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Just how fun is advertising in China? A university student attempts to explain.

04.20.2009 Print

The following ads are from a student named Wang LiPing studying advertising in China. Each ad focuses on some negative facet of the advertising industry, along with the tagline, “working in advertising is so much fun”.

“Only by constantly pushing yourself can you reach a higher level”.

Targets of Wang’s campaign are university students who are entering [...]

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Chinese netizens express mixed responses to seeing Mao Tze-Tung’s image used in condom advertisement.

04.15.2009 China Modern Culture
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If seeing this advertisement alone, it will take me some time to find out that is Mao Tze-Tung.

Recently, huangqiu.com (a website belongs to Global Times) reported a German condom advertiser used Mao Tze-Tung’s image on their product advertisement, which was also produced by a world renowned advertising agency, Grey Worldwide. This “brave creativity” raised lots [...]

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Construction cranes in the bamboo forest; Balancing nature and urbanization in China PSA Advertising.

04.13.2009 China EPF
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Great PSA ad campaign focuses on China’s preference  for urbanization over environment. This style of Chinese landscape painting is very traditional, and can be seen pretty much anywhere in China.
By mixing elements of urbanization (ie: construction towers, etc) the message twists from the “seen that painting before” to “whoa, wait a sec”; the implication of [...]

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