Cheesy Advertisment

Here is a link that includes a clip of a Chinese Olympic sponsor's ad--beware, it may be very annoying.

I caught wind of this story elsewhere earlier, but now the Wall Street Journal has provided more color to it. The clip above is of a low-budget advertisement that seems to have annoyed an awful lot of Chinese. What it does is repeat the name of each animal in the Chinese zodiac thrice followed by the name of the wool-selling Olympic sponsor until all twelve animals are mentioned. Before its further opening up to the world, a lot of advertising in the PRC was of this ilk. As you will read below, it's the "caveman" approach: the objective is to club your brand into the consumers' consciousness. However, modern Chinese consumers have found this particular throwback nauseating given the proliferation of Westernized ads with "high" production values. (I find it charming in a juvenile sort of way, actually.)