This morning when surfing CNN.com I ran across this ad for travel to Malaysia:
Truly Asia, eh? The implication there is that there are some “so-called Asia” nations that are actually no more than a bunch of posers. Which nations are the posers, I wonder? Anyone care to speculate?
I also began to wonder: does China have any similar tourism slogans, or is it too busy scaring off the rest of the world to bother? What slogans might China use …
The entrance of Zhongshan Park
Ever since the May holiday, Shanghai’s Zhongshan Park has been housing a big The Mummy Returns promotional activity. It’s like a mini Egypt-themed fair. The main entrance of the park is all Egypted out, and a huge-screen (but low-res) TV has been installed which shows nonstop The Mummy Returns clips, interspersed with advertisements for the mummy fair going on inside the park. Each ticket costs a ridiculous 80 rmb per person.
After you pay, …
Is this common back in the States now, or is this marketing trick being tested here in Asia? You can’t tell from this shot, but that screen at the top right is displaying nonstop Coca-Cola advertising.
The people at Coca-Cola are pretty much universally regarded as marketing geniuses. What, then, were they thinking when they thought this up? Apparently it’s supposed to work something like this:
You’re walking by a Coke machine. You don’t feel like a Coke. But then …
I bought this book a while back solely because of its title: 老外也会喜欢你 (“Foreigners Will Like You Too”). The author was a twenty-something Chinese woman and, judging from the book’s cover (oops), the intended audience was Chinese women. It seemed likely that the laowai referred to in the title were male ones. Like me. This was going to be entertaining, I thought.
I was very wrong. Every time I tried to read the book, it failed completely to hold …
For about half a year now, I’ve been using software called Skype to communicate by voice with friends back home. In the past month or two I’ve even gotten my family into it, and we’ve enjoyed an excellent connection (at least as good as long distance phone calls) many times. The really great part, of course, is that it’s completely free. The network connection uses similar technology to Kazaa, the popular file-sharing (P2P) software.
Jump back to several …
eBay currently has an ad playing on the flatscreen displays of the Shanghai subway system. It shows a series of short Chinese phrases, each followed by a brief illustrative video clip. The phrases are:
These images are followed by the phrase “…
Recently I was cleaning up the China Blog List. Some of its image links had gone dead. I had to replace the Living in China image as well as the Chinese Forums image. At first Roddy couldn’t find the proper size, so I made him a new one:
He returned the favor:
I think I like the one he made better.
P.S. If anyone else wants to e-mail me one, I’ll post it if I like it.…
Ever since he wrote to me, I’ve been in communication with Mark Rowswell (AKA Dashan) via e-mail. Well, this past weekend he came to Shanghai to shoot a few commercials, so we got together for a chat.
As a public figure, he really has to watch his image, and there’s a lot he doesn’t talk about publicly. It was really interesting, then, to meet Mark and hear some of his opinions. We talked about a range of topics, including …
The new Chinese Cheerios packaging promotion is a ripoff and Wang Lihong is probably just a shameless money grubbing pretty boy. You heard it here first! (with pictures)
See if you can guess what the deal is with this pic. Or, just be lazy and see below.
We ran into this guy in the Holiday Inn lobby. He was being interviewed, and he let me take his picture. This is how he advertises. Chuck has the (very short) story in his blog. This particular ad is for a soccer pool.…
John has lived in China for
11.8
years. He is a linguist focused on SLA and tech.
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