- a transport road safety ad - had a four-year-old girl saying it when her father, driving a ute, accidentally splashes her shoes when going through a puddle of water. Still, I guess bad language doesn't pay, because she gets hit by a car a couple of seconds later.
no idle threats in your safety ads! you kill off jaywalkers and foul mouthed kids, huh?
Every year in Japan as an end of year special, and at odd intervals here, there are shows featuring international TV commercials. Some of the european soap commercials are too riske for US TV, and end up "blurred"-- others are just strange to our way of thinking.
I like one of the beer commercials-- OZ i think, a guy sitting at a bar stool, first beer opposite an old hag, with each beer, she gets younger and more voluptious! by time he is bleary eyed, the woman is knockout! it would never play here! the puritans wouldn't object, (truth in advertizing), but breweries would never show any one getting bleary eyed on beer! Our beer commercials look like ads for young health bodies!
there are scads of stories about how us marketer's failed to check out a translation, and wordered why there marketing effort failed...
some ideas just seem so obviously bad.. Xerox changed its corporate logo from a blue san serif XEROX to a big red X(digitized) -- a symbol i associate with "Wrong". and i guess looking at there stock and company performance others agree with me.
And my daughter came home from visiting her aunt in japan, and remarked it was no wonder no one in japan bought american cars. she hadn't seen a single one with the steering wheel on the right. all were equiped as if for the US market! she was a teenager, and she thought it was a dumb way to sell cars.
