What surprised me at the awards was a piece of work which won the Statue prize.
Not that this particular piece of work was truly outstanding or anything like that.
I am referring to the Foods Print Category Statue winner work for Nabisco by Megacom in Beijing.
Firstly, I was surprised to see an English-language work submitted by an agency based in China.
As we all know, Chinese is the language which is most widely spoken in the country, and all mass media is in Chinese. There are only selected magazines or media, which target expatriates in English, and this is a very niche market.
Unless the advertising agency has a particularly good reason to submit a poster in English for the Chinese mass market, it is unlikely that copy will be generated in English.
I understand that translating the headline in question would not work for the creative as it would have no meaning in Chinese.
The English headline actually mirrors the 'Got Milk?' campaign created by Bozell Worldwide.
The 'Got Milk' campaign is renowned in the US and it is relevant for that market. But has anyone seen that campaign running in Asian countries, including mainland China, where English obviously isn't the language spoken by China's one billion plus nationals?
I think it would be safe to say that the majority of the people familiar with that ad in China are in the ad industry.
And there's an even more shocking discovery when you turn to page 419 of One Show Volume 19 (Year 1997) for the awards. You'll see an identical ad, with a similar headline and visual that won a Merit under Public Service.
Great minds think alike? Maybe.
But it will need an even greater mind to understand why an English poster was used to create an ad targeted at the average person in China.
Whoever you are, and whatever you want to get off your chest, send your rants to rant@media.com.hk and we'll print them anonymously.
