May

26

2008

(8) Comments

Adwatch: If you can read this, will you drink it?

03:20PM by kevinlee

I’ve been seeing this ad on the NYC subways for Oi Ocha, touted as the “original green tea” by Ito En, the largest green tea distributor in Japan (they also make the popular Tea’s Tea brand of bottled unsweetened tea). It’s hard not to notice how Japanese script features prominently in the ad, throwing its foreignness in the face of those who can’t decipher the characters.  It may take a moment to notice the red bubble near the top right with the English text: “If you can read it, chances are you already drink it.” Further down, next to the tea’s English name, is another blurb in red: “Japan’s #1 Green Tea.”

Taking all of these elements together raises questions about this ad’s target audience, cultural subtext, and bottom line effectiveness as advertising.

After all, what is the point of advertising to people who presumably “already drink” your product? My guess as to the real target audience of this ad: health-conscious, culturally sensitive consumers who know all about Japanese green tea and its anti-oxidizing powers, but faced with the growing mass of green teas at the local Whole Foods, might be interested in a tea that can claim to be the most genuine and authentic out there. Hence the “Japan’s #1 Green Tea” at the bottom - it’s not enough to be genuinely Asian, but genuinely popular among Asians - after all, they know their green tea better than anyone.

That’s a lot of sophisticated consumer logic to cram into a subway ad. It’s up to Ito En to tell us how effective this ad strategy is for their tea peddling, but what’s an Asian American to make of it? How should we feel when our culture is so prominently displayed as “otherness,” in a way that might stoke cultural pride, even elitism?

Still, the Oi Ocha ad is tame compared to this doozy, which was found in the latest issue of Planet Magazine:

I found this pretty atrocious at first in its tired but still offensive use of dragon lady imagery. I’m also not sure what a white dude getting his neck sliced has to do with the ad’s “Discover the Tiger” theme (underscored by the Chinese text on the right that reads deng zhe qiao: “Await Discovery” according to my remedial Chinese skills - not that anyone intended to read this ad would care). Is this meant to be a white masochistic Orientalist fantasy?  Or perhaps, just perhaps, it could be a subversive call to all the Asian sisters to discover their Tiger, grab the nearest straight razor and go Sweeney Todd on The Man?

saofeng said on 05/26/08 04:32PM

steve said on 05/26/08 04:41PM

Miss.Kang said on 05/26/08 04:58PM

Destiny said on 05/26/08 05:43PM

soutsada7 said on 05/26/08 05:57PM

Hiro said on 05/26/08 07:52PM

Hoc said on 05/26/08 09:29PM

PLam said on 05/28/08 09:17AM