Monday, August 25, 2008

Emobile of Japan commercial deep sixth by CNN

A cellular company in Japan named, "Emobile," traditionally uses a monkey in their television commercials. Apparently a monkey is a cute animal to the people of Japan. As in America if you add a baby or a dog in a commercial, you are guaranteed to maintain the viewers. It seems in Japan the winning recipe for a commercial to keep the viewers is a baby, dog, or a monkey.

In a recent commercial by Emobile they used their monkey in a campaign setting resembling Senator Barack Obama's campaign. This was a double header for the Japanese, because the Japanese like monkeys and they also favor Senator Obama. Until the mental disorder of American liberalism entered. CNN did a report in Japan that the commercial was racist. CNN brought in a group of black Americans in Japan to ask how they saw that commercial. Remember they are Americans and historically in America monkey reference to blacks has been racist. It is with these legitimate sensitivities the black Americans replied to CNN's questions in Japan stating the commercial was racist and insensitive. The commercial got pulled. When the average Japanese was shown the commercial and asked to respond, they liked the commercial and saw nothing wrong with the commercial, as a monkey is cute to them, and they like Senator Obama.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks Tony for posting this, as I live in Tokyo but had never seen this TV commercial. So this was pulled out by such stupid reason before it got to my attention? This is just crazy! I think it's a groundless harassment or a fascism over freedom of expression!

OK let's chill out and analyze this video. The story I see in the picture is that the Emobile uses the loser white dog barking over the monkey winning the support from a big crowd.

In Japan a monkey and a dog together are symbolic to "a company that never agrees with each other - always fighting". As a matter fact, A Softbank (Emobile's rival company) has been using the exact white dog for its commercial and since the dog collected so much of popularity, now they even sell the dog's character goods.

All I see therefore is Emobile's firm resolution and message to beat Softbank, nothing more or less....

So what does it benefit for the human right activists in the first place??? I don't get it at all. Softbank may well have reason to manipulate the activists...