Saw this ad for HSBC by, I presume, JWT …
Yep, that kid really is doing an amazing pencil sketch of the Mona Lisa [whilst standing infront of the real thing, obviously] while his young, beautiful, well-dressed parents look on with a sense of pride.
Oh what a happy family they look.
Perfectly groomed, behaved and financially secure.
I particularly like how they made the kid look a bit ‘street’ by giving him cargo’s and a long sleeved tee under his shirt. Very clever.
Of course the fact it’s all a big pile of convoluted, contrived, fanciful bollocks doesn’t matter because JWT have told HSBC that the entire population of China aspire to this sort of image [even if it’s an image that has been so badly photo shopped that its physical dimensions make no sense whatsoever] and they sit in their homes each night dreaming about the day they too can stand as a family in front of one of the World’s most famous paintings [without any interruption from the Louvre’s staff despite the fact they’ve commandeered the space in front of the very reason most people enter its hallowed halls] and watch as their little Jamie [let’s face it, they wouldn’t take their daughter would they!] gets his crayolas out and pulls off the sort of genius Da Vinci himself would be proud of.
God I hate this fucking shit.
The Chinese population are not ‘stupid’. They are not gullible. They are not [all] living in a time warp bubble just like they don’t [all] aspire to the Western perspective of contrived sophistication.
This is one of the oldest cultures in the World … one that has created, developed and spread many of the skills that we take for granted. Too many marketers and agencies mistake the countries relatively recent consumer spending power for a nation full of naïve and/or ignorant souls which is ironic given this sort of work show it’s actually the client and agency who need to be taught some lessons.
Feel free to vent with vengeance.