The Wider Environment
Chinese woman lands roving foreigner
06/02/2007 16:56:43
Remarkably, China the Mysterious still reigns, in the eyes at least of the ad agency which created the latest Land Rover ad (and presumably in the minds of the Land Rover execs who thought it a good idea):
http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA2126&advertiser=Land%20Rover
What a mish-mash: oriental mystique, macho Westerner, stiff diction and a Chinese soothsayer with playing cards. But it goes to show that the creatives will blithely go anywhere with their 4x4 approach to culturally alien territory....and the whole point is that it's alien. China, so especially alien in the shires.
For what it's worth, linguistically, the Chinese copy at the heart of the ad really doesn't work: a 'stranger' in Mandarin is literally a 'strange person' and so cannot be applied to an inanimate car body, no matter how the copy writing license is stretched. But then we're probably missing the point, the target audience probably think that Freelanders somehow render them sexy, or something. It must be all that surf.