This morning at work, one of the travel trade press releases caught my eye today. Intrigued, I decided to pursue the story. Nowadays, almost every company is caught on the viral marketing wave (including the company of yours truly and I have been tasked to explore this avenue), and everyone is keen to leverage on the marketing opportunities that social networking sites promise. However, if utilised in the wrong way, it can become a dirty big deal. I am simply bewildered at how the PR agency and the CEO can devise and approve such a distasteful marketing campaign in the first place. You don’t need any marketing guru, or anyone, to tell you that poking fun at locals to advance one’s business is a very big no-no. It may be a case accidental Orientalism, but to me it’s more of cultural insensitivity which some expatriates are guilty of despite the years spent in the host society. As they said, one’s man’s meat is another man’s poison, or in this case, one man’s satire is another man’s insult!
June 20, 2009...1:36 am
viral marketing gone awry
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3 Comments
June 20, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I didn’t click on all the links apart from the last one re: Langham in Mongkok. The uh, expat circle here does refer to Kowloon (which includes Tsimshatsui, Mongkok and all the quaint HK places that we see on Tv and where tourists flock to) as the Dark Side. See, the Dark Side underscores that HK is China, where it is generally true that many locals don’t speak much English (in particular, standards among the young are falling) Anyway, I do agree that the stereotypes of being hassled, chicken foot in porridge are probably funny to expats who are in the know, and was probably devised by an expat, but indeed shows poor taste in advertising to tourists. Aii but racial stereotypes are everywhere… Remember all of Jackie Chan’s Hollywood movies? His mastercard ads? Cringe la.
June 20, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Yeah but the “dirty locals” bit really crosses the line la. We all make fun of the HKies (and they also make fun of us in the SCMP regularly) but no I think they got shower wan la.. haha
June 20, 2009 at 11:55 pm
C’mon, everyone of us is guilty of making fun of locals and everyone else at some point, but i thought for a hotel to come up with such a marketing ploy was way too unwise. But then again, Langham was quick to issue an apology and removed all the ‘offending’ videos – would love to watch them though! :p