VO5 Commercial
There's a VO5 shampoo commercial that's been catching my eye lately on tv. It advertises the product by showing two Chinese students in a very communist looking China that "break the mold" by using VO5's hair gel product and then ditching school together hand in hand. The commercial caught my attention because I thought it was a strange concept in the first place and wondered who thought of it and why. I also wondered who they were targeting.
In my opinion the commercial is full of stereotypes and imparts a negative view on the Chinese. This commercial would never make it in China. People would laugh at this and think "do westerners really think this is how we are?" You won't find any trouble seeing Chinese people with styled hair and wearing the latest fashions in China. And I highly doubt kids in school look that way and march up and down the halls like soldiers.
If this commercial is targeting the general market in the U.S., how would people relate to this? Well, if the intent was to grab people's attention, it certainly did for me, but if it is meant to entice people to the product then it failed miserably because whereas I had a neutral point of view before towards the brand, it is now rather negative.
Am I overreacting? What do you all think about this commercial?
I actually don't mind the stereotype that the commercial is portraying. I like the idea of the Chinese being strict, disciplined, and hardworking. I guess that fits me now cuz I've already started disciplining baby Valerie by putting her in the corner when she doesn't stop crying! :-O Negative stereotypes, on the other hand, do bother me.
You'll look cool, be happy, and get the girl who also uses VO5. What more can you ask fore?
Hi. I found your site when I went onto Google to see if anyone thought anything weird about this commercial.
Maybe I'm giving hip young people a bit too much credit, but I think they largely associate modern China with kids who are more open-minded -- and with wilder hairstyles -- than their parents and grandparents.
I think this commercial is supposed to be mocking a communist China from an earlier era, when such non-conformity was heavily frowned upon, if not outright crushed. There was a fast-food chain that had a similar commercial back in the late 1980s or early 1990s that made fun of a lack of choices in "Soviet fashion."
And I don't think the commercial is necessarily promoting a stereotype. After all, it is showing that some of the kids, at least "break the mold," so certainly it's not portraying all of China as a bunch of automatons.
The one thing I think is most interesting is that the map in the classroom is not an accurate map of China, but a mirror image of one.