International advertising variations

The first part of our trip home a few weeks ago was aboard the Daewoo Express, which I think we've mentioned before.  On the Daewoo they show an in-flight movie, but the one time I tried to watch it I wished I hadn't bothered due to the sheer frequency and length of the advert breaks - usually with exactly the same adverts each time.

So this time I wasn't watching, except for when one advert caught my eye.  It was an advert for chicken. K&N's chicken, to be exact.

At home I reckon raw meat isn't that high on the list of advertisers flagship products, and if it did make an appearance, you might expect a beautiful farmyard scene with handsome brown birds pecking away happily under yellow afternoon sunlight, perhaps followed by a close-up of some mouth-watering dish being cooked by some celebrity chef.  Not so here.

Instead, this advert was about 10 minutes long, and comprised an amazingly detailed study of the life of the broiler chicken, from egg to dinner plate.  It had the eggs being picked out.  It had the little chicks hatching.  It had thousands of white chickens scratching about on a dimly lit warehouse floor.  (They may have skipped over the 'this is how we kill them' part...)  It had gargantuan factory production lines with big shiny machines to gut, clean and disassemble chickens.  It had quality control galleries, where lab-coated technicians would, at the touch of a button, dispatch sub-par chickens from the ranks of pristine carcasses to some unknown destination below.  It had yet more shiny machines to shrink-wrap the meat ready for sale.  It even had a short foray into their logistics department, showing palettes being forklifted into gleaming fleets of trucks.

It was fascinating.

And a far cry from the sunny ignorance-of-all-the-nasty-bits we like in our food production.  I think it comes down to a difference in background.  Whereas in the UK, where we assume all our food meets some EU regulations for hygiene (and, if we're lucky, animal welfare), we go for the aesthetics:  the nice looking farmyard and the tasty looking recipe.  Here, the company wants to make sure they show off every last detail of its cleanliness and professionalism (however close that might be to the reality...), and thus how much better their product must be than the cheap dirty animal from down the bazaar.

Their final product/brand name screen sums it up with their slogan:  "Safe and healthy".

Safe?!

Product placement and outrageous claims

A couple of things that stand out when you're shopping or driving around town here are the random product placements and outrageous advertising claims (even more outrageous than those we get at home, that is).

My favourite example so far is on the packaging of a toy car in our local grocer's shop, which says of the slightly bulbous Renault Scenic clone contained within: "It can make magical music and gives out wonderful light and imitates the sound of horses". Yes please.

And here's one from our dining table at the intezam (where we go for our lunches during the week):



















Those are some bold claims for a humble teabag, but it's the last two lines which seal its geniusness in my opinion. I'm tempted to request a reference, just to see which famous scientist/politician/celebrity writes back, and what they have to say to support these wonderful claims.

And one from our fridge:

I'm especially fond of the "get ready to embrace a life full of joy" bit, and the last sentence: "We collect milk daily from thousands of farmers across Pakistan to end your search for the complete all purpose milk with a promise of a life full of life."

A life full of life? I'll take some.

(There is something slightly too-good-to-be-true about this milk though - opened cartons have been known to last 10-11 days without even beginning to smell or taste off... It is UHT I suppose, but still, it's a bit spooky.)

It's also fairly normal practice for the badge on your vehicle not to match its make - Toyota being the high class manufacturer in these parts results in many Bedfords (and Bedfrods, interestingly), Daewoos and Suzukis being proudly emblazoned with the "ovally T" of Toyotaness. Oh, and we saw a suzuki minivan with beautiful BMW hubcaps the other day too.

And finally for today, it's strangely pleasing to note the number of taxis emblazoned with huge "Kenwood" stickers across their back windows. I mean, who doesn't love a nice food processor?

(Okay, I know they make stereos too, but it wasn't the first thing that sprang to mind...)