Taiwanese TV Advertisements

I've always found Taiwanese TV advertising very fascinating. In any given 5 minutes on TV, you could hear up to 5 different languages: Mandarin, Taiwanese, English, Japanese, and Korean. Such diversity doesn't seem as rampant in other countries. My theory is that Taiwan welcomes diversity so much that having advertisements in so many languages has become the norm.

These companies seem to fall into 2 camps of thinking. Either they use the existing commercials that they used in the US or they create a custom advertisement for the Taiwanese market. Those that use the existing commercials usually have Chinese print translation as the tagline. Very rarely do they dub into Mandarin. Somehow, I think these commercials lose their effectiveness. What it says to me is that the company doesn't regard Taiwan as an important enough market to create a new commercial just for the Taiwanese market. These commercials really annoy me because I don't feel like they are respecting the different cultures that they are marketing to. Apple last year had I-Pod commercials purely in English with no translation. That says to me: "I'm so cool that I don't really need your business and so I'm going to make a commercial that you don't understand." It's really arrogrant and annoying.

The other companies rework their advertisement for the Taiwanese audience. I think McDonalds is really successful in that aspect. They managed to convert the "I'm lovin' it" campaign and integrate the slogan into the campaign into an acceptable and nomal advertisement. They hired Taiwanese actors, blended the need for bright colors as with traditional Taiwanese commercials and threw in random English words for extra hip-ness. As much as they failed in the US, I think they were successful here.

On a side note, McDonalds here have rice burgers. Instead of the bun, they have 2 rice patties and instead of ground beef, they have strips of sauteed beef. I kinda want to try it, but don't want to be that person that goes to McDonalds when you have plenty of good local cuisine to try.

P.S. Random shout out to Casey! I saw really cute stuffed animals in owl shapes!