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07.Jun.2009 advertising wordplay the Taiwanese way

Filed In: marketing

When I was riding the MRT on saturday in Taipei, I saw this ad:

Ad for Taiwan Yes

 Taiwan Yes is advertising their Vitamin C juice. Bush is saying something like ”no c, no c, when drinking juice it can not only have Vitamin C”. Obama’s answer is “Ou ba ma, Ou ba ma”, which is his name but not with official characters. They switched the “巴” with “八” to make it sound funny, but could also be interpreted as a little rude. 

Then he says “you must not buy juice at random”. “黑白” means random in Taiwanese dialect and plays with the other meaning of the characters “黑” = black and “白” meaning white, referring to the contrast between Obama being black and Bush being white. Additionally the pronounciation of “黑白買“  in Taiwanese dialect sounds somewhat like “ou bei mei”, which is also similar to “Obama”.

So all together it’s an very interesting ad. Does it imply that since you do not choose your president at random, you should’t do the same with your juice? I think more than one interpretation is possible.

2 Comments
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  • David

    That's usually the case with advertisements. People would interpret it differently depending on the circumstance. I think the most possible scenario would be that people who sees it will have no idea what to think of it since the context involves understanding of quite a few sources of information.

  • David

    That's usually the case with advertisements. People would interpret it differently depending on the circumstance. I think the most possible scenario would be that people who sees it will have no idea what to think of it since the context involves understanding of quite a few sources of information.