Infomercials Chinese Style
Now I’ve heard of it all, but an “invisibility cloak”?? (See details by clicking on article here – and maybe the video will work for you too – not for me in
Nightly every Chinese channel (and especially the English channels) get inundated with what I can only term as mini-informercials. They are about three to five minutes long, but when an advertiser starts a campaign with one of the infomercials, they get repeated every 20 or 30 minutes for days on end. Then suddenly it disappears and another appears. (Maybe we will get the invisible cloak next.)
Now these are shown right within the regular programming of the news or any other feature. And all being three to five minutes long, they often run over into the show. Evidently, the local carrier is pre-empting the regular broadcast to show the commercial, and they don’t care too much if runs over.
But what’s more amazing, is the subject matter. First there is the downtrodden cast of girls that get magically transformed with a facial lotion into beautiful young ladies.
The second is really unbelievable. It plays on the gullible to buy shoes that increase one’s height. Example after example shows boyfriends and other purchasers transformed into a larger companion just by the purchase of a new shoe. Of course, the camera angle changes nicely to make it look like the wearer of the shoes has grown overnight.
The most recent really amazes me. It is for a hair tonic to instantly provide men with new hair. But what gets me is that the main promoter is BALD! I finally figured out he is a famous Chinese actor. It helps explain why he is in the infomercial, but it still seems a little unusual to use a bald guy to advertise a tonic to help men grow hair on their head.
But what really galls me is that almost all these infomercials feature a statement that the item is “from the
Labels: chinese TV, Infomercials, Life in China
posted by A Bryson (formerly) in China @ 5:23 PM
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