Advertising

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Taiwanese marketing experts love huge posters. Preferably these are placed onto the walls of houses, which, in turn, become a lot more beautiful in this way.

When comparing the scooterist to the lady on the poster, the enormous difference becomes visible to the eye. This clarifies how much posters dominate the view and how obtrusively present

advertising in Taiwan is at times.

Yet, the best effect is reached when you really look at a poster from a short distance. Then, advertising is most inviting...

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Advertising: Orientation towards Western Faces

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As far as advertising is concerned, there is a remarkable orientation towards Western faces in Taiwan:

Western faces indeed stand for progress, general acceptance of the product in question and, last but not least, a desirable world. This is why they are frequently chosen when it is about product marketing.

If only Taiwanese PR agents knew that those are just the criteria which people in the Western world attribute to Asia... . Or is it that the grass is really always greener on the other side of the fence?!

A Question of Humour: You A.S.O Beautiful

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Taiwanese humour is rather limited in scope: Humour is not prevalent in Chinese because the language does not really provide the means to express irony. Yet, Taiwanese people are open to humour as long as it does not exclusively entail their mother tongue, i.e. whenever it refers to the relationship between Chinese and English or to English alone. The latter is true for the case of the shoe company A.S.O whose name stands for the proprietor's initials. This company features advertisements like the following one, which are big-size posters put onto house walls:

Even more than the beautiful ladies does the slogan hit the beholder's eye: "You A.S.O Beautiful", which, of course, means "You Are So beautiful". Isn't this funny? Isn't this creative? Above all as the slogan was not created in an English-speaking environment! This is what potential customers really keep in mind - a successful message, so to speak.

We see, then, that in some cases, Taiwanese people are humorous. They are, however, more open-minded to their own humour than to that imposed by Westerners. What Westerners can learn from this is the following behavioral mode: Whenever Taiwanese peoply try to be humorous, Westerners should just follow them. Westerners should, however, not try to impose their humour upon Taiwanese people because more often than not, this humour will not be understood. If this simple behavioral pattern is respected, communication between Taiwanese people and Westerners will work very nicely.

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