Not Ready for Mickey Mao
Athletic shoe commercials in this country have been called many things. But blasphemous? That’s the charge China leveled earlier this month against NBA phenom LeBron James, who recently appeared there in a Nike commercial. The now-banned advertisement showed the 19-year-old star playfully kicking and punching his way through cartoon dragons, a Kung Fu master and other characters dressed in traditional Chinese attire. Pretty tame stuff in the U.S., where bikini-clad mud wrestlers pitch beer and guys with horns push little blue pills.
Nike, though, drew a stern rebuke from China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television, which held that “all advertisements in China should uphold national dignity and interest and respect the motherland’s culture.” The commercial “also goes against the rules that require ads not to contain content that blasphemes national practices and cultures.” Now that’s political correctness.
Nike and James promptly apologized, but stay tuned for more culture clashes as China’s unprecedented blend of communism and capitalism continues to ferment. Earlier this month, regulators banned a foreign-produced computer game for breaking a rule about “content harmful to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The soccer game’s misstep? Referring to Taiwan as a separate country.
China’s economy is heating up dramatically, fueled in large part by rampant consumerism among its 1.3-billion residents. China is the leading market for BMW’s top-of-the-line 760Li luxury sedan, and Giorgio Armani hopes to open dozens of boutiques behind the Great Wall. These things don’t sell themselves, so marketers are flooding the country as well.
Advertising in the U.S. has morphed into mini-dramas and comedies because media-saturated Americans won’t sit still for straight-ahead sales pitches. Nike’s experience suggests that the same evolution already is occurring in China. One can only imagine the repercussions should Mickey Mao Tse-tung one day surface on television to encourage Chinese parents to celebrate National Day by packing the kid off to Hong Kong Disneyland.
To be fair to the bureaucrats, the Chinese media agency maintains that it acted against the Nike ad only after viewers lodged “an indignant response.” But rumors have circulated that a Nike competitor stuffed the regulatory mailbox to get the action-packed commercial banned. If that’s the case, some Chinese people understand more about capitalism -- and democracy -- than they’re letting on.
