Since my brain still doesn't process most Chinese automatically, only if I deliberately look at it, the first thing I noticed was the picture, which I found quite perplexing. I mean, I get why she's not wearing the mask over her mouth -- not much need for breath mints if you keep your mouth covered up! -- but why is she wearing one at all? So far, Taiwan's mask mandate doesn't extend to photos of models in breath mint ads. Is it just to show solidarity with the birdemic agenda? But this sort of letter-of-the-law loophole ("I am wearing a mask; the sign doesn't say I can't wear it as an earring!") is a pretty dodgy show of solidarity. I really don't think the marketers thought this through. They decided they needed a mask in the picture to show they're good people, but they couldn't have the mask obviating the need for the product they're advertising, so they settled on this!
Then I read the actual copy: 清新一錠，罩樣好口氣. This is a pun, taking 照樣好口氣 ("good breath as usual") and replacing the first character with the homophonous 罩 ("mask"). This punning version isn't quite grammatical Chinese, but the literal meaning would be "good breath like a mask" ("And in some face masks is there more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks"). So basically, in the copy as in the photo, they've shoehorned in a mask for no real reason.
I've tried searching the Web for the slogan to see if there was any explanation -- maybe a free pack of face masks if you buy 10 tins of mints or something -- but there's nothing. All I could find was that Mars (the company behind Eclipse) is branding itself in Taiwan as 瑪氏應援口罩族 ("Mars pro-mask generation").
I'm surprised they haven't switched to the much more breath-mint-friendly Standing With Ukraine, but that hasn't really caught on yet in Taiwan. Give it a few months.
4 comments:
Yellow shirt + blue mask = Ukraine sublimal virtue signal
> I'm surprised they haven't switched to the much more breath-mint-friendly Standing With Ukraine, but that hasn't really caught on yet in Taiwan. Give it a few months.
She's doing her part by chewing blue gum and wearing a yellow shirt!
I remember finding it interesting that almost immediately after the birdemic hysteria began, every new advert HAD to include people social distancing and/or wearing a mask, regardless of the context of the ad.
I tend to forget that hypnosis makes suggestion much more effective, but also requires it to happen every now and then to extend the condition. Color scheme/ symbolism reinforcement like this and whatnot. Even when you see it, it can be easy to miss sometimes.
I've seen that video that's going around showing endless examples of the blue-and-yellow color scheme in birdemic-related ads and photos, but I'm on the fence as to whether it means anything. Blue and yellow is an extremely common combination anyway for basic design reasons (rule of tincture), and blue is particularly common in medical/hygiene contexts because it is rare in the biological world and thus looks "clean" (see feminine hygiene ads, which invariably show how well their product absorbs blue liquid). Blue was the dominant color for medical masks and gloves long before the birdemic. If I do a Google image search for "[birdemic] vaccination," close to 100% of the pictures feature the color blue, and it's easy to cherry-pick the (not particularly numerous) ones that have yellow as well.
Or maybe they really were trying to brainwash me into supporting Ukraine as far back as Cub Scouts. Who knows?
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