BenQ goes for the shock ad

BenQ’s ad campaign for its MüsiQ “Magic Bean” dog-tag mp3 player makes use of a rather iconic image:

“Though the world be destroyed, I will still believe in music.”

There’s another poster from the campaign at the BenQ MusiQ Club here and an English-language poster here. The dog-tag player, designed by Ashin of the Taiwanese band Mayday, is being promoted with the slogan “Believe!”

English-language tech sites have been all over this one since Friday. Here’s a comparison of source photos.

UPDATE (9 Dec): BenQ took down its site on Monday, 4 Dec, and on 6 Dec replaced the MusiQ section of its website with this apology:

(in Chinese) Between 29 November and 4 December 2006, BenQ’s China website (http://www.benq.com.cn/musiQ) ran an ad for its MusiQ product. The background photo for this ad caused unnecessary hardship for consumers, and BenQ China apologizes for this.

Design of the MusiQ MP3 player was led by Ashin, lead singer of the popular Asian rock group Mayday. “Put music into a beautiful container,” “oppose war,” and “spread love and peace” were the guiding principles of the design of the MusiQ player and its advertisement. For the problems for consumers caused by the background image in this advertisement, BenQ took down the ad on 4 December and once again extends its deepest apologies! BenQ China will maintain vigilance in the future to avoid similar problems from occurring.

(in English): BenQ regrets the subject matter of an advertisement that ran on a local website in China. We immediately took action to remove it. BenQ apologizes for the feelings this regrettable incident may have caused. We have put a process in place to prevent this type of incident from happening again.