Olympics! Olympics! Olympics!

Let’s take a look at that hot new television commercial everyone’s talking about.

First, a bit of background. One fairly common format for Chinese TV commercials is the three-peat: a company will buy a short ad spot—say, fifteen seconds—and then run an even shorter ad three times. At its simplest, a company can simply put up a still of its logo and repeat its name and slogan three-times in a loud voice-over. This sort of ad may not win any design prizes, but it’s (a) cheaper to produce than a long spot, and (b) has the effect of tattooing the company slogan onto each viewer’s brain.

It was in 1994 that Hengyuanxiang (恒源祥), a clothing brand founded in 1927, pioneered this format in a prime-time ad spot on CCTV-1. Its slogan, 恒源祥, 羊羊羊, was catchy and identified the brand with wool clothing.

But what if you’re given more than just fifteen seconds of air time? Once again, Hengyuanxiang had a stroke of brilliance. Check out this 1-minute spot that ran on Dragon TV this week (the first few seconds are the end of the previous ad):

Did the station get caught in some sort of broadcast loop? No, that really was the line “Heng…yuan…xiang, Official Sponsor of the Beijing Olympic Games” (恒-源-祥, 北京奥运会赞助商) repeated twelve times, one for each animal of the Chinese Zodiac.

Aside from disbelief, the immediate reaction of many online BBS commenters was that Hengyuanxiang had undermined its credibility. It was compared to brands like Naobaijin and Huangjin Dadang, whose grating commercials play incessantly on local TV stations. But those ads still manage to move product, albeit quacky vitamin tonics.

Does Hengyuanxiang really believe that there’s no such thing as bad publicity? Or is this simply the best that the company could afford after spending US$20 million sponsor the Olympics (a decision that was controversial even within the company, according to an article in Business Watch Magazine last year)? Chongqing Economic Times estimates the company spent between 9,000 and 52,800 each time the ad was broadcast (the ad rep that the CET reporter talked to suggested a “soft ad” as a more economical alternative to a one-minute straight-up commercial).

Chen Zhongwei, vice-president of the Hengyuanxiang Group and head of its Olympics projects, says that so long as people remember the brand, he’s fine with all the criticism. And according to the Mirror, the company will hold a conference in Beijing on Sunday to announce its Olympics marketing strategy.