On December 5 last year, Danwei reported that Toyota apologized to Chinese consumers after publishing an advertisment showing a Toyota four-wheel drive towing a Dongfeng brand truck. Chinese consumers, escpecially the ones that frequent Internet chat rooms, can be very sensitive to advertisements from Japanese companies.
Now it’s the turn of Nippon Paint. Nippon’s ad did not even did not get published in commercial mass media. The work was published in the September 2004 issue of International Advertising, a trade mag for the Chinese ad industry. The magazine features a special report on the creative talents of multinational ad agency Leo Burnett, the company whose Guangzhou office produced the ad.
One of the featured works is the Nippon Paint ad which shows a dragon sliding down a pillar of a traditional Chinese pavilion, which was painted with Nippon paint. The ad is supposed to highlight the smoothness of the product.
This ad caused a big discussion on the Internet. People were offended because the dragon is a symbol of Chinese culture, so it shouldn’t be made to slide down Japanese paint. Even if a Chinese creative team was responsible for the ad.
According to Beijing Morning Post of September 27, Leo Burnett China apologized to the Chinese public for its improper creative.