"How to see Asia"

This is an advertisement that I found online and looked offfensive. It is from a traveling company and it invites us to "see asia like asians do", putting the message in a way in which we have to imitate asian eye features in order to read it. I found some pictures online of the reactions of people,most of them did imitate the asian features, and it looks offensive to the asian community and even a little bit humilliating. That is how the streets of Ukraine looked like when the advert was on them.

Many companies use humor as a persuasion technique, and most of them with more success than this one. There is no need to make fun of any community in order to sell something. This company, when trying to make an original advertisement, they ended up being just offensive. Some research has been made to study how intentional humor is used in advertising and is sometimes offensive. In a study, some researchers studied some advertisements that had recieved complaints and coded them. After some statistica analysis they found that intentional humor is present in advertisements that were complaint about. Also, they found that when advertisements offend people, they usually use some kind of humor that includes inherently offensive themes.(Beard, F.K., 2008)


Beard, F.K.(2008).Advertising and Audience Offense: The Role of Intentional Humor.Journal of marketing communications, 14(1), 1.17.