As the recent Fiat car ad, starring Richard Gere, continues to raise havoc, the ad continues to run. However, the Italian car company did apologize to China for raising any controversy and will refrain from running the ads in China.
Meanwhile, dreamy Richard is now deranged Richard in China after criticizing Beijing’s history and conflict around human rights involving Tibet. One more company to add to an increasing list of apology-owers-to-China.
“I’m sorry China.” Sincerely,
2 responses so far ↓
1 Mark C // Jul 2, 2008 at 9:42 am
If one looks carefully at Chinese history, then one should add the UK, the USSR, the USA, Mongolia (Genghis Khan), France and The Green Hornet to I’m sorry China list. Ok, Bruce Lee did launch his career with the GH,but still….
2 elo // Jul 7, 2008 at 9:54 am
Fiat may have issued an official apology, but I’m sure they foresaw all of this before the even released the ad (including the apology). Dr. Tantillo (’the marketing doctor’) posted on this last week. The ad was intended for the European market but was of course going to upset the Chinese, and Fiat took this gutsy move of “playing one market’s sensibilities against another’s.”
“Adpublitizing is my term for what happens when an ad becomes an issue and this issue can be written and opined about in the media.”
Full link to Tantillo’s post:
http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2008/06/25/tantillo-on-the-news.aspx
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