Category : Blogs

Sub Category : LifeStyle

At around this time last year, Watson's Malaysia came out with a TV commercial to promote their chain of stores. It was during the holy month of Ramadhan (just like now)  and they released the commercial just a couple of weeks leading to the festive month of Syawal. I believe the idea behind the timing of the release of the commercial was to entice the public to shop at their chain of stores. Marketing wise, it was a good move. Unfortunately, the execution of the plan was not well thought out. 
The commercial they produced had a storyline. It was about a young Prince looking for an appropriate Princess to be his bride. All eligible Princesses from neighbouring kingdoms we're invited to the ball - think Cinderella. 
They brought in a number of public figures from actresses, models, TV personalities, etc. to play the roles of the various Princesses. Their marketing team probably thought the commercial would sell better with so many 'well-known' faces thrown in the mix. Anyway, there was one talent who was not a public figure whom they had chosen as the lead character. She had her face painted in total black make up for the commercial. When she arrived at the ball, all the other Princesses atarted acting catty and vicious - think real mean, nasty bitches. They mocked her, laughed at her and called her names. But the girl with the black face held her head up high and ignored the Princesses. When it was her turn to be presented to the Prince, she was a nervous wreck. She half covered her face with her veil as she made her way towards the Prince. Once she was standing in front of him, she slowly removed her veil to uncover her face. The Prince, a superficial and shallow idiot, took one look at the girl's face and quickly told his guards to remove her from his sight. He was disgusted by her very black face. 
The commercial was then cut to a scene where the girl with the black face was crying in the bathroom. She then washed her face, took out a bottle of whitening cream from her purse and applied it to her face. Then she walked out of the bathroom and sashayed in front of the Prince. The Prince took one look at her and began to drool like a dog. He wanted to get to know her and even asked her to be his wife. Sheesh! 
She smiled at him and said, "Don't you recognize me?" The Prince shook his head and said something lame and cheesy like, "If I had seen your face before, I wouldn't have forgotten it. You are beautiful." 
Oh, puh-lese! 
The girl then said to him, "But you have met me before. I was the girl with the black face which had disgusted you."
The Prince was dumbfounded. "But your face.... how...???"
And she smiled and pulled out the whitening cream from her purse. "With this," she said. And.... they lived happily ever after. 
I am freelance Producer and TV commercials are my thing. I will be the first to say that the commercial sucked big time because it was corny and cheesy in so many levels. There was no commercial value in it at all. But what I did not expect was the way the Malaysian public reacted towards the commercial. There was a big uproar about racism. Funny thing is, it wasn't about racism at all. It was about this particular brand of whitening cream that supposedly can make your skin ten times fairer with just one application. That, to me is ridiculous. There is no such cream, no such 'magic'. But because people were being overly emotional and sensitive, they failed to see what Watson's was trying to sell in that commercial. The commercial only lasted on air for two days. It was taken out and banned after that. 
My point is this, people will see what they want to see and they will feel what they want to feel. And when they have so much time in their hands and want to be part of the "noise", they create all kinds of hooha just so they feel "important", convincing themselves that they're actually "contributing" to some "public awareness" shit. Pfft. We know what it's really about.