Advertising on the MTR - slight return

It's been a while since I've seen really idiotic advertising in the MTR. Or perhaps I'm inured to it, having walked past countless pictures of pseudo-models advertising breast enlargement cream / slimming pills / scowling lessons in these past few years.

But today as I strolled through the concourse, an ad for Hitachi air conditioners caught my eye.

Challenging, weakened

It was a challenging weekend to get through. My girlfriend was laid low with the sickness she'd had from Thursday night onward, and I was at the clutching-at-the-floor stage of my hangover. So rather than achieve anything epic and salutary on Saturday, we lay about the flat trying to avoid movement. I did read to her from Kolymsky Heights, my favourite deeply-implausible spy thriller, but there wasn't much else worth attempting.

Odd Advertising

There's always an advert for bottled water at Tin Hau MTR. Sometimes there's several: notably, one where a podgy child is weeping because his mother has given him Bonaqua when he really, really wanted Watson's - but usually Hong Kong eschews that sort of combative advertising.

Otherwise, there'd probably be a sign sponsored by Dr Face saying how Professor Body's Patent Weight Loss Programme bloated you up, or all rivals of Happy Wong baked iron filings in their mooncakes.

Marketing for cities

An acquaintance suggests the slogan:

You'd be bonkers to not stop off in Honkers

to encourage more people to have a night in Hong Kong on the way to Australia/London/wherever.  Obviously, this is good because it rhymes, and it suggests mental health issues - the two cornerstones of a successful advertising program.  Can we generalise this?

Adverts on the MTR

One of the tunnels in Causeway Bay station has been redecorated with an advertisement for instant noodles. Not with a poster here or there, but with the whole of each wall covered in a floor to ceiling mock-up of a supermarket, endless shelves of freeze-dried, almost-ready-to-eat instant noodles lined up along them, occasionally punctuated by a cartoon person looking at the munificence with unalloyed joy.

In itself that's no so bad; slightly disorienting, yes, but at least it's bright and colourful, unlike Canon's adverts a month ago, which were all dancers leaping through a pitch black universe: not so wonderful in a subterrean setting.