Strangeness in advertising

Hong Kong has some of the most fascinating advertisements in the world. I think this mostly because I live here, and don’t see much other advertisement. However, there are some decidedly weird things going on. One of these is in mannequins. One street at which I enjoy eating, has a clothing store whose mannequins wear masks: bunny and cat masks. It is as if the bunny from Donnie Darko decided to be a mannequin for a day. Human mannequin, with a full cat head.

There are also the Forever 21 mannequins that have one facial feature: black lips. They are the kind of cut outs that look like they could be mustaches or stylized kissy-lips. I sometimes see them out of the corner of my eye as I exit the train out of the train and think for just a moment that Forever 21 is trying to do some gender bending, then I look again and reaffirm that it is definitely just stylized lips.

Then there are the mannequins without a head: one place next to a Gourmet grocery has mannequins with simple spikes for faces. They have necks, but extended until they come to a point. It may be worse than the film about the coneheads.

But this is excluding actual advertisements. There are adds with over the top angel costumes, with men in suits covered in mud, and John Travolta advertising a watch. One of my personal favorites from the MTR:I enjoy these campaigns, but I am not sure how much it encourages me to actually go into the shops, and I probably won’t start worrying about having prostate cancer.