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ADVERTISING | MARKETING
A Lockdown Love Story
Heineken
Nope. I don’t get it. It’s a great story. Two people fall in love over zoom chats and texting while the world waits in lockdown paralysis. And the first thing these two do when the lockdown ends? Meet up for a beer. All makes perfect sense…until the ending. The two bump into two hot strangers and immediately ignore the partner they were supposed to meet.
It’s a stupid ending with a slight hint of racism (Asian woman ditches Black man for Asian man). The spot was initially launched in Vietnam. All filmed in Japan, you can see why racism would rear its ugly head. To sell more beer to Japanese men, they couldn’t possibly imagine a Gaijin (外人, [ɡai(d)ʑiɴ]; “outsider”, “alien”) being more attractive and stealing the hearts of their women. Hence the sudden u-turn from the lead actress. And naturally, the foreigner still couldn’t resist another Japanese woman.
The conservative nature of this ad appeals to the Japanese everyman. A love story rich in metaphor. Notice how the Gaijin couldn’t bring himself to say sorry? Typical of the Western culture that blights the Japanese landscape.
Hard pass from me.
