I find that this campaign is fairly ineffective, because of the negative portrayals of Jackie Chan that they give in this advertisement. Jackie Chan’s intelligence is insulted when he speaks in broken English, because this could have been fixed in the script for the ad. The producers made Jackie Chan seem as foreign and Asian as possible, and the best way to do this was to generalize him with the entire Asian population. They also generalized Jackie Chan through the comparison to Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid, because they assume that all Asian actors are the same, because they are trained in the martial arts and they have similar accents. The entire advertisement degrades Chinese, it shows that they have a natural superior ability in the martial arts and they have no type of discretion on when to use these skills to protect themselves or to harm others. Jackie goes into this commercial as being friendly with the two dolls, and leaves having beaten one up and going to the party that he invited them to by himself. He initially tells a doll to put some clothes on and then beats him up, and in this message I can find no relation to the product. The product was clothing, such as pants and shirts, but no such reference to the clothes advertised was mentioned until Jackie walked out of the house. The end of the ad had clothes advertised at various prices, but that was only a twentieth of the advertisement. If one were to miss the last ten seconds of the video, one would have no idea what the company was trying to sell. The producers of the commercial literally could have put anything before the last five seconds of the advertisement, and it would have had just as much relation to the product as the Jackie Chan advertisement does. Its these reasons why I believe the ad campaign was negative and ineffective, but I do think there are a few changes that could have been made to make this advertisement much better.
To make this ad better, I would first make it so that Jackie doesn’t talk in broken English. I don’t think that his accent is offensive or demeaning to the Asian population at all, but the fact that Jackie doesn’t form complete sentences is a slap to the face towards his intelligence. Also, I think that the doll should have come back wearing the clothes that Jackie originally told him to buy, not some wrestling costume. It would have made the advertisement more effective by incorporating the product into the storyline, and it would have made it less offensive by not having Jackie fight one of the dolls. If the advertisement were to go this way, it would have put Jackie in a friendly and kind light because he would have given them valuable advice on clothing themselves while making him look friendly by inviting them to a party. The way they presented this product was offensive and ineffective because of the way they displayed Jackie Chan as a stereotypical Asian, and the improvements I suggested would have created for a much more effective and positive ad campaign
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