Complaints from the Chinese embassy in Moscow forced an advertising agency to scrap a chewing gum commercial playing on Russian television which featured China’s national anthem as backing music.
China’s People’s Daily newspaper said the commercial for chewing gum produced by Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. using the “March of the Volunteers” had “harmed the dignity of China.”
Igor Kirkchi, general director of BBDO, an advertising subsidiary of Omnigroup in Moscow, which designed the advert said it was immediately withdrawn after complaints from the Chinese.
“It was a monstrous misunderstanding,” he said.
“We bought the music and the rights to use it in an ad from an English company owning banks of music tracks intended for commercial purposes. It was impossible to determine that it was the Chinese national anthem by the name of the track.”
I can imagine it now… hmm comrade I feel like chewing gum for some reason, damn those Russians using OUR National Anthem for their ad!
I can imagine its embaressing but how did the art director not realize it was their neighbors national anthem? Hasn’t the person watched the Olympics? Or do they not have any newscasts about major happenings in their neighbors countries? I wouldn’t be able to give you the names of Canada’s or Mexico’s National Anthems, but I’m sure I’d probably recognize it as such (and perhaps a few other nations). I will say it’s probably also the company that supplied the music banks fault, generally music titles have their main title and if they have a sub title (ie. United States National Anthem) it’s there.
Tags: Advertising, Interesting, Irony, Legal, Music, News, Weird
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