Government plans to double number of tourists

re: Taiwan’s international tourism adverts

Did anyone see the recent fullpage advert in TIME magazine, Asia edition, featuring TAIWAN? Yes, The Powers that Be finally put a nice ad in a huge intl magazine, but the ad sucks. First of all, it is titled “Taiwan, beyond your expectation.”

Should that be plural EXPECTATIONS with an S?

And secondly, the copy below the headline sounds like freshman English in an ESL school, not very good ad copy at all.

But worst of all, the ad is placed on its side, since it is a horisontal ad, so they placed it on its side, which means readers have to turn the magazine on its side to read it. that loses half the audience right there?

Why didn’t they follow the good examples of Malaysia and Thailand and do that advert right?

Comments? Maybe somebody here can post a pic of the ad. Not bad photos, but scary. Paointed ghost month dancers, scary! Who would want to visit a country like this,in that ad?

Question: who made that ad, who paid for it, how much cost, and who wrote the kopy? SHITE!

Probably the GIO. Why are you surprised?

Actually, probably not.

Here’s roughly the procedure for a lot of Taiwan’s ad campaigns.
[ol][li]Somebody somewhere in the gummit decides on the need for an English-language ad campaign. Various wheels are set in motion. [/li]
[li]An inept ad agency is given a lot of time and a shitload of money to produce the material. [/li]
[li]After the material is finished, various government officials look it over and sit on it. [/li]
[li](Optional. These steps don’t happen at least as often as they do.)
[list=a][]Approximately 10 minutes before the expensive English-language ad is sent off to run in extremely expensive space in wide-circulation international magazines aimed at Westerners, someone might happen to consider, “Hey, we have Westernerns working here. I wonder what they think?”[/li]
[li]The foreign copy editors say, more or less politely, “What you have here is basically crap. If you run it this way, not only will it fail to bring tourists, it will embarrass Taiwan. We can try to fix it, but it will take some time.”[/li]
[li]The copy editors are told, “That’s good. Could you have it for us in five minutes?”[/li]
[li]The copy editors utter various remarks about good work of this sort taking time and input from lots of people. [/li]
[li]The copy editors are told, “Yes, that’s very true. It’s just that this time is an exception; next time there will be a lot more advance notice.” [/li]
[li]The copy editors wonder if it is possible to become any more cynical than they already are. [/li]
[li]The government official tells the copy editors, “Oh, now you’re down to three minutes.” [/li]
[li]As chucking out the whole thing and starting again from scratch is not an option, the copy editors do the best they can with what they’re given in what little time there is. [/li]
[li]The copy editors who helped prevent the nation from looking even more ridiculous get … a pat on the back, at best. [/li][/ol][/
:m][li]The Chinglish-heavy ad agency that turned out crap gets another lucrative government contract. [/li]
[li]Return to step No. 3. [/li][/list:o]

I think you missed a couple steps (these could be added to 5, after “i”:

j. The ad agency takes the page with corrections, inputs it (incorrectly into the computer) and sends the error-ridden copy straight to the printers.
k. OR, if the ad agency has time, it will make the corrections, send it back to the foreign editor, who corrects it a second time–this time directly in the computer, in which case:
l. The ad agency will take the liberty to un-correct the corrections made by the foreign editor, because (a) they don’t trust the foreign editor’s English or (b) they don’t think s/he “gets it”.
m. The (still incorrect) ad copy is sent to the printers.
:imp:

The online and CNN clips must be arranged by a different government department as some of them are quite good.

Taiwan Tourist Bureau flash intro http://www.tbroc.gov.tw/lan/cht/index/flash_intro.htm

taipeitimes.com/News/feat/ar … 2003098895

seems the taipei times be reading us! following us, that is!

Government plans to double the number of tourists coming to Taiwan.

The planned slogan is “Naruwan, Welcome to Taiwan!” Idiots. Noone here even knows what that means. They’ll get a handful of tourists who’ll try it out and get nothing but blank stares. Or worse yet “Women bu hui shuo Yingwen!”

And of course, a little Taiwan-English for everyone: “Taiwan: Beyond Your Expectation” :unamused:

Ads to be put in TIME magazine:

One interesting quote:

Su Chengtian (蘇成田), the director general of the Tourism Bureau of Ministry of Transportation and Communications (觀光局). said that “Major temples, such as Buddhist Light (佛光山), offer a whole course of Buddhist meditation in English, including reading Buddhist Scripture and kungfu…”
Really? There is kungfu taught at temples in Taiwan? Or is that something just staged for tourists?

Yes, this a much better idea than having a decent airport with decent transport links, or trying not to kill any tourists that try to cross the street, or fixing the spelling so tourists can find their way around, or just simply cleaning the place up so people would WANT to visit. Just need a slogan, here’s another they could consider “Taiwan, we don’t pirate stuff, and we have rule of law”, there, that’s fixed a few negative images and improved the quality of life in Taiwan. Wonder how many tourists go back home saying “Yeah, Taiwan’s a nice place to visit, and deserving of our respect” or “Sod them then, let China nuke them”. They ran a tv program showing how everyone in Taiwan spoke perfect English (including taxi drivers) and how tourists can manage on English alone, must be true then.
WTF is “Narawan” ? I’ve never heard it, which aboriginal language exactly ? they are all different with no relationship between them what so ever, Just like Taiwanese and Chinese. You can’t call someone aboriginal, they would be offended, like if you call some someone Chinese, “No, I’m not Chinese, I’m Taiwanese”, “I’m not Taiwanese, I’m aboriginal”, “I’m not aboriginal, I’m tribe X”, “How dare you accuse me of being a member of Tribe X, they’re barbarians, I’m tribe Y”
Must be yet another language to change to so foreigners can’t communicate, they changed everything from Chinese to Taiwanese during the past 5 years, must be time for another one.

Or to promote Taiwan abroad, how having a Taiwanese colour ? etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2004/ … 564482.htm :unamused:
Completely different from the communist red used in China of course.

forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?t=13881

Maoman, you missed this thread that was started long ago. Why start a new one, you are wasting bandwidth again!

That aside, you echoed formosa’s comments exactly, which shows just how close you and he are in thinking.

I agree, that SLOW GUN is a bust. They wanna make NARUAN the equivalent of Hawaii’s ALOHA. You just can’t do it in a day, and it has to happen naturally. So what do they do? They hold an Internet contest and this NARUWAN wins out over NI HAO MA? Incredible. Stupid. Ni hao mao, much better to the ear!

So in the spirit of things, let’s have our own mini slogan contest. What would YOu suggest for a good Taiwan tourism slogan?

My first entry is this: “Let us turn you on! Taiwan!” (with appropriate pictures of buds growing in Kenting, betel nut girls in revealing costumes, and Japanese porn stars promoting cars at the WTC)

Second entry: “Go on! Taiwan!” (with good tourist shots)

Anything but naruwan. This word will be in a trivia contest for unused words in 5 years, maybe tomorrow. Dimwits.

Any other good tourist slogans out there for Taiwan? Shoot away.

hehehe. beyond your expectation…

no brainer: “huan ying guan ying!” 7-11’s mother company(the southland corp.) in america can have a contest and send the winners on a whirlwind tour of taiwan’s BEST 7-11’s.

“Daiwan: giving you the best function and tourist sensation all I have”


“Taiwan: for true Chinese culture, go somewhere else, we’re not Chinese”

Slogans: Taiwan On! :mrgreen:

I agree - Naruwan - WTF?

Well, they’re trying, but I have to admit that before I came to Taiwan for the first time (1996) the only things it brought to mind were cheap plastic toys and something about tensions with China. When I said I was moving here, a friend said that she actually had to consult an atlas to find out where the heck Taipei was :slight_smile:

“Taiwan: feast yourself on our delicous food”

“Come to Thailand, er, no, make that Taiwan!” (pic of world map)

for starters.

24,000 to fly from japan to taiwan. ouch. hello hawai.

if you had a friend back home, what would you tell him is a “must see” in taiwan? national palce museum? kinda boring as far as museums go, even from a museum lover such as i. taroko? yeah. taipei has nothing that can’t be found outside of most large chinatowns. why would western tourists want to come to taiwan?

What’s wrong with a color? If you’re going to try and build a brand, you must develop a distinction between your products and others. Copying the traditional red of China surely doesn’t do this! The Council of Cultural Affairs has done a excellent job promoting the arts over the last four years, especially the long neglected fields of design and architecture.

The mountains are nice.

I think Naruwan may be a poor romanization of an aboriginal phrase that I don’t really understand “Naluwan.” I’ll ask around amongst some of my aboriginal friends (if I still have them :frowning: :laughing: ) and see what it means.

As far as doubling tourism, I believe that international kidnapping (the only way they’ll double tourism) is a serious offence, I hope they know that.