Posted By Damjan DeNoble
I came across this (a blog which is growing on me by the day) on (a great “best of” China blog story aggregator site) that highlights 10 of the most annoying and misleading commercials that aired on Chinese television in the past year. You can check it out yourself but I thought I would post two that I thought took the cake from a healthcare standpoint. The brazen lying in the commercials is quite suprising because China has pretty stringent advertising laws for health products. I need to look further into this. But for now, just enjoy the videos. The words in quotes are from China Hush. I have added my brief thoughts below each of the two videos.
“Gift to the elders, Gold wine (liquor) (黄金酒)!” this product is really hard liquor advertised as nutritional supplement. Two old men’s fake performance spoke nothing but lies. The claim was liquor containing “tortoiseshell” elements which supposedly can prevent Alzheimer’s disease. But in fact, this kind of product, “you are not going to die by drinking it and must drink long-term to see results”, is just bunch of BS.
Great, just what China needs, more drunk old men playing cards. The best part is that it plays out like a drunks dream, like that really famous dinner seen from the Simpsons where Homer is convinced that he is the life of the party while in reality he is ruining the good time for everybody.
The following is the most well-known, most mentally retarded and most idiotic commercial in China. Do not dare to say it’s non-repeatable, but it is certainly unprecedented. Yes it’s Naobaijin (脑白金), the epitome of false advertising of China. Naobaijing is another health product targeted to elders claimed to have 50 million users in the U.S.; was selling for 50 dollars per pill in California; elders who took Naobaijin on average lived till 110; Just before passing away, they were agile, can have sex like 30 year old men and women; Someone had a child when he was 100 all because of Naobaijing; There were over 7000 papers in the academic community out of 8000 which fully recommending Naobaijin. All of these allegations were later proved to be fabricated.
It’s a shame that so much of the academic community got involved in this charlatan advertising campaign. This further illustrates why people should be careful when listening to die hard believers in traditional Chinese medicines. They are good for certain things, but they are not magical cures from another era. They certainly won’t let you live until you are 110, let alone allow you to have sex (assuming that they made you stronger, to have sex past 100 they would also have to make you deaf and blind). The scary thing is – this medicine made enough money to fund national commercials and over 8000 academic studies!
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