Product placement in Asian dramas

I created a photo book on Snapfish today with pictures of my friend’s cat who passed away recently. I thought it’d be nice to have around to remember him by. I’m getting the book sent directly to her address, so I won’t get the chance to see what it looks like. I hope the finished product looks decent – and that she likes it! 🤞

Snapfish makes it really easy to put together a photo book

I watched a few more episodes of Ode to Joy 2, my new Chinese drama. I thought advertising in western shows was bad. Asian dramas take it to a whole new level! Not only do they have the products strategically placed throughout the show, but they also bring the products into the dialogue. It’s insane! Here is a screenshot of one of the scenes in the episode that I watched today. The line she says before the one written on screen in the photo was, “You care the most about your looks, don’t you?” and then hands her this huge SKII box 😂

Product placement in Asian shows couldn’t be any more blatant 😂

And in season one, virtually every technological device in shot was an Apple. A laptop, a mobile phone, a tablet, whatever. It was almost always an Apple. Based on their advertising spend in the first season, they clearly wanted to make a bigger footprint in the Chinese market! 😂

Not in a good mood

I decided to go to IFC today, and buy some cleanser at the SKII store there. The woman who served me asked if I had a bag, and I said no. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, stores don’t readily hand out bags here in HK, and sometimes they even charge you for the privilege of getting one.

Anyway, after I paid, I realised that what the woman was actually asking me was “do I NEED a bag” and not what she did ask: “do I HAVE a bag”. So I asked for one, and she said it would cost fifteen cents. I was like omg fifteen cents, what is that, less than S$0.01?? (It’s actually less than S$0.03.) So even though that’s next to nothing, it meant that I had to break the smallest note that I had on me, which was a HK$20, as I didn’t have any coins. So if I had known that I wasn’t getting a bag right from the start, I would’ve just asked for them to include the additional HK$0.15 onto the cost of the cleanser when they charged it onto my credit card. Sighhh…

Then when I was handed my receipts, apparently the bag was fifty cents, not fifteen. I haven’t been impressed with the level of service at IFC, not just at this store, but in a few other stores too. It doesn’t seem to match the iconic name that the mall has for itself. Maybe it’s because the staff are not very comfortable speaking in English. I have found English to not be at the standard that I would expect in a global city. I have found it much harder navigating my way around HK compared to SG.

And then I made a number of losing trades in the afternoon. The last few weeks has been quite demoralising, actually, so I’m going to take tomorrow off (and perhaps Friday too) and regroup, do some more testing, and come back fresh on Monday.

I tried cheering myself up a bit in the evening by watching an episode of my Korean drama About Time, as it has been a rather frustrating day 😒 It’s getting good! 👍 At least there was one thing that was actually good today 😆