|
Advertising and Marketing
A bank card for your mistressPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn on Sunday, February 1, 2009 at 5:37 PM
 Huaxia Bank has launched an advertising campaign for a "Pretty Girl Card" (丽人卡) that appears to be targeting ernai, the mistresses of rich men, with posters and flat screen ads in elevators in high end apartments all over Beijing. The ad is reproduced in the image at left (click to enlarge). Below is a rough translation of the copy:
The website of the Pretty Girl Card (link below) looks more like it is aimed at a broader group of women and does not have the little princess tone of the ad translated above. The card itself does have an unusual design feature: the right hand side of it is a wedge shape rather than the straight side of a rectangle. Links and Sources
|
Partner Links
Jobs in China
Recent Comments
Henry on
The Eurasian Face
Caroline W on
Big in China
Michael on
Julia Lovell on translating Lu Xun's complete fiction: "His is an angry, searing vision of China"
Brandon K. on
Clueless academic takes on popular fantasy novels
Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
The latest recommended blogs and new media
 From 2008
Books on China
 The Eurasian Face : Blacksmith Books, a publishing house in Hong Kong, is behind The Eurasian Face, a collection of photographs by Kirsteen Zimmern. Below is an excerpt from the series:
Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ Korean history doesn't fly on Chinese TV screens (2007.09): SARFT puts the kibbosh on Korean historical dramas. + Religion and government in an uneasy mix (2008.03): Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊) article from October, 2007, on government influence on religious practice in Tibet. + David Moser on Mao impersonators (2004.10): I first became aware of this phenomenon in 1992 when I turned on a Beijing TV variety show and was jolted by the sight of "Mao Zedong" and "Zhou Enlai" playing a game of ping pong. They both gave short, rousing speeches, and then were reverently interviewed by the emcee, who thanked them profusely for taking time off from their governmental duties to appear on the show.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky
 (on the mainland)or Feedburner  (blocked in China) Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links) Top Links: Links from the top bar Danwei Jobs: Want ads Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30 |
 |
Chinese media, advertising, and urban life. |
|
tweet
facebook
bookmark
HaoHao
digg
Comments on A bank card for your mistress
This is an almost identical card and campaign as that of a Taiwan bank in the mid 90's. Their's was the rose card.
Out of curiosity, how is ernai written in Chinese?
二奶
Lost in translation. "Li ren" can be a quite general term for ladies, a much broader concept than "pretty girl", despite the word "li". And when I read the ad. in Chinese, it pretty much sounds like an ad. for any other products that are targetted at women. But when you translate it into English, especially with "pretty girl" in it, it does sound a bit different. Maybe the card is indeed targetted at mistresses, but the original name and ad. is quite general, unlike the translation.
I think it's a bit of a longshot to assume it's a card for ernais based on the ad... unless it has any special features that I am not aware of (such as the ability to link it to someone else's bank account and/or manage a capped monthly expense account etc.)
The small print reads: "WARNING: your investment in a mistress may allow you to go up and down, or it may not."
Jim: you mean, it may allow herto go up and down... (or it may not).