Soccer

Making Slanty-Eyed Faces For An Ad Campaign About A Tournament In Japan: Not A Good Idea

Later this year, the FIFA Club World Cup will pit some of the world’s finest club football teams, including FC Barcelona, against one another. This tournament will take place in Japan. One of the qualifiers, Brazil’s FC Santos, is trying to drum up fan interest with an ad campaign promoting their participation in the tournament.

Again, this tournament is being held in Japan. Now, if you were thinking of ways to promote your involvement in a tournament taking place in Japan, what’s the one thing you absolutely would not do under any circumstances? Did you answer “make a gesture for a poster that appears to make fun of how Japanese people look, and make the background of the poster the same pattern as the flag of the Japanese military during World War II“? If so…good answer. Alas, this was not FC Santos’ answer. Via HyperVocal:

HyperVocal goes on to note that in the clip you see above, the reporter does not mention that the poster, um, looks pretty racist. (When we showed the same clip to a Spanish-fluent colleague, they made note of the same thing.) Rather, the reporter apparently said that the team is “getting psychologically prepared.” Well…that’s one way to interpret that pose. We have our doubts that’s actually what’s going on – and even if it were, it would still be a bad move. Because seriously…look at that screengrab above. That’s, like, one step above this. Safe to say: FC Santos, next time, you’ll probably want to go with a different marketing strategy.