Tacky or Genius? Chinese Coconut Milk Brand Goes Viral For Gaudy Advertising
For those of you too busy to check in on the RADII website every day, we’ve got you every Tuesday with a summary of all we got on China’s youth culture from the last week. In this edition:
- The ad in question features curvy women in tight-fitting clothes dancing provocatively to promote Coconut Palm’s beverages.
- KnowKnow from Higher Brothers and Feezy from Straight Fire Gang both tied the knot during China’s recent National Day holiday. Their respective ceremonies attracted very different feedback from netizens...
- Chinese customers will soon enjoy their first taste of Ferrari’s high-end fashion, as the Italian sports car manufacturer is joining the ecommerce platform TMall.
- King of Hong Kong comedy Stephen Chow launches Instagram account. The 60-year-old comedian and filmmaker is off to a strong start on ‘The Gram,’ garnering 29,500 likes and 61,100 followers within 12 hours.
Intrigued? Keep scrolling, my friend.
Chinese Coconut Milk Brand Goes Viral (Again) For Tacky Advertising
One of China’s most renowned coconut milk brands, Hainan-based Coconut Palm, is once drawing attention over a tacky campaign on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin.
The livestream occurred during China’s week-long National Day holiday and featured curvy women in tight-fitting clothes dancing provocatively to promote the brand’s coconut beverages.
The campaign quickly went viral on Weibo, with a related hashtag gaining more than 42 million views and sparking a tidal wave of comments.
“How can the CEO not understand? Those who buy Coconut Palm do it because it’s tasty, not because of the advertising!” reads a comment with almost 7,000 likes.
Others have dismissed haters by saying that the campaign wasn’t that provocative: “During the summer, I see many women on the street wearing much less than this.”
Hilda Yu, a Shanghai-based 30-year-old who works in advertising, finds Coconut Palm’s marketing approach interesting rather than offensive.
“It’s clearly geared towards second-and third-tier cities. I am not their target, but I remember drinking [their coconut milk] with my dad whenever we went for dinner,” she tells RADII.
This is not the first time the company has sparked a debate. In 2019, Coconut Palm faced backlash after championing a controversial slogan: “Drinking (Coconut Palm) from childhood to now (从小喝到大),” which can be interpreted as “From small to big by drinking.” To many, it was an apparent reference to the curves of the voluptuous woman featured on the beverage’s packaging, actress Raquel Xu.
New Horror Graphic Novel a Vivid Tale About Otherworldly Family
A joint creation of The New York Times-bestselling novelist Marjorie Liu and Eisner Award-winning illustrator Sana Takeda, The Night Eaters: She Eats The Night is a horror graphic novel about supernatural chaos and family ties in the lives of Chinese American twins.
Published by Abrams ComicArts, the graphic novel dropped on October 11.
She Eats The Night, the first volume of what will become The Night Eaters trilogy, follows twins Milly and Billy, who are struggling restaurateurs. While restoring a run-down house that was the site of a violent murder, they accidentally unleash grotesque horrors, which reveal hidden truths about the twins and their mother, Ipo.
The comic jumps about in both its setting and timeline. Readers will learn more about Ipo’s youth in mid-century Hong Kong and the twins’ life in present-day America — two separate but connected tales distinguished by Takeda’s elaborate art.
She Eats The Night has thus far been compared to Barry Windsor-Smith’s graphic novel Monsters, Kevin Kwan’s novel Crazy Rich Asians, and Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You.
- Sleeping Dogs’ 11-track debut LP offers rock fans a hearty serving of groovy and engaging instrumental goodness.
- The first season of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ has received conflicting reviews from Chinese fans, with an overall score of 6.8/10 on the rating platform Douban.
- Created by seven Chinese American women, ‘Monologues of n Women’ provided a safe space for them to vent about the complications of race and gender.
- ‘38 At The Garden’ examines the phenomenon of Linsanity and the cultural impact of Jeremy Lin 10 years later, against the backdrop of a rise in anti-Asian violence amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Are you a gifted meme maker? Or a storyteller crazy about Chinese youth culture? Take a look below, because we’re currently hiring for the following positions:
Find us on our main site, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, and WeChat (@radiichina)