Hello guys! I am going to meet Resie this afternoon in the National Bookstore and remembered that I am out of Globe prepaid credits. So, I stopped first at the SM”s stall o’ prepaid cards and bought me a fat load of 300. While waiting for my turn to buy one, I saw this ad:

Wow! Look at those people in the upper right corner of the ad! So confident, so go getter-ish! So… corporatey with a side of yuppish. They really look like the people SM needs for their store operations team!

Wait a minute! I haven’t seen any people wearing SM’s uniform who look like them! I know! It’s because they are not Filipinos! Look at them:

I don’t see any traits of a generic Filipino in those images. A blonde? A red head and an african american? I haven’t seen any of them during my times in any SM outlet! Why can’t they post that really looks like someone working in SM? They look like they got these images of people from iStockphoto!

I don’t get SM at all. Why in the world are they using these kinds images for their ads that doesn’t look anything like a working Filipino? Why is it that they have to use images that are not native to our country? Is that how we perceive success? To look like a foreigner and somehow land our faces as stock images? Or is success to us Filipinos is to wear a freaking nurse uniform or wearing a yellow hard hat that oh so many tv ads have used to depict “a successful Filipino”? I don’t get it all.

I hate how media depicts how a Filipino works in the Philippines today. They don’t show someone working in a call center, on a semi-con company, odoks dealer, bangus deboner and having success. Media gurus! Your old way of thinking how to depict success must be changed. Percolate your brain gents.

Just so you know, take a look at this:
Think about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 12:45 am and is filed under Lightened Minds, Rants . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.