The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2014
ANA's 'let's change Japan's image' ad put a comedian in a blond wig and fake nose
ANA's CM had a comedian don a blond wig and fake nose to 'change Japan's image.' Foreign residents called it racist; ANA pulled the ad within days.
All Nippon Airways · 2014-01-18
What happened
On 18 January 2014, ANA began airing a 30-second CM, produced by Dentsu, to promote new international routes from Haneda Airport starting that March. Actor Hidetoshi Nishijima, in ANA uniform, says in English 'let's change the image of Japanese people' — and comedian Bakarizumu appears transformed with a blond wig and a large prosthetic nose.
Complaints poured in from foreign residents of Japan and overseas commentators, who read the wig-and-nose transformation as a caricature of Western features used as a punchline, and criticized ANA for airing what amounted to a racial stereotype on national television.
ANA apologized and pulled the ad from broadcast within days of the complaints, and international media including AFP and outlets covering Japan picked up the story as an example of a major airline misjudging how a 'humor' device would read outside Japan.
Why it happened
- A joke about 'changing an image' that relies on a caricatured foreign face undercuts its own premise — the punchline reproduces exactly the kind of stereotyping the campaign claimed to be moving past.
- What reads as harmless slapstick in one cultural context can read as a racial caricature in another — an airline selling international routes is addressing the audience most likely to object.
- Approval passed through Japan's biggest ad agency and a major airline without anyone flagging the wig-and-nose gag — the review process tested for humor, not for how outsiders would read it.
The lesson
ANA's ad joked about 'changing Japan's image' using a comedian in a blond wig and fake nose. Read as racial caricature, it was pulled within days.
Aftermath
ANA apologized and withdrew the CM; a revised second version of the international-routes campaign, without the transformation gag, aired in its place.
Sources
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