Often China & Japan Related.
When I took today’s photo, I was partially giddy and partially feeling sorry for the poor guy inside that balloon.
You see, at first I thought that the orange man was just a blow up. But no, there was a guy inside it. I have no idea how he was getting air and I can only imagine it was scorching hot inside there. The giddy feeling came from how ridiculous of a job this is and how much better it is than doing horrible back breaking construction work in China. The pity part was because not only were little kids trying to kick and pull at the balloon outfit but so were random 20 something year olds who happened to be walking by. It isn’t the worst thing that could happen to a person but something about it seems very degrading to me.
So I started thinking about advertising in China. There are girls in weird brand outfits with shiny silver boots, cowboy hats, Oreo cookie uniforms and all sorts of get ups to get your attention. Anything to get you to take a sample of a cookie or the flier they are handing out. It seems so ineffective to me. I never take them and the people who do usually end up tossing them on the street. It seems like, if anything at all, most of the advertising in this country is creating even more litter. So what’s the point?
Then I remembered two things. Very few people have personal computers here. So they still have to rely heavily on paper ads and funny outfits. People love to have their children (and often even their own) photos taken with the guys in silly suits.
And more importantly to my research, there is a huge oversupply of workers in this country. Doing anything, including wearing a big orange balloon with poofy hands, can give work to someone for a day.