Good to see XL giving the two-pointed fingers up to the terrorist loonies in this defiant piece of advertising:


But advertising in Indonesia is not always this sharp, and sometimes they come up with stuff that is so wide of the mark that the other team would get a throw-in rather than a goal kick. A good example of this being HM Sampoerna’s slogan for its recently launched super slim kretek cigarettes "Sampoerna Avolution":

Begin what Next

Er, you what? You what, you what you what?

Completely baffling even to native English speakers (including those with Philosophy and Linguistics degrees), I can’t imagine what Sampoerna thought the average Indonesian dude was going to make of it: that confusing consumers with indecipherable slogans is a good way to get them to buy the company’s cigarettes, perhaps?

Another really bizarre piece of advertising that I came upon recently was on an absolutely huge billboard in the Tanah Abang district of central Jakarta:


Nope – means nuffin to me - and I don’t think I’m the only one in Indonesia who isn’t freezing his butt off either!

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