During the second lecture, an advertisement of OMO at a bus stop in Vietnam was mentioned by Rachel Wilson. She said that Vietnamese advertisement too many texts because Vietnamese are influenced strongly by the literary culture. At this point, she made a good judgement but from my personal point of view, there are at least 3 more reasons besides literature.
First, abstract or literature depends on the type of the product. In Vietnam, a product like OMO is usually referred to house wives and they are very busy. Many of them take the responsibility to take care of everything from making money to doing the laundry. So these specific types of product is often as simple as possible.
Second , after the civil war in 1975, the government imprisoned the entire economy by turning Vietnam into a heavy industrial country which depended on the agriculture to survive. As a result, the Pearl of Southeast Asia was turned into a stone. Everything about science, art and media including advertising was shut down or limited. The advertising industry just began to raise again about 15 years ago. That is the reason why Vietnamese advertisements (ads) fall far behind in the globalization era.
Last but not least, the failure of the current out-dated education system plays an important role for this matter. The system restrains people to think out of the box. On the one hand, it does encourage students to think critically and make questions in “paper”. On the other hand, the grading criteria is based strictly on the “official” textbooks. So, which way will a student choose? An old but safe one or a new but risky one? Logically, they have to play safe if they don’t want to waste money and time to retake a class or even the whole course. Years after years, the system produces generations that are lazy to think and make question. And of course, when the majority of audience do not desire to think much, ad with lots of texts is a good option. Even if ad designers can come up with better ideas, they still have to follow customers who only want the audiences know what they are selling easily.
In a nutshell, to develop the advertising industry in Vietnam, many things must be changed. Good things are more and more people pay attention to this issue everyday. I hope that there will be a positive changes for the whole media, not just advertising, in the near future.
Original photo by Rachel Wilson