Weekly wrapup: Durex's safe sex win and Hyundai's unsafe driving fail

FTW or fail

Each week we select one campaign or piece of work that we agree is 'FTW' (for the win) and one that...isn't.

FTW: Durex Singapore and Malaysia's lovable social media campaign has just the right balance of humour, sweetness and product placement. We also appreciate the absolute absence of a safe-sex lecture. After all, 820,000 views can't be wrong. Kudos to Durex and agency iHub Media Read the entire case study here or just sample our favourite video below.

Fail: This isn't a campaign fail but we include it because the brand allowed the incident play out with a poor reflection on itself. Last week, Chinese swimming star Sun Yang got into a crash....in his Porsche Cayenne...while driving without a license and managed to embarrassed Hyundai, the company for which he has acted as a brand ambassador in China. (Brand Channel has the story.)

No big deal, right? Well, this event, which we wager wouldn't even warrant a yawn in North America or Hong Kong or Singapore, actually generated a measurable social-media reaction. That's interesting enough for what it says about the faith some people apparently put in celebrity endorsements (it's kind of touching, really).

But it's Hyundai's reaction that really elevates the story to "fail" territory. Under attack for "false advertising" (Really?), the brand reportedly issued a defensive statement claiming that its ad featuring the swimmer was never a "driving endorsement" but only an "image endorsement" because—and this is the part the boggles the mind—he wasn't actually driving the car in the ad but pretending to drive it while a flatbed truck pulled it around. Later, a Hyundai spokesperson reportedly claimed that the star's contract with the carmaker had already expired at the time of his accident.

Dear Hyundai: You are not actually on trial. Trying to get off on a technicality only prolong the story through additional news cycles. Next time, make a single, simple statement and then let it go.

Top stories

The most-read items on CampaignAsia.com for the week of 1 through 7 November.

1. UPDATED: Damien Cummings leaves Samsung, 25 marketing jobs affected - 
2. NEW BUSINESS LEAGUE: September update
3. Creative People: The most important resource of all
4. Raymond Tao quits Ogilvy & Mather China after 20 years
5. What if ad concepts could talk smack? 
6. Moleskine writes distinctive success story in Asia
7. ZenithOptimedia wins $50m APAC media account for Clarins
8. IHG tackles falling hotel occupancy with WeChat campaign decoding Chinese dialects
9. Google's Eric Schmidt: Think global, act local? Forget the 'local' part
10. Taobao selects SMG for regional media duties 

Distractions

1. If you haven't seen this Honda ad yet, we won't spoil it for you. After you've watched, you're going to want to see this 'Making of" video.

2. The latest Virgin airplane safety video. An admirable effort, but Betty White for Air New Zealand is still our reigning champion.

3. Are you still dubious about the prospects for 3D printing technology? Watch this CBS News report, in which a kid talks about his cool 3D-printed prosthetic hand, which cost far less than anything the medical establishment has been able to offer even though his family bought a 3D printer in order to make it. Can you say disruption? 

4. One more. We shared it earlier on Facebook, but can't help including this video about agency life again (here's the backstory). 

That's all for now. Join us on Facebook for little bits of oddness all week long. Thanks for reading Campaign Asia-Pacific.