magic sing's "tribute" ad to manny pacquiao - magic sing thought manny will lose the fight!

day after manny pacquaio's amazing win over de la hoya, philippine newspapers were full of ads congratulating manny on his win. i had expected that and i was eagerly reviewing the ads to see how the brands did it.

most of the brands did it very well, except for one.

magic sing is an in-home electornic karaoke machine where songs are saved in computer chips and you control the songs to be played on the tv to sing along to by using the microphone as the control device. its a very convenient machine for karoake afficianados.

but magic sing overdid the convenience part in their tribute ad to pacquaio. in fact it wasn't even convenience, they were downright lazy and it's a real shame the way they honored the country's new hero if that was the intent of this ad.

the good news is it's not a full page ad. most of the tribute ads to pacquaio were large in size with a few full page ads or at least a 3/4 page ad. magic sing took pity on us and just had a 1/4 size for this one. we thank them for that.

first of all, this magic sing ad is a very tacky ad - they had pacquiao hold the magic sing mic in a fighting stance pose!  of all the tribute ads printed on that day, this is the only ad that showed manny holding a product in his hands. all the ads printed on that day only had manny's picture dominating the page and the brand names or pictures of the product discretely placed at the bottom of the ad and in small sizes.

the most disgusting part about this ad is the headline and the subhead. the headline read - "Mabuhay Ka Manny!" (Long live Manny!); and the subhead read "Sa puso namin, lagi kang panalo" (In our hearts, you always win in our hearts).

What the.......???

that subhead threw me off! what exactly did they mean when they said "sa puso namin, lagi kang panalo"? manny actually won the fight. shouldn't they have said something like - "congratulations for winning the fight" or something like "we are proud you won the fight"? all the other tribute ads that appeared on that day had headlines that were triumphant, victorious, proud, happy and celebratory. but in this one, the best that magic sing can do was tell manny he wins in their hearts all the time!

that kind of line you say if manny did not win the fight and you wanted him to still feel good by telling him even though you did not win the fight, in our hearts you are always a winner.

it seems to me magic sing actually THOUGHT MANNY PACQUIAO WILL LOSE THE FIGHT! that is the only plausible explanation for that kind of copy in the subhead.

magic sing must have asked its ad agency to produce a print ad and perhaps to save on production costs, they asked the ad agency to prepare only 1 ad instead of 2 ads.

of course nobody knew if manny will win or lose the fight. and for companies who intended to come up with ads after the fight, the prudent thing to do was to have a camera ready artworks for 2 ads for 2 eventualities - 1 ad that assumes manny will win the fight and a 2nd ad that assumes manny will lose the fight. that way, you have an ad ready for  publication no matter what the outcome of the fight is.

it appears to me magic sing wanted to save on production costs and produced only 1 ad. that ad they had produced must have been based on what the clients in magic sing thought will be the outcome of the fight - manny will lose to de la hoya. practically all boxing experts had predicted the same thing, so i guess the clients in magic sing bought the prediction.

they produced only 1 ad. and too bad for them, manny pacquaio had upset the favored de la hoya. not wanting to miss out on the manny frenzy one day after he won the fight, the clients gave the go signal to print the only ad they had - the one that assumed manny will lose the fight!

maybe they thought it's okay to do that as nobody will notice?!

there is really nothing wrong in thinking pacquaio will lose the fight. some thought of the same thing. what makes this whole thing terribly wrong was publishing  a half ass ad on a day of glory that was intended to pay tribute to a hero. advertising is expensive. we know that. but saving costs in this way is a disaster waitng to happen.

this ad is  a WAWAM! twice over.

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here is the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, day after he won. that is very similar to the tribute ads that were released by many brands on that day - large, dominant picture of manny and triumphant, glorious haedlines. this says "It's Christmas Day". that is the way to pay tribute to the country's hero.