Making Sense of Leica's "The Hunt" Ad

For a camera company, Leica isn't very good at optics.

Chinese netizens flooded the German camera company's Weibo account with critical comments this week after an ad associated with Leica was released depicting some of the events of the Tiananmen Incident.  The ad shows a western photographer outmaneuvering Chinese officials in a hotel near Tiananmen Square in order to capture the famous "Tankman" photo.  The Chinese government subsequently stepped in and banned posts with the word Leica in Chinese or English.

The debacle made me wonder: is it possible for a brand to tackle Tiananmen, or another highly sensitive topic, and not receive significant backlash from the Chinese public?  Was there a better version of the ad, where Leica was able to both pay homage to the memory of the victims and also avoid a image crisis in China?

It's clear to see why Chinese people may be genuinely upset by the advertisement.  Nationalism is generally on the rise in China, and as the country begins to become a more active player on the world stage it's natural that citizens may feel an urge to defend their government when they feel it's being attacked.  Many commenters also pointed out that Leica partners with Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and that this advertisement could potentially put the Chinese company in a very awkward position.  These factors aren't really in Leica's control, and thus any ad that touches on Tiananmen is, to a certain extent, doomed from the get-go in China.

But were there aspects of the video that Leica could have changed to make it more palatable?  I think the identity of the photographer in the Tiananmen portion of the ad stood out to me as the major potential point of contention that could have been avoided.  Why is the photographer white?  It doesn't seem as though he is based on any real person who was at the event (especially seeing as this photo was, in fact, shot on a Nikon, and not a Leica camera).  Ethnic Chinese journalists were present at and reported on the Incident.  To depict the photographer as white seems tone deaf, and plays into narratives of Westerners as the primary advocates of transparency and freedom in China.  The protests in Tiananmen, of course, were about Chinese citizens standing up for these values themselves, and paying a heavy price.  It may have been better to have the photographer be a native Chinese citizen.  As the ad currently exists, the only Chinese people visible are soldiers and CCP officials.  It does very little work to draw the distinction between China, the nation, and the Chinese government.

Similarly, the fact that this ad is for a German company, and yet focuses in large part on China, could be part of what is causing the heated reaction.  A Chinese person may be open to having a candid conversation about Tiananmen with a fellow citizen, but may react negatively when viewing an ad from a foreign company leveraging the Incident to turn a profit.  I think a defensive reaction is normal, if not "right".

So maybe it's possible for Chinese citizens to both have a nuanced and honest understanding of the Tiananmen Incident, and to also have a gut-level problem with this video, which can come across as condescending.

But, as always with pro-Beijing Internet commentators, other things may factor into their motives.  The Chinese government encourages its younger members to post content generally supportive of the Party and government policy.  The Party also employs a large group of bureaucrats known as the "50 Cent Army" (because the members were alleged to receive 50 cents per post, a theory now debunked) to post similar content when they're not performing their daily duties as officials.  It may well be that some of the backlash to Leica's ad was made by these kinds of commenters.

Thanks to that backlash, Leica has now distanced itself from the ad, saying that it was not officially sanctioned by the company.  It now joins the ranks of many other companies that, having been forced into awkward positions vis-a-vis China because of their perceived political stances (or in some cases, simply for being American).  And, partly thanks to its own lack of foresight and a black-and-white depiction of the Tiananmen Incident, it now serves as just another example of why it may just be easier to go along with Beijing when marketing in China.