Information Ministry Guidelines On TV Ads Soon.

The Information Ministry will discuss with the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry the guidelines to be adopted for television advertisements to reduce the domination of Pan-Asian faces in television commercials.

Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin said the guidelines, expected to be ready in a few months, would be one way of restraining advertising companies which were fond of using pan-Asian faces instead of Malaysians for their advertisements, either on TV or billboards.

"I realise that many advertisements on TV now, especially on private TV, feature more faces which are not Malaysians, This, to me is downgrading local faces," he told a press conference after a visit to a theme park, The Carnivall, here Friday.

Zainuddin, who is also the Member of Parliament for Merbok, said the matter was also raised by a few local advertising companies which regretted the presence of too many Pan-Asian faces in advertisements. He said a note to that effect was distributed to the Cabinet members at a meeting a few months ago.

He said TV advertisements came under the purview of Finas which is now under the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry.

Zainuddin said the guidelines would also touch on advertisements which did not conform to eastern values and culture and contained sexual innuendoes. "When the guidelines are finalised, all advertisements to be produced will have to conform with the stipulated criteria," he added.

He said RTM already had its own set of rules which did not allow the use of Pan-Asian faces on its advertisements and did not go against Eastern values.

***** Are all these regulations, rules, criteria, guidelines etc etc really necessary? As it is the atmosphere of local TV and ads are stultifying to put it mildly. Enforcing strict rules in an area of creativity tends to choke off good ideas and we may end up with more of the same stale stuff that passes off as 'original' commercials.

The authorities should instead focus on achieving higher standards in the production of commercials and advertising agencies should be persuaded to employ better quality producers instead of attempting to cut costs by dumping third-rate ads on the gullible public. As for 'pan-Asian' faces there is no such thing. Most of the model types in this country are of mixed race parentage so therefore they appear somewhat different and many of them in fact end up looking like Pakistanis on screen . So can we consider a Pakistani as representative of the so-called 'pan-Asian?'

As I understand, the real gripe is that average looking Minah and Ahmad are not given the opportunity to appear on ads. This is a worldwide trend and the public likes to see 'beautiful' people and not your average next door jiran types. It is only commonsense that one can't possibly sell beauty products with a model who does not have at least fairly good looks. Instead of totally banning mixed parentage models, ad agencies should be given incentives to employ more of the tempatan variety. Over time people will be conditioned to and accept our local models. While on the subject the ministry must ensure that all ethnic groups in Malaysia are represented in the ads. At present as in other fields, Indians no matter how good looking or attractive are given short shrift by the racists running our ad agencies.
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