Hasbro says Singapore Hasbro ads are fake, even though an "individual approved it". Wait, what?

Play-Doh Matches ad

The Dognpony was on a mission, he wanted to find out if those Hasbro Play-Doh ads were as 'created to wins awards' as they looked, and managed to get a response from Hasbro USA. Faboo! Wayne Charness, SVP of Corporate Communications explains;

In our research we discovered that the campaign was created by a Singapore-based advertising agency, not employed by Hasbro, as a creative awards submission.
We also found out that an individual within Hasbro Singapore made the unfortunate decision to approve a one time use of the ads without going through the proper channels.

I'm confused, a person that works for Hasbro said yes to it, but this doesn't count? Am I reading that right?

The campaign seems to have appeared first at UglyDoggy: A Campaign With an Edge - whose friend in Singapore found it in a mag and thought it was funny; "the whole campaign appeared in one of those small free magazines that you can pick up at the coffee store" - that also sounds like cheap media. Read: what the agency could do in order to ensure they followed award-submitting rules.

And I suppose it is nice that a global brand now says "More importantly as a result, we are putting in place a global policy to help ensure an issue of this nature does not occur again." even though that should have been in place before, and it sounds like what they mean is "we'll only do adaptation from now on". Picture smiling American kids playing with Play-Doh in dubbed ads over in Singapore. We'll be the lucky ones up here in Sweden, as we'll probably gag on the German adaptation ads instead (because we're so alike in culture and all, it doesn't grate every time we see a German ad dubbed, no siree, we love them. Really we do). I hope that's not what they're saying. I hope what they mean is "We'll see to it that the marketing director of Hasbro Singapore has the power to say yes to local creative, as we'll hire a person we trust with our brands."

DognPony (a.k.a @copyboy1 on twitter) interprets it differently. He thinks they mean “No Hasbro employee may give approval to run Hasbro-branded communications by non-roster agencies.” which seems like a rule in place everywhere already, that rule makes sense. Wonder why Hasbro didn't have that rule then. Does anyone know who the Hasbro agency of record is in Singapore?

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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Dabitch's picture

Remember this ad? It was Credited to Y&R 2007. This one doesn't speak to the target market at all, wonder if Y&R has an in-house magazine. ;)

Team: Creative Director: Patrick Low - Copywriter: Mark Fong/Chua Li Ling- Art Director: Alvin Yeo -Photographer: Sebastian Siah

kamari's picture

That play-doh Lion is what they deserve.