I’m sure you’ve seen AT&T’s place name mash-up ads. This one greeted me at my neighborhood trolley stop early in the morning today. If you’re wondering what that lump is where Japan should be, I’m fairly certain it’s not a tumor or a wart - I’m pretty sure it’s a volcano. I guess they’re trying for Mt. Fuji, which actually is a dormant volcano, but I don’t think most people in the US know that (it last erupted 300 years ago). So it struck me as a cryptic choice - when I think “Japan,” “volcano” is not an image that comes to mind. It’s a shame because they could have had a lot of fun with other possibilities: Hello Kitty, Shinto shrine gates, sumo wrestlers, sushi, samurai, bullet trains, Astro Boy, cherry blossoms, geishas, and so on. The real problem is that the ad designers boxed themselves in with their choice of bland gray icons, as so much that is iconic about Japan is wonderfully colorful. What makes Mt. Fuji so recognizable is its white capped peak, but that aspect is lost in the ad’s bland grayness.
If he were more widely known outside Asia, I would have picked Doraemon for the ad. Here’s a picture I took of him on the Stanford campus about 6 years ago. When the University’s copy of The Thinker was temporarily removed for minor repairs, some enterprising students put Doraemon in his place.




