Instant noodles and... Mid-Autumn lanterns
(Baonghean) - Today my brother and sister went to a wedding, my nephew and I agreed to eat instant noodles because it was "easy to play, easy to win". While we were eating, the TV showed an advertisement for instant noodles with a Mid-Autumn Festival lantern promotion, Bim poked at the bowl of noodles:
- I have to tell my mom to buy instant noodles for the Mid-Autumn Festival!
I burst out laughing, in the house there were ice creams and computers, milk and video game consoles, even chips and toy models, all of which belonged to Bim. Not letting me make fun of her, the little girl quickly explained: “The Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns are for Bim to play on during the Mid-Autumn Festival, not for being silly, harmful to the eyes, and a waste of time like computers and video game consoles!”. It made sense!
When I was in school, I was also crazy about winning prizes. After school, I ran to the fat lady who sold taffy. Her taffy box had a marble that ran through a “maze”, and for 500 dong, the taffy was shaken once, and if the marble fell into the hole at the end of the maze, the fat lady would grab another piece of taffy. Five out of ten times I could shake the marble down, and at those times I was so busy showing off to my friends that I didn’t even notice the promotional gift that the fat lady was enthusiastically pulling a little too hard.
In fact, big or small, young or old, everyone likes prizes (big as an elephant or small as an ant). To be honest, Bim's father and I sometimes whisper to each other to play the lottery, earn a few tens of dollars to drink beer, or Bim's mother really likes the supermarket's "buy 3 get 1 free" programs. Promotional prizes are probably one of the greatest inventions of businessmen, because it appeals to the psychology of consumers who like to be lucky. In a way, buying and winning prizes is quite similar to gambling, except that there is only winning and not winning, there is no losing because the purchased item still has value. Thus, buying and winning prizes is much safer than gambling, so it is understandable that people like it.
Promotions for customers are also a modern step forward in the economy, demonstrating the advantages of industrial production compared to traditional manual production. Because producing a manual product inherently takes a lot of time and effort, now adding on to the production of promotional products will only lead to... big losses! At this point, perhaps readers have understood why in the past, our grandmothers and mothers did not fall for the advertisements of "buy 3 get 1 free", "buy cake get stomach ache medicine" like we do today, because this form of sales did not exist a few decades ago.
You must be wondering, does my blabbering have anything to do with Bim's Mid-Autumn Festival instant noodles? To be honest, it has nothing to do with it, just like the way sales methods in the past and present are completely different, in general, modernity and tradition are completely different. Even the instant noodle advertisement is very contradictory: what is the connection between instant noodles (a modern food) and Mid-Autumn Festival lanterns (a traditional toy)? The genius of the manufacturer lies in "pairing" modernity and tradition, the common to the point of mundaneness with the quintessence of a festival that only happens once a year. It may sound silly, but it is quite effective, as evidenced by the fact that Bim insisted on buying these noodles, even though he rarely eats instant noodles.
What I want to say here is that integrating traditional values into modern life is completely feasible. In fact, thanks to that, modern values will be elevated, have depth, beyond their inherent use value to become "vessels" to preserve the beauty of the past. How valuable it would be if manufacturers and businesses, instead of offering luxurious gifts (which buyers will have a very hard time winning), promoted products with traditional features that people have forgotten. The value of the finished product may not be high, but the cultural and educational value is much higher. That is also building a civilized brand, in the true sense of "Vietnamese people use Vietnamese products"!
Hai Trieu
