Don’t cly for me, Algentina / The tluth is, I never reft you
Oh Evita I miss you 
From what I’ve read here on the boards, Japanese speakers can’t pronounce either.
And in related news, the Watermelon Growers Assocation of America fired Bernard Dill, their African-American spokesman in several recent advertisements, because he was “Too stereotypical.”
An ad like that described in the OP would probably get past the Advertising Standards Authority here in NZ, but only just. They have a code of ethics about not denigrating people belonging to a culture or race. Depends on whether anyone remembered the old stereotype. That memory is dying out here.
But yeah. I got what the OP was on about almost immediately. Made me go :eek:
What really hurts here is that Coke was probably all excited because they were really going for diversity in their advertising with this campaign, and then someone jumps right to the Isle of Conclusions off the bat.
Personally, I doubt it was even noticed. The juxtaposition of the ethnicity of the model and the unintentional pun (the pronunciational pun as opposed to the definitional/rhyming one) is a total coincidence. “Treat yourself light” is apparently a major new promotional slogan for Diet Coke and I can’t see something like this being done intentionally by a major international company.
As opposed to by, say, Abercrombie & Fitch, right? 
Again, I’m not jumping to conclusions. I’m not ascribing any sinister motives. But considering that I’m not the only one for whom the unfortunate juxtaposition of slogan and model came immediately to mind, I’m surprised this wasn’t flagged and nixed in the development stages. It’s not as if it’s a smashing and witty slogan standing alone, anyhow. “Treat yourself light” doesn’t even make that much sense, even as a play on “treat yourself right.” “Live light,” for example, is a far more euphonious construction, and one to which I would be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt.
But anyway, the title of the OP overstates things. Not appalled. Mildly gobsmacked. shrug But YMMV.
It’s not a stereotype, it’s reality. The japanese language doesn’t make a distinction between R and L. So to their ears both letters sound the same. Our ears can hear only the sounds that they are expecting to hear.
True, but that’s Japanese - not Asians as a whole, and plenty of Japanese people can properly pronounce their Ls and Rs.
Funny, and I thought this OP was just going to be pitting the sheer stupidity of replacing “right” with “light” and calling it an ad campign. Weak rant, but vaguely more justified at least, but I guess I was wrong.
Nobody ever said Graberbootie & Pinch was a smart international retailer.
And I think there’s a serious difference between deliberately selling a t-shirt that trades on an offensive stereotype and a coincidental merging of an innocuous (if vapid) ad slogan and one particular model of the appropriate ethnic background to make that slogan sound like its playing on a linguistic stereotype.
Well, when they run one of Barbara Walters telling us to “Tweet Yourself White . . .”
And of course, if it were a caucasian blonde holding the product and saying “treat yourself light,” I’m sure someone would complain that there weren’t enough Asians being represented in the ads…
Please, Gadarene…I normally like and agree with your posts…please, don’t go over to the ranks of the congenitally offended…
I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t get it until you explained it.
I thought maybe the OP was implying that Asian women don’t need to drink Diet Coke or something …
This is only tangentially related but the only part of Lost in Translation that I enjoyed and wasn’t actively bored by was the call girl scene where Murray’s character is repeatedly told to “lip my stockings” and it takes him around a minute to figure out what she was saying.
More likely there’d be some English language mavens commenting loudly over the increasing incomprehensilibility of modern advertising slogans.
Hmm, could the photo on the floor display have been the same as shown here?
Or was the photograph on the floor display you encountered different?
(Yes, I know it’s a little difficult to assess similarities and differences, given the distance at which the display was photographed, but perhaps you can let us know whether that image in the photograph above meshes with your overall impression of the model’s appearance and posture on the display you saw.)
– Tammi Terrell
However, whatever sound is actually pronounced, the standard transliteration to English tends to represent it as an R: Ryushu, Hirohito, Hiroshima, Subaru, maru, and a host of others.
(Hawaiian had a similar “problem” between Rs and Ls and between Ts and Ks, among others, until the Missionaries were were composing the Hawaaian dictionaries decided to impose specific rules that forced Honoruru to be written and spoken Honolulu and the name Thomas to be written and pronounced Koma.)
It’s not often i can say this about your posts, tomndebb, but i disagree completely. Just because you are aware of the differences doesn’t mean everyone is.
All evidence i have seen of the “/L/ and /R/” stereotype suggests that it is quite frequently used for Asians in general, and used without respect to specific nationality. I’ve seen cases where Chinese were parodied in this manner, and Japanese, and Koreans, and Vietnamese. I don’t think the people who indulge in such stereotypes very often make the distinction, and i think perhaps that you credit their intelligence too much by suggesting that they do.
As for the specific case of the OP’s example, i can certainly see how one might interpret the ad as playing to stereotypes, but nowdays big companies like Coke are so conscious of not projecting any adverse public image that i’m willing to bet that this ad is just an ad for light (i.e., diet) soda.
CHA-CHING!!!
From here, it’s clearly a part in the whole low-carb craze the kids are all talking about
Let’s just hope that the ad for Coke with Lime doesn’t include any British women, lest we offend anyone’s sensibilities.