Apparently, the Doppelganger Effect in Taiwan doesn't stop, and this week, an entirely new TV commercial with a new American expat playing the role of "Steve Jobs" has begun airing on TV screens across Jobs-infatuated Isla Formosa.
Again, no word on whether Apple execs have seen the advert (most likely not) or if they intend to sue for infringment of copyright and lookalike trademarkedness (most probably there is no lawsuit in the pipeline).
This new fake Steve Jobs comes at a sensitive time in Apple's corporate history. While Taiwanese are more than respectful of the ailing tech wizard's health and are certainly cheering for him to make a speedy recovery, the new TV spot - just 15 seconds long - was made before the resignation letter was released.
It was planned at least two months ago when it was shot in a Taipei studio for a local snack company called Vedan Enterprise Corporation in central Taiwan's bustling ''second city'' of Taichung.
The new spot is also giving away a free iPad to those who buy the junk food snack packs and enter a drawing, Kety Chen at Vedan told this gimlet-eyed doppelganger sleuth by phone.
While not as good a lookalike as Mr Jobs as Brook Hall was in that earlier TV spot for a popular tea drink (now off the air in Taiwan, but archived for all eternity on YouTube, with over 200,000 hits and counting), this new fake Apple CEO looks the part if one stretches the imagination across the seas and plants it firmly in Asian terra firma.
And yes, this new snack food advert is making waves in the Chinese-language blogosphere and giving Jobs fans in Taiwan and around the world another viral video to file away in the doppelganger department.
Sadly, it comes at a sad time in Jobs career, and we wish him the best of health from here on out.
Jobs in the 15 sec. commercial , is a Taiwanese part time actress model woman hired to look like
the chairwoman of HTC ......Cher Wang, HTC's co-founder.
Ms. Wang was
recently photographed taking a leisurely gander at Apple's wares, with
her husband Wen-Chi Chen -- who just happens to be CEO of VIA
Technologies -- tagging along as well during a recent Palo Alto
shopping trip.
So this advert is a two-fer: a fake Jobs and a fake Cher Wang. (How
she got the name Cher is beyond me, maybe from Sonny and Cher or just
from the French "cher"....... o mysterious Taiwan, land of the faux
super CEOs....
and wait a minute, the GUY in this ad looks very much the guy in the earlier Tea Drink ad, are you sure that it isn;'t the same dude? his hairline, his cheekbones, everything, it looks the same exact dude. maybe it is. maybe he hires himself out for every Jobs ad in China. Or maybe it IS a different person. Not being there, I cannot tell, but the two vids look awfully the same. no?
http://iservice.libertytimes.com.tw/IService3/newspic.php?pic=http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2012/new/jan/11/images/bigPic/35.jpg
No sooner had Steve Jobs passed away than a savvy Taiwanese computer
firm called Action Electronics puts out a TV ad on Taiwanese
television with a local actor named Ah-Ken
posing as Steve Jobs hawking a new product called "Action Pad." In the
popular commerical, the apparently born-again Jobs, played by Ah-ken
-- ''阿Ken'' -- sporting the Apple CEO's famous black t-shirt and blue
jeans and this time wearing
a white-haired wig with angel wings on his back and a halo
photoshopped in above his head, is selling a new kind of tablet pad,
made in Taiwan and marketed by Action Electronics.