Leica’s ad agency denies releasing Tiananmen Square ‘Tank Man’ film without approval
- F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi says it would not risk its reputation with such a move
- Promotional advert for camera maker sparked uproar on Chinese social media for its references to the bloody crackdown in Beijing in 1989
The saga of a Leica promotional video featuring the Tiananmen Square crackdown that landed the company in hot water in China took another turn on Friday, when the ad agency that produced it pushed back against the camera maker’s attempts to distance itself from the ad.
Yet despite Leica’s efforts to disavow the video, F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, the ad company that represents the German firm in Brazil and which produced the film, said on Friday that it was “developed together” with its client’s representatives in Brazil.
F/Nazca “would never [harm] its huge reputation by creating, producing and airing a work without the proper approval of its client”, spokeswoman Carolina Aranha said in an interview on Friday.
The agency was “immensely proud” of the video, which was released earlier this week, and was confident it had “delivered a remarkable piece”, she said.
The company had represented Leica since 2012 and “[developed] content for several different media platforms for the client over this time”, Aranha said.
Leica did not immediately respond to requests for comment on F/Nazca’s statement when contacted outside business hours.
The ad agency’s comments came as the film began to disappear from YouTube and Vimeo, and the accounts of its directors, who work for Stink Sao Paulo, the Brazilian arm of Stink Films. Leica said in an earlier interview it would be taking measures to ensure the film was not shared on its own social media channels.
The video presents several vignettes of photojournalists documenting violence and conflict around the world. A recurring scene features a photographer who captured the famous image of a civilian blocking a column of tanks the day after the Chinese military’s deadly crackdown of protesters in June 1989.
As the photographer’s shutter closes to capture the historic shot of the “Tank Man”, as the still-unidentified person is known, the screen transitions to a dedication to “those who lend their eyes to make us see”, before Leica’s distinctive red logo appears.
Airing just weeks before the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, the video came at a highly sensitive time for Beijing, which routinely quells any mention in China of the events of June 4. But Zhou Fengsuo, who was a student leader at the time of the protests and now lives in the US, said Beijing was unlikely to make any explicit response to the video for fear of drawing attention to the matter.
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But that did not prevent a stern response from some members of the Chinese public. Soon after the commercial was shown online, social media users rushed to pour scorn over the German camera maker, which works with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to develop lenses for the company’s smartphones.
“Has Leica gone insane? It’s free to look for trouble for itself, but does it want to throw Huawei into a hole too?” one user wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service.
Posts including the word “Leica” and its Chinese translation were censored on Weibo on Thursday, but the ban appeared to have been lifted by Friday.
Following the outcry, the company said that it regretted any “misunderstandings or false conclusions that may have been drawn”.
China is one of Leica’s fastest growing markets, with the company planning dozens of new stores on top of its current nine.
