That Dirty Yellow Fellow

Peering behind the cutesy surface of DiGi’s disturbing new mascot
By Chris Chew

The Yellow Man arrived on the scene in December 2006. Conceived by telecommunications company DiGi together with its advertising agency Naga DDB, the mascot is part of a promotional campaign by Malaysia’s second largest telco to promote its nationwide coverage. The chubby chap has been steadily touring the country on numerous roadshows and on-ground appearances, while his yellow mug has been plastered on numerous television spots, accompanied by a reworded version of Petula Clark’s 1962 hit ‘Chariot (I Will Follow Him)’.

And in the past five months, his popularity has been, to say the least, immense. Malaysians have openly warmed up to him. Kids adore him. Grandmas remember him. He pops up at wedding receptions, birthday parties, school assemblies and F1 races. His Friendster account has almost 1,000 friends and 200 testimonials. Heck, the fat bugger even has an album.

Yet beneath the Yellow Man’s stratospheric rise, an eerie vibe has developed. While the mascot’s inventors claim that the Yellow Man is merely a friendlier, cheekier version of the Incredible Hulk, there is something uniquely ogre-ish about this physiologically disproportionate creature. Amidst the winds of buzz and hype, a gentle breeze constantly whispers to us that the sum of his adorable parts might not give the complete picture of a murkier whole.

DISSECTING THE YELLOW CREATURE
The first thing to recognise about the Yellow Man, is that, well, it is not a man. It is not a woman either. The creature’s original name is the Yellow Coverage Fellow, or YCF. The closest it gets to resembling any type of masculine ‘fellow’ is the tiny bulge at its crotch area (which, evidently, could very well be a cup protector to aid the YCF in repelling any crotch-kicking young bullies).

And indeed, this androgyny is most perplexing, not to mention unsettling. While the thought of a mildly effeminate, mostly asexual being strutting around town might normally have triggered mass incidences of protest letter writing and parental petitioning, the YCF’s sexual ambiguity has been cleverly disguised by its hefty midsection, thus making it instantly huggable. It has also adopted a series of jovial dance steps that seem to pay homage to Big Bird. How could anyone be prejudiced against a round, bouncy mound like that?

But ‘cuteness’ carries a definition almost as cryptic as the YCF’s taxonomic designation. And herein lies our suspicions: that the YCF is not even human. The YCF could have been birthed after a drunken tryst between a Tellytubby and some random woman. Or perhaps, it is a byproduct of some mad scientist’s malevolent experiments involving interspecies copulation. Hence, it possesses the oversized hands and torso of a cartoon character, together with all the lumbering qualities that stuffed entities of this ilk are usually associated with. Yet where most walking soft toys have cartoon heads to match their exaggerated bodies, the YCF’s face is… a human face. All eyes and ears and mouth and nose.

This… face. This gory face that supplants the pudgy belly those kids (and perverts) love. This grimacing, yellow-painted face underscores the fact that this half-human is clearly uncomfortable beneath all that latex. Worse still, the patches of white from the eyes and teeth have only been further accentuated by the surrounding yellow face paint, making the fellow look more like a member of some sadistic serial killer collective taken from the pages of A Clockwork Orange. If that’s considered cute, someone might want to start mass producing some Ted Bundy plush toys.

NAUGHTY SIGNALS
If the YCF’s appearance isn’t disconcerting enough, the series of advertisements that have appeared on Malaysian television over the past five months must surely raise cause for concern. Each one is obviously meant to point to the YCF’s unrivalled commitment to its customer, but their subliminal connotations suggest that the creature’s blind obedience is hardly childlike.

The mildest of the lot is the initial launch ad, which started airing in December last year. There, an army of YCFs flood the length and breadth of Malaysia, strutting around with bloated chests and giving each other high fives. All very chummy, all very good.

But things get freakier. An ad called ‘Naughty Naughty’—the title itself suggesting plenty—finds a bunch of YCFs sitting in a DiGi customer service centre. A customer walks in, signs up for a plan, and walks out. Immediately, two YCFs get up, chasing the man and jostling each other to get ahead. One of the YCF butt-pushes the other out of the way, and with utter glee, proceeds to tail the customer, thus fulfilling the sole purpose for which it was created.

Whoa, back up there. Is that the ominous premise: that the YCF takes great pride in being a slave to the customer? Yes, and no. The official term used in press releases has been ‘guardian angel’, but a clumsy, oafish YCF offers about as much protection to its owner as a poodle does to a granny. No, the YCF is a slave, and darn proud of it. Its survival is entirely dependent on the actions of its customer: sign up, and you bring it to life. Cancel your phone line, and the overgrown canary perishes. Plus, you never have to acknowledge its existence—unless it fails to provide you with a connection, in which case you are free to berate it at will.

The subservience has even more sinister undertones in subsequent ads. A cinema ad shows the YCF enjoying the movie, until its master whips out the phone and starts chatting loudly, blatantly ignoring the incessant pleas of his suddenly mortified but powerless YCF to keep the noise down. Another spot has the YCF taking in some fresh jungle air in a rare moment of respite—but the hiatus is instantly punctured by a dialing camper, and the YCF scrambles from its peaceful utopia, arriving at the camper’s side just in time to provide its supreme overlord with uninterrupted connectivity. In other words, the YCF is not just a peon; it is a defenseless peon, eternally subject to the whims and fancies of its demanding master and never able to oppose. It is a prisoner of its own abilities.

Perhaps the most bizarre spots come with three culture-specific ads that demonstrate the great lengths the YCF will go to do its master’s bidding. At times, they are borderline sadomasochistic. In one, the YCF willingly slams itself to the back of a bus that its owner has just left in. In another, a Feng Shui expert identifies a corner of the house as the most prosperous area, right where the YCF is cowering like an abused puppy. In a third, the YCF is privy to a newly married Indian couple’s first night. It cannot leave the room—”I will follow you / Follow you wherever you may go”, remember?—and despite some vain attempts to hide behind a plant, it is destined to be the inactive third party to one long, traumatic, bed-rocking ordeal.

GOOD RECEPTION HERE
For all accounts and purposes then, the fact that the YCF has been so openly embraced as a national icon represents a broadening of the country’s creative acceptability. Mascot-related branding worldwide has certainly evolved from its kid-friendly Mamee Monster and A&W Bear-days to edgier characters in the mould of the ultra-creepy Subservient Chicken, which invaded America in 2004 as part of Burger King’s campaign to promote its new chicken sandwiches, and subsequently became a pop culture phenomenon.

Of course, all the attention being devoted to the YCF has conveniently diverted some away from its behemoth mother, i.e., DiGi. The battle for market share and a larger piece of Malaysia’s 18 million mobile phone subscribers has often resembled something closer to a menial football field scuffle, where its scufflers tug at each other’s RM1,000-boots and limited edition jerseys. For once, the YCF makes all that fighting seem scantly watchable, if only to imagine Celcom’s own representative Afdlin Shauki putting a killer sumo wrestling move on the docile yellow one.

Nevertheless, when you consider that an androgynous, overweight masochist with an unquenchable thirst for hard labour has managed to enter into Malaysia’s collective national consciousness—it certainly deserves an applause or two. For better or worse, the YCF has shown us that ugly can be beautiful, especially if it comes packed with pounds of very pinch-able paunch. Just think twice before you invite it to jumpstart your one-year-old nephew’s birthday party.