WHAT DO YOU DO if rumours spread that your media company is broke and about to be put up for sale? Well, you can get your spokesman to tell Bloomberg that you are “unaware of the reported plan”.
But if you’re Next Media Animation (NMA), Taiwanese purveyors of cartoon news bulletins and part of Hong Kong-listed Next Media Ltd, you can also turn to your in-house talent to deny the rumours in style.
After a Taipei-based publication suggested Next Media chairman Jimmy Lai (right) was about to sell its businesses in Taiwan, sites including Business Insider, The Atlantic, Gizmodo and Time NewsFeed latched onto the report as an opportunity to embed a list of its animators’ funniest videos.
NMA, which publishes its current affairs updates on nma.tvand on YouTube, responded by dismissing the story via one of its characteristically surreal news reports, complete with animated exploration of how the online rumour mill works.
Social media users may recall NMA’s terrifyingly accurate two-minute summary of Ireland’s economic gloom-boom-bust cycle, which uncannily included such details as “down with that sort of thing” placards, Fianna Fáil’s “free cheese” desperation and the “Double Irish” tax avoidance methods deployed by tech multinationals.
Of its more recent output, NMA’s take on Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram – pithily described as a mobile app that “allows hipsters to turn their crappy snaps into decent looking photos” – is also worth a look, if only for the depiction of Kodak executives crying hot tears as laughing Instagram founders float in a bubble above them.
