How to improve your tourism promotion strategy (Lesson 1)

Here we see the old Malaysia tourist campaign and the newer one. I mentioned these in an earlier post. When entering Malaysia from Thailand as late as the early 1990s, the item on the left greeted you in billboard proportions. I seem to remember this in giant banner form waving over the immigration officers counter, but it may be that it was in a large poster form. The message: "Death awaits you in Malaysia!" or "You'd better hope no junkie slipped a packet of powder into your backpack before crossing the border, because if we find it, we will kill you." The punk aesthetics of the old one were hopelessly out of date by 1992, and the marketing appealed only to masochistic junkies contemplating suicide.
The newer version stresses that Malaysia is truly Asia, not Africa or South America as believed by many non-travellers. This geographical confusion apparently arose from the fact that Malaysia sort of rhymes with Venezuela, and could resemble Malawi or Madagascar if you didn't look carefully at the travel brochure. There is also the possibility of confusion with Melanesia. Having worked for years to associate Malaysia with the right continent, one is curious to see what the second phase of this ad campaign will consist of. They seem to be confident that "Asia" has connotations, not of kamikaze, Kim Jong Ill, Agent Orange, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot, the little Red book, war, despotism, and overpopulation, but rather of peace, harmony, cultural diversity, gentleness, and lovely women. It works for me.
I found the DEATH picture from Stephen Bougerolle. (It's probably not pronounced the way most people would pick.) Steve has a great set of pages of travelogues, although I haven't explored them all yet. I did appreciate the description of Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong, and the Travellers' Hostel there. Thanks, Steve, for allowing me to use the picture. I nicked it without your permission, since the source image is just the Malaysian government's public artifact anyway. I may have a better picture of this somewhere, too, in a box in a basement on another continent. Maybe.
I know I have a picture of a stick figure man shooting another stick figure man in the back with a rifle. The first stick figure man is surprised to be shot in the back without warning, and his arms are jerking up in the air to convey that. That was the international sign language used on a sign in Singapore for "Do NOT Enter!" or "Trespassers will be shot," I suppose. I would have thought that the 3-meter high chain-link fence and coiled razor wire on the top would convey that, but the sign adds another signal for the semiotically challenged.