Does slogan publicity work?

Since March, a freakishly cheerful cartoon character girl has been beaming down at passing traffic from oversized billboards on Beijing's east side. Her name is Luo Baby and, with a jolly hop, she promotes Chaoyang's latest public service slogan: "Civilized Chaoyang with Magnificent Me".

Images of this latest propaganda incarnation are now ubiquitous in neighborhoods east of Chaoyangmen. At intersections, along sidewalks, and atop residential buildings, Luo Baby's constant smile makes me wonder, "Does this stuff still work any more?" This thought is usually followed by another worthy question, "Couldn't the district government have hired an English proofreader to iron out the syntactical awkwardness?".

The "Civilized Chaoyang with Magnificent Me" campaign appears to have kicked off on March 1, from what I could gather on the district government's information smorgasbord of a homepage. The website doesn't tell me much else about the campaign: what it seeks to accomplish, how long it will last, and why it was necessary to have clumsy bilingual slogans. But, I did find a uselessly entertaining page featuring English translations of Chinese signage, which decodes handy instructions like, "If the alarm beeps after you pay, please go to the counter with purchased books for re-demagnetization."