The Product: Some model of Toyota or other.

The Ad: It uses a clear (and quite literal) idea to convey Toyota’s ‘Human Touch’ strapline, featuring a number of salarymen performing the roles of car components.

The Stars: The salarymen, memorable in the same way that androids in films tend to be (Westworld, A.I. etc). They’re also a good example of kimo-kawaii.

Why It’s Top: As the best TV ads do, this one uses a unique idea to convey a message anyone can understand. It’s also quite subversive in the it represents a reversal of the Japanese obsession of replacing humans with automated robots.

The last two Top TV Commercials have focused on products unique to Japan that have been advertised in a memorable way. This time round, I’m going to look at memorable Japanese advertising for a product that isn’t unique to Japan, but is familiar to people all over the world.

The Product: Fanta. Everyone knows the brand name, but as well as the usual orenji (orange) flavour Fanta, this series of ads also introduces the less familiar flavours of gurēpufurūtsu (grapefruit), howaito piichi (white peach), sumomo (plum), toropikaru furūtsu (tropical fruit), suiitii (sweety), gurēpu (grape) and sappari piichi (refreshing peach). For a full list of Fanta flavours sold in Japan, see Wikipedia.

The Ads: This series of 7 ads features a different teacher in the first six. The final one has all the teachers together with the school principle.

The teachers are: Mr Leather, an English (more…)

Following my previous Reblogging Japan post about kids’ beer, here’s a TV ad for the product from YouTube.

The Product: You need to be 20 years old to legally buy alcohol in Japan, but that hasn’t stopped the Sangaria company bringing out kodomo no nomimono (lit:children’s drink), a drink they basically market as beer for kids. Admittedly the product doesn’t contain any alcohol, but the fact that it’s blatantly portrayed as imitation beer means it’s the kind of thing you’d never find in a western country. (more…)

4 Japanese Beer TV Ads Featuring Harrison Ford

After the global success of The Fugitive in 1993, Harrison Ford went on to make a series of beer commercials in Japan the following year. At the time still the biggest thing since sliced bread, he was the perfect frontman for Kirin’s ‘Mr Beer’ campaign, which showed him drinking beer with Japanese people in assorted Japanese settings:

Drinking in a Yakitori-ya

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Anyone who was living in Japan in 2006/2007 will no doubt be familiar with the tarako commercials, which I wrote about in this article. The Kyūpii advertising campaign was one of the most memorable in recent years, and the tarako craze is still going strong. Here’s an inflatable tarako I found in Kyōbashi shōtengai.

While watching Japanese TV I’ve noticed that it’s extremely difficult to distinguish one channel from another. OK, so it’s easy enough to spot public broadcaster NHK’s two channels from their programming (boring!), but the commercial networks all seem the same to me. For one thing, they all offer the same mix of light entertainment programmes (mostly wide shows=variety shows) featuring the same TV stars on every channel. More significantly though, Japanese TV channels rarely feature any previews/trailers of forthcoming programmes, schedules telling you what’s going to be on the channel later that night, or information about which channel you’re watching. (more…)

Earlier in the year I wrote a piece about deodorant in Japan called The Axe Effect. In it I talked about the launch of Axe in Japan and I included some Japanese Axe TV commercials I found on YouTube. Since then, a load more have appeared so I thought I’d include three of the more interesting ones here:

Mobbed By Geisha
A continuation of the earlier viral videos I mentioned in The Axe Effect.

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Space Tarako

To kick off this series here’s a classic TV ad for Kyūpii Tarako Pasta Sauce.

The Product: According to Wikipedia tarako is salted Alaska Pollock roe. I’m not sure, but since the word tara means ‘cod’ in Japanese it may be used to refer to the eggs of a number of different white fish. Whichever fish they come from, tarako are basically red fish-egg sacs that are something akin to the fish version of oviducts (fallopian tubes). Not the most appetising of foods when you think about it! (more…)

The Launch of Axe Deodorant in Japan

For more Axe commercials, see below. Also, three more ads can be found here.

One of the downsides of living in Japan for me has been the unavailability of good deodorant, particularly during the extremely humid summer months when temperatures soar to around 35c. The handful of Japanese deodorants that are available - such as those in Mandom’s Gatsby range, if the word ‘range’ can actually be used for such a limited selection - are a waste of time, being little more than lightly-scented air. Because of this, I’ve had to resort to stocking up on large quantities of deodorant when on overseas trips, something which has in the past resulted in some alarmed looks on the faces of shop clerks when I’ve done this during winter.
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