Chokkan Band from Taito out and on the town

Even before the iPhone, NTT DoCoMo was making phones with accelerometers that let you play chokkan (motion) games, send an email with a flick of your wrist, and use the phone physically to interact with applications. Recently, much has been made of using the onboard cameras to accomplish the same thing, and there are more and more cool applications coming out.

For those of us without Guitar Hero we can now use our mobile phones to play Chokkan Band courtesy of Taito.

The sensor on the phone detects movement, allowing anyone to use the phone as a guitar, violin, drums, or other instrument. Synched up together, you can create an entire band in perfect harmony, jamming out to songs downloaded through the service. The game is free, but songs come at a small fee.

Below is a video from the new online campaign for Chokkan Band starring their new…err…spokesmodel rocking out around Tokyo in public baths, at the laundry, in Shibuya. You know, normal places where you would play in a rock band with your mobile phone.

Check out more at Chokkanband

Tags: Campaigns, Mobile
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends, Technology & Gadget Trends
Other categories: Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Chocotatsu campaign from Tirol

With all of the 30th anniversary campaigns lately (space invaders, slime, to name a few), it would take a lot to catch our eye. Tirol must have been thinking just that when it launched its “Chocotatsu” campaign as a lead up to the 30th birthday of it’s iconic chocolate square next year. “Chocotatsu” merges the words “choco” (the common word for chocolate in Japan) and “kotatsu,” the traditional heated table that most Japanese households pull out for winter. True to its name, it is just that: a kotatsu in the guise of a Tirol chocolate square, the original coffee nougat variety to be exact.

300 lucky(?) winners will be chosen by lottery from applicants who send a postcard with the correct answers to a quiz about Tirol chocolate. All of the quiz answers (to questions like “how old will the Tirol chocolate square be next year?”) can be found on the campaign website. Another 10,000 winners will receive a “necobag,” an ecobag with a cat emblem (cat is “neko” in Japanese).

Individually sold Tirol chocolate are typically found near the cash register in convenience stores and are just about the only thing you can get for less than a dollar (¥21 to be exact). New seasonal flavors are constantly released, with recent years seeing upwards several new ones a month.

Pictured above is the line-up thus far for this year. The newest is a pumpkin flavor in honor of Halloween available from mid-September.

Tags: Campaigns, FMCG, Marketing, Tirol
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Idle salarymen earn niche market

Do you know the Sabori-man? This recent buzzword (and hence niche market) refers to a worker (typically a salary man) sent out of the office for business who idles somewhere for a while before returning.

While you can find them in suit with briefcase in coffee shops or on park benches, recently a few businesses have started to specifically target these adult loiterers.

For example Shibuya Q-AX Cinema ran an “Sabori-man” campaign during May and June for the movie Mr. Brooks. Before 4pm, customers could order “1 Mr. Sabori please” to receive a ¥200 discounted ticket for the film.

Similarly, in June, Ueno capsule hotel Dandy began offering an afternoon nap special from only ¥2,100 between 10am and 4pm. At the 8-story men’s only hotel, truant salarymen can temporarily trade their suits for a robe and take advantage of the sauna, dining bar, or movie selection.

The word became popularized with the publication of the Tokyo Osabori Map in December 2006. Created by a volunteer team of salarymen from the East Japan Work and Rest Association, this sabori bible contains listings of 230 spots in popular business areas such as Shinjuku and Otemachi that meet the minimum requirements of being quiet, agreeable, and having seats.

Selections, rated on a five-point scale, range from the lobbies of upscale hotels, to local ward offices and university cafeterias.

Tags: Campaigns, Publishing, Salarymen
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Coca-Cola mini R/C car campaign

Coca-Cola has just finished up an interesting promotion where they sold mini R/C cars along with a regular bottle of Coke. The four choices of cars were branded as old-style Coke delivery trucks, and the reverse side of the remote controls as vending machines.

At $6, these are special purchases, but not that out of the ordinary. If anything, the Coke was secondary to the purchase of the car, despite it being displayed with other refrigerated drinks. Why offer a mini R/C car by sending in money and a POP when you can just sell it to customers right there in the store without the hassle? I saw these on display in my local 7-11 and they were all gone within a couple of days, never to return.

Tags: beverages, Campaigns, Coca-Cola, FMCG
Category: Technology & Gadget Trends
Other categories: Marketing & Ad Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Be@rbrick and Fox promotion with Pepsi NEX

Pepsi NEX, the zero-calorie cola taking on Coke’s Zero offering, is now doing a collaboration with MediCom and their Be@rbrick line.

The collaboration is also with 20th Century Fox, with each figure (12 total) modeled on one of Fox’s movies or TV shows, ranging from Fight Club (I am Jack’s shameless promotion.) to Prison Break. Each one comes with a clasp, making them perfect candidates for cell phone straps. Some of the pieces are pretty tame (The Day After Tomorrow?), but several are quite cool, especially the ones for Predator, Die Hard, and Planet of the Apes.

Pepsi NEX drinkers can also enter to win the dvds for the promoted Fox items by sending in labels from Pepsi, though it’s hard to say whether the Be@rbrick for Night at the Museum is cooler than the actual movie.

You can get your own Be@rbrick Jack Bauer, Michael Scoffield, or Prada-wearing Devil attached to Pepsi NEX bottles until the end of this month.

Tags: Bearbrick, Campaigns, Collaborations, Pepsi
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Unidenman mobile advertising unit in Shimokita

Under the banner of a “mobile showroom” home electronics company Uniden has unleashed upon the streets of Shimokitazawa this troop of “Unidenmen.”

As you can see, they look like they are wearing asbestos suits and have Uniden TVs strapped to their chests so they are impossible to miss. It gets even more clever, however: on their backs they have QR codes because Uniden products can be purchased from mobile phone sites and thus can actually be ordered from the mobile showroom.

These Unidenmen are meant to attract attention to the mobile showroom which consists of TVs planted in 34 cooperative Shimokitazawa establishes. The website offers this map to help would-be TV buyers to track down the locations of the mobile showroom.

With this campaign, Uniden hopes to attract new customers from the crowds of 20-30 year olds who frequent Shimokitazawa for bar/café hopping and vintage shopping.

Tags: appliances, Campaigns, Home
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Lark Artist Pack series: Japanese cigarette branding

Far from encouraging the use of tobacco, our interest is purely in unusual and creative packaging design and promotions. So kids, smoking is bad for you, but if you’re going to do it you should at least get some with a cool box.

Looking to replicate the success of Lucky Strike’s creative re-branding in Japan, Lark is pushing new and creative packaging and collaborations to, obviously, pull in early-twenties smokers and establish a cool and hip image. They started recently with a new “Push Pack” that opens and closes automatically when you push from the bottom.

However, Lark is currently running the best tobacco campaign I’ve ever witnessed, and one that deserves the Only in Japan label more than anything. Lark’s new Artist Pack series is a collaboration with three Japanese designers, each contributing three separate pack and lighter designs to be sold exclusively in specific convenience stores.

Fashion design house Dress Camp produced our favorite design, with diamond graphics and a lion shaped, tail activated lighter that actually works quite well.

Musician/Artist Towa Tei (of Deee-Lite fame) put in the design for the green pack and lighter below.

Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any of these again since they first came out last week, and were unable to get ahold of the design from graphic artist Ryo Ono, but we found a picture online from this Japanese blog.

Can you imagine the backlash if an American brand, designer, or celebrity produced their own custom packs for Marlboro? They’d be forever tainted with the foul stench of smoke, and would likely endure the wrath and demagoguery of any TV pundit within range. Not so in Japan, at least not yet.

Tags: Campaigns, Collaborations, design, Fashion, Lark, Tobacco
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Pockyboard reminds you not to share Pocky

Up for some frustration and maybe a little social insight? Pocky has a new flash-based interactive Pockyboard where you can change and rearrange Pocky sticks to create pictures, write things, etc. The interactive part? Everyone else on the site has to use the same pieces, so it’s a constant battle for resources.

Is this an ad for Pocky, or a greater experiment demonstrating spontaneous social order?

The first few minutes can be frustrating, but if you give it some time you may start to get along with the other anonymous builders and create something…or get immediately irritated when someone new takes the chocolate Pocky you needed for the “M” in your name, turns it strawberry, and puts it in the corner.

Click to play on the Pockyboard

Tags: Campaigns, FMCG, Pocky, Web 2.0
Category: Technology & Gadget Trends
Other categories: Marketing & Ad Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

Latest advertising gimmick: 3-D plastic tongues

The latest in over the top Tokyo train stations advertisements is this campaign by Johnson and Johnson’s Reach toothbrush brand. The billboard’s main feature is a giant human-sized (as in the size of an actual human) pink plastic tongue attached to an equally pink background.

Each tongue has a different message, cleverly hinting about why you might need to pay special attention to your breath. The real cleverness of this ad, however, is that the tongues just beg to be touched and therefore cannot be ignored. Really, when I spotted the wall of tongues this weekend in Omotesando station I saw more than a few people (kids and adults) handling the plastic protrusions and even trying to lift them up to see if there was even yet another gimmick lurking underneath (unfortunately the tongues are firmly tethered to their posters).

Like many train station ad campaigns, this one monopolizes a whole corridor of the station, and with all that sickly (err, healthy I guess) pink the effect is decidedly kimoi (gross), not to mention a bit odd in fashionable Omotesando, an area considered by many to be the height of good taste.

In fact just about every other ad in the neighborhood is pushing some kind of glitter princess Christmas romance in the name of good taste. Yeah, I kind of want to stick my tongue out at those ads too. That’s probably not the point, but thanks Reach!

So what are the tongue ads actually selling? A closer look at the product on the Reach
Japanese website shows that the on the back of these new toothbrushes is a “soft tongue cleaner” which promises better breath and oral hygiene in general. Not a bad idea.

For more coverage of the wonderful world of Tokyo train station advertising gimmicks, PingMag ran an excellent article on them last year, which you can read here.

Tags: Campaigns, Omotesando
Category: Marketing & Ad Trends
Other categories: Technology & Gadget Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends

“You are what you buy” from EPOS confuses, lacks meaning

We’ve been seeing ads around town for the EPOS Card, a Visa card that has (among other things) a collaboration with the OI (Marui) department store chain. This is clear.

What isn’t clear, particularly to Japanese, is the point of the ads. You are what you buy? Certainly the image speaks to the shopping public, but the accompanying English text brings no explanation.

Being familiar with the English expression it’s derived from (thus making me a walking mentaiko spaghetti), I get it. It’s cute, but what’s the hook for the average Japanese consumers bustling through the train station? Put yourself in their shoes, read it without an emphasis on “are”, and it loses a great deal of meaning.

To be fair, the TV commercials (below) come with explanations in Japanese, but I still don’t get why an English expression that resonates with native speakers would be useful here. Perhaps the pictures are good enough?

UPDATE: After a little searching, it appears that these ads are actually an improvement over their first attempt with the same expression.

Tags: Advertisements, Campaigns
Category: Technology & Gadget Trends
Other categories: Marketing & Ad Trends, Fashion & Lifestyle Trends