‘Tis the season for pop-up shops, it seems.
For six days only real estate company Chintai is hosting a branded cafe in Shibuya to promote its services. Although as with the Chocolate Support House we blogged yesterday it also finishes just before Valentine’s Day, there doesn’t appear to be any connection to romance in the campaign.
Saying that, the Chintai x Akira Cafe space is fronted by the company’s eponymous public face, Akira, from chart-topping, zillion-member pop group EXILE. No doubt his female fans might be attracted to the special band merchandise available for visitors. There’s also free drinks for the first 100 customers each day and you can use computers browse apartments for rent. Other than that it’s a regular cafe with drinks and food available.
Real estate companies typically employ small showrooms to promote their model homes but making their carbon copy urban apartments appear more exciting is a tougher challenge. However, occasionally they can happen upon interesting retail innovations.
Another well-known example includes the Yamanote Line real estate space right on the platform of Shibuya station: part information booth for real estate company TamaHome and part cheap (if tiny) coffee shop. (This is also a nice pun since the pronunciation of “home” in Japanese sounds just like the word for “platform” too.) Whereas Chintai have Akira, TamaHome trump them, though, with the all-powerful Takuya Kimura of SMAP.
[Photos via Fue Kitty blog]
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