Beverages company Suntory is currently running a tie-up campaign with a long-running TV comedy show that gives consumers a chance to win one of eighteen kinds of eco solar bags.
Up to ten thousand people will receive a bag as part of the “Solar Lucky Bag” (ソーラー福バッグ) campaign. Lucky Bags are of course usually the blind purchases common in Japanese retail in the New Year sales, where you buy a sealed bag, which may or may not be filled with items ordinarily worth many times the package price.
Shoten (笑点, or “laughing point”) has been on TV for over forty years and its crew of old and young kimono-clad comics are household names, especially amongst the older generation. The show format is a competition between the men to see who can say the funniest gags, being rewarded with more zabuton cushions (obviously, the winning comic ends up suspended a few inches from the stage!).
To enter the campaign you need to collect twelve seal stickers from Suntory drinks, including Jokki, Kinmugi, and other popular beer or happoshu products.
The solar bag charges up a battery through its solar panel. You can then use this to power your mobile phone or other gaming device.
This campaign, which was first run in 2007, cleverly taps a key consumer base for Suntory’s cheap beer (salarymen drinking at home) and something they like (a treasured, long-running TV series). Given how a lot of the eco consumer trends have focused on “cooler” things like fashion and design, it is refreshing to see eco (and mobile culture) awareness being raised amongst a different demographic.
It’s also a logical pairing of two things most people like to do: drinking and laughing!
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