Hasta La Gadget!

In a campaign for Hajime Chaka, the beverage company makes clever use of this staple of urban life.

To commemorate the two-year anniversary of its “Hajime Chaka” tea drink, Coca-Cola Japan has launched an innovative advertising campaign to take over city taxi cab seat belts. Safety belts in 200 cabs around Tokyo and Osaka will be branded with the slogan, “Every Day Weight Support Hajime Chaka” until mid-June.

The feted beverage is billed as a “healthy green tea” using 100% domestic tea and containing zero calories. The use of seat belts is meant to accentuate the discomfort or self-consciousness one might feel belting in a hefty “metabo” waistline. Metabo is the Japanese way of saying “metabolic syndrome,” which is said to mostly effect salarymen—just the sort who might be taking a taxi home after an evening drinking session with co-workers.

Standard promotional material for Hajime Chaka features a traditional-looking warrior fighting metabo, another appeal to the middle-aged male company employee seeking to feel better about his body and energy.

Trend Potential
Public transportation in Tokyo is notoriously plastered with advertisements and companies compete to cover new—and eye-catching—ground. The Hajime Chaka campaign goes a step further, by drawing on a physical and emotional sensation that the target consumer presumably feels upon using one of these forms of transportation—and encountering the well-placed advertisement.

Via J-Cast