Hasta La Gadget!

Toilet paper can be so much more than just a cleaning apparatus. Some have published horror stories on it. Others, in desperate need of it, have demonstrated the real-time practical values of Twitter.

Now toilet paper gets political. Yahoo Japan is reporting on the tactics of Odawara City to get people interested in the forthcoming summer elections.

Preparing a fairly modest 200 rolls, the city’s election organizers has been distributing the toilet paper to Odawara restaurants, along with posters and special drinks coasters.

On the white paper is printed in blue guidance on the early polling, as well as information on laws about donations. There’s no word yet on whether candidates themselves will resort to canvassing in this fashion!

In Japan it is common to give out free tissues on the street when you want to promote your business. However, apparently the election committee didn’t have much success with this tactic and so came up with other ways to raise awareness of the approaching polls.

Even though it’s just toilet paper and a few drinks coasters, the campaign doesn’t come cheap, costing some 100,000 JPY (c.$1000)!

It’s no secret that I like bijin (美人, “beautiful girls”). In the past we’ve blogged here about apologetic bijin but this time the development has more of a web marketing spin.

The popular Bijin-Tokei (美人時計, or “beautiful girl clock”), a website that showcases different young ladies telling you the time every minute, has collaborated…with a new instant noodles product.

All right, so perhaps you were expecting a fashion brand? It seems that even yakisoba in a plastic container can be made to look glamorous when it’s held by a pretty girl.

For one hour every night on Bijin-Tokei, the time will be told by a revolving set of 15 girls indulging in JanJan noodles. Every minute there’s a new lady, which even for instant noodles might be a bit too fast to prepare and eat. Tune in from eleven for your dose!

Bijin Tokei has been a big success since it started nine months ago, accruing some five million unique users and 2.5 billion page views. It has also spawned imitators (the “Gal Tokei“, another in Korea, plus an adult one!) and the site even has an English version. The widgets are particularly popular and mean you can ogle girls whenever you look at your own blog!

Recently you might have seen some posters around Tokyo seemingly promoting the concept of evolution: an ape face changing into that of a good-looking Japanese male. Actually it’s a strange, Darwinian-themed campaign for Stride, the Cadbury Adams mint chewing gum.

The website also is pretty fun too. You can upload a picture and watch yourself reverse back to primate form (strictly speaking, I guess that’s “devolution”). Too scared to see your own origins? Well, this is apparently what I look like minus a few thousand years! At least I seemed to have some hair back then…

We previously tried wearing chimpanzee masks in the office and the results were impressive, though we never took them outside!

This, however, is another league entirely, and has to be one of the most bizarre campaigns we’ve seen for a while. At least it makes a welcome change from the ubiquitous Kimutaku appearing on every poster!

Stride is also currently recruiting our snaps of a branded monkey statue, which should be popping up in unexpected public places. Judging from the video below they have started with Hachiko in Shibuya. Now, that’s what I call gorilla guerrilla advertising! Submitting your photo gives you a chance to win a million yen ($10,000) so get hunting.

As if all the Ryoma Sakamoto merchandise wasn’t enough, back in January Georgia made the news for its series of Sengoku (Warring States) period samurai-themed coffee.

Well, now they’re back, with the Espresso Blux, dedicated to the legendary Nobunaga Oda.

Posters and ads have used images of the ancient warrior, along with intriguing slogans (”Nobunaga lives”, 信長は生きていた) and directions to search for Honnouji no hen (本能寺の変), the name given to the incident at Honnouji Temple which ended in Nobunaga’s downfall. Going online you arrive at the campaign’s homepage (though Google lists Wikipedia higher!) and you’ll see a list of tweets.

Yes, Georgia might well be using history as part of its imagery but it is also utilizing the latest trendy marketing tool — Twitter. During the campaign, readers can read mini episodes from a “science fiction” story about Nobunaga surviving and living to the present day.

Espresso Blux takes a canned coffee primary consumer (salarymen) and something they like (samurai history), and mixes it with a bit of viral online sav. The result? A campaign that matches perfectly with the drink’s advertising line: “Good things, a bit at a time” (いいものはちょっとずつ). After all, you should savor espresso and are simultaneously tantalized by the Twitter narrative updates.

This also apparently marks the first time that a company has positioned tweets as part of a TV campaign. Previously it was common for marketeers to put “continued online” (続きはWebで) on the poster or TV commercial, but Georgia used “continued on Twitter” (続きはTwitterで).

There always seem to be a lot of websites and resources for women and female health issues. Why should be men be left out?

That’s what pharmaceutical company Banyu thinks, and this has seemingly motivated them to set up a Flash site called AGA30’s Opinion (30代の悩める気持ち) that collects questions and responses about male dilemmas.

When you log on you will be asked for your age group; if you are in your thirties you can then vote on the issues, though everything is still viewable whatever your age. The problems are color-coded into categories: work, money, love, and hair. Examples include: “Would you borrow money from your parents in an emergency?”, “Have you ever looked at porn at work?” and “Do you check out your thinning hair when you get up in the morning?”

Of course, this isn’t just CSR from Banyu and they are trying to promote their products through the site. They already have created other media like AGA-news (AGA is short for “Androgenetic Alopecia”, or hair loss) that encourage you to go to your local physician for consultations, and raises awareness of hair loss issues.

A byproduct of this is that they sell things to consumers who might have been too embarrassed to do anything about their problem before.

It’s only just got started but this kind of Web 2.0 marketing might just go viral with all those worrisome salarymen in their thirties. When we checked there had already been nearly thirty thousand votes! The site connects with Twitter too and of course there is the customarily blog parts (see below).

As a man balding since my teens I don’t mind admitting that I checked the hair loss voting results with keen interest! Anything has to be better than the KeUpper we stumbled upon in 2007 that shocks your hair into growing again!

[Via Kokoku-kaigi.]