Hasta La Gadget!

Interesting. First Philip Morris sells its products along with a Georgia coffee (from Coca-Cola), and now BAT does it. This time, however, the color scheme is dead-on perfect. Coincidence?

I’m dying to know whether Georgia has any kind of say in these promotions. Anyone know?

As noted in Monocle Magazine’s liveable city index, Tokyo does indeed have 247 Starbucks. While it might be cliche to say there is one on every corner, there are a few real examples: the Roppongi Hills shopping complex has no less than 3 branches of the coffee shop. Still, in defense of the mega-chain, Starbucks Japan does test some pretty neat ideas here. There is the Starbucks Discoveries series that shook up the chilled cup coffee market and ushered in an era of destination themed products. They make some pretty “innovative” in-store flavors too, like this summer’s Coffee Jelly Frapuccino.

In an effort to disprove the “seen one Starbucks seen them all theory” the chain also has a few surprising concept shops. Earlier this year, the eponymous coffee shop took up residence in the Kobe Kitano Monogatarikan, a historic house built in 1907.

The western style clapboard building was damaged in the 1995 Hanshin earthquake and was later adopted as a ward of the city to protect it from destruction. Private clients eventually turned the structure into a café and, this March, Starbucks Japan took over the helm. Becoming a Starbucks turned out to be a boon for the old Kitano Monogatarikan, which got some publicity over the summer months.

There is another concept shop in Kamakura, in a wooden structure resembling a Japanese style house, built on the spot of manga artist Ryuichi Yokoyama’s former residence. In Kyoto, there is a Starbucks on the strip overlooking the famous Sanjo Ohashi bridge and another one shaped like a hexagon, in homage to the traditional shape of a temple’s main building.

With attention-grabbing structures in popular tourist destinations, Starbucks seems to be hoping that customers will want to make some domestic “discoveries” as well.

Can a mobile phone read a QR code created not digitally, but out of sand? This is a question that arose while communication “architects” Sinap Co. Ltd. were brainstorming new strategies for reaching customers in a world suffering increasingly from information overload. A QR code created by a natural substance, and one as fragile as sand, would make an impact, they thought. The question remained, would it actually be usable?

To find out, the Tokyo-based company launched the Sinap Summer 2009 Project, creating a human-scale QR code out of sand on a Shonan beach, about an hour away from the capital. The finished result, along with several “making-of” photos and a video, appear on the project website. To date, almost 400 readers have left comments regarding whether or not their mobiles could read the code; a cursory glance at the results shows that most phones could.

In addition to creating the sand QR code, Sinap is teaming up with the Nishihama Surf Lifesaving Club to promote beach cleaning efforts. According to Sinap, the efforts to break away from information noise pollution and to rid beaches of disposable lifestyle goods (plastic bags, foam trays…) are complementary endeavors.

Earlier this month we had the pleasure of spending the day with Rajan Datar and the crew of the BBC World business/travel show fast:track during their visit to Tokyo with Richard Branson.

Since the show expressed an interest in our Tokyo Trend Tours, a service we’ve been doing here since 2002, we planned a full day of locations and meetings that give a well-rounded view of what we do. We do tours and market immersions for professionals and globe-trotters alike, this time with a focus on a few of our favorites: The KDDI Designing Studio, Beams CULTuART, HP France, and Toppan. The idea was to show the power of mobile culture, fashion, and where they converge in the retail space.

It was also nice to find out that our friend Danny Choo was going to be featured in the same segment, which I believe we had once before on Attack of the Show. Funny how these things work out.

Many thanks to the BBC for a successful day, though I think I’m going to change my last name to “Keferi” since it seems to be the default misspelling/mispronunciation every time I do television!

Check out the video here on Yahoo. If you’re interested in inspiring yourself or your team with some time in Tokyo, from street-level trends, to nightlife, to boardrooms, feel free to contact us anytime.

Crowdsourcing has been one of the more relevant trends for innovation in recent years, helping companies create and improve products by engaging the public. From cosmetics to Calpis, Japanese consumers have been engaged through social networks to give their own ideas to the innovation process.

Anyone who has a Japanese gadget fetish is surely aware of the “Mugen” (infinite) series of toys by Bandai Asovision that all started with the PuchiPuchi Infinite Bubblewrap. After going through various incarnations from soybeans to beer, they decided to enlist the help of the infinite imaginations of consumers with Mugen Idea.

The result, as you can see, is Mugen Chocolate. Not quite sure what form this will take, but I think it’s a pretty good guess that it will involve infinitely cracking off a block of chocolate that you can’t actually eat. Kind of sounds like torture actually.