Hasta La Gadget!

Customers can step right into cyberspace until April 19th at Shibuya’s Parco department store. Promoting the 3D release of “Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Solid State Society” web company Kayac Inc installed a large game booth that lets players immerse into the game and float in space.

The game uses the microsoft Kinect sensor to let players use gesture and movement to travel through space in a bid to capture Tachikoma. Controls use the whole range of movements from twisting to turn and moving forward and back to shift perspective then using an arm movement to zap and capture the characters. With the installed wrap around screen the effect is pretty absorbing and really feels like you are floating around.

The store itself has various anime goods and a display of some original shots from the Ghost In The Shell movie also for fans to see.

Users twist and turn below in the original video from Kayac:

The game is on the 5th floor of Parco, Shibuya in the S.A.C Premium Shop until April 19th.

Thanks to www.asiajin.com

There isn’t exactly much of a need to entice Japanese to buy bottled water right now, but Vittel has another great collaboration with New Balance that pairs the sporty water with miniature versions of New Balance running shoes as mobile phone straps. Running is rather popular these days in Japan after all, and everyone loves some quality omake (giveaways).

On top, Vittel has created the Tokyo Run app that uses technology from Sekai Camera, the augmented reality app that allows for a feature called “air tagging”. This means that you can place tags in virtual spaces defined by geography, and other people can find the tags on their own devices and interact with them.

The Tokyo Run app is also a game of sorts that creates digital running paths for joggers to take, with virtual Vittel bottles marking the turns at set geographic points. By using the phone’s GPS, runners can hit the points during their run, collect points, and then be eligible for winning prizes such as limited edition shoes.

The mini shoes straps are pretty nice and quite detailed. It says a lot about Japan that such cool little gifts can be so casually attached to the bottles without being stolen.

Even the tread on the shoes is realistic!

Was interesting watching NHK News tonight with Softbank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son featured as a panelist. Usually when people on Japanese television use props to communicate graphs and other information, they do it with very analog paper cards with colorful graphics. Son ditched the paper for his trusty iPad, and did all of his explaining through this medium. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to snap a picture until he finally set it down, but he was constantly fiddling with it like he just wanted to bust it out and show his favorite YouTube videos of cute cats.

I’ve never seen the iPad used like this on Japanese television before, especially on public broadcaster NHK. It just so happens that Softbank is the exclusive carrier for 3G iPads and all iPhones, so Son managed to turn legally commercial-free NHK into a 30-minute iPad commercial. Nice work.

Kate spade new york is currently running an aroma sampling campaign in two places in Tokyo, giving consumers a chance to take home a sample of its new fragrance product “twirl” as it goes on sale across Japan.

Not too dissimilar to the manga dispensing ads I recently stumbled upon, kate spade is promoting the twirl perfume with posters in Omotesando and Shinjuku subway stations that feature peel-off scented cards. Not only can you experience the product’s smell but there are QR codes on the back of the cards so that you can enter a competition to win twirl goodies, such as a necklace or bag designed in the same way as the perfume.

Not quite as generous as Adidas — who are currently loaning out running shoes — but then, considering the quantitive nature of the product, the approach is very similar but more practical for the industry.

The aroma sampling posters are in the two stations from March 7th to March 13th, but the campaign is over when they’ve all been claimed. Certainly when I was there they were going quickly, even being taken by people who were obviously not the target consumer: these kinds of campaigns have a strong curiosity kick that engages with passers-by, no matter whether you buy perfume regularly or not.

Another day, another anime-themed promotional campaign. It still sometimes surprises me how the so-called moe and otaku (geek) “subcultures” have now become so suffused into the Japanese mainstream. I’m not convinced it is a wholly healthy thing for marketing — from the point of view of vibrancy and variety — since the imagery has become so ubiquitous these days, but if it is attracting new customers to troubled services, who am I to argue?

Two ferry companies shuttling passengers between the main island of Honshu and the fourth largest Japanese island, Shikoku, have turned to similar methods for pushing up passenger numbers. Both Kokudo Ferry and Nankai are producing merchandise with female moe cartoon imagery to attract younger customers and, judging at least by the sales of the products, it seems to be working.

The ferries have seen business decline, aggravated by the government’s highly publicized highway toll discounts for encouraging people to get in their cars and drive to regions around the country.

[Images via Asahi]

Kokudo’s slightly racy Utakakarin-chan was created by Akira Yamato; initially available as two stickers from spring last year, she sold out in a month. The company added another girl over the summer as a t-shirt and this also sold out in two months. (Unfortunately, it’s not known how limited the production numbers were.) The latest female character came out in January this year, forming a set of three sisters promoting the ferry service’s fiftieth anniversary.

The Nankai characters were two fictional high school girls brought up locally respectively at the two ports the ferry serves, designed by an illustrator from the region.

Apparently there was also a successful use of similar characters for packaging on rice from northern Akita Prefecture in late 2008, with the result that in sales of rice in three months equalled that usually sold over three years, according to J-Cast. The organizers then followed that up with using the moe motifs on bottle labels for shochu from the region.

[Image via Gigazine]

With the government highway toll nationwide discount scheme set to kick in again from April, the real battle between the re-animeated ferries and the roads is about to begin…