Currently on platforms 5 and 6 of JR Ikebukuro Station there are vending machines dispensing free cans of a new UCC Coffee drink. At random times twice a day for one hour each lucky people visiting the pop-up shop “mediacure” booth on the Yamanote Line platforms can receive samples.
This campaign is hoping to build up buzz for no-sugar coffee UCC The Clear (120 JPY, $1.3), aimed at male consumers in their twenties to forties. Apparently, the organizers are worried about a scrum to try to claim free drinks and will have security staff on hand to keep things safe.
People waiting around on platforms are in need of distractions, making the spaces prime spots for advertising or sampling campaigns like this one. The mediacure booth is a great tool, offering digital signage, vending machines and a physical forum to push your product to nearby consumers with little to do with their time. Given the target for UCC The Clear, a line like the Yamanote and its rush hour hordes of salarymen, is a great choice for channeling samples to the right people.
The campaign runs until 28th March, the day before UCC The Clear goes on general sale. Of course this isn’t the first time that the Yamanote line has experienced a marketing overhaul. We loved the Meiji Chocolate campaign last autumn that saw entire trains becoming branded.
Since fashion market watcher David Marx hit the bulls eye perfectly with his assessment of Abercrombie’s new Ginza flagship store, we have very little to add to the story besides the tweet we blurted out while in the midst of the most traumatic shopping afternoon ever. Actually, we were scouting the store for a client report, but it didn’t take long to confirm what we knew already.
To be fair, I don’t want to write a hit job on the brand, but the market-entry history of Japan in the last…well…150 year suggests that you can’t just waltz into the market, business as usual, and sell a bunch of American goods to consumers that you perceive as desperate for something new. Especially if the items are marked-up in a time of recession, and when real fast-fashion brands are doing brisk sales.
However, this recent damning review by Japanese celebrity Midori Utsumi pretty much sums up what I’ve heard from every other Japanese consumer I’ve queried about the shop. Granted, she’s not exactly the target customer, but there are elements of the Japanese retail experience that cross most demographics.
Money quote: もう、最悪！でした。(Ugh, it was the worst!)
She goes on to talk about the darkness, the smell, how cramped it is, and how the elevators only go straight to the seventh floor, leaving you to navigate the rest of the building by stairs. The women’s dressing room is only on the 10th floor, and the cash register is only on the 11th. Plus, when she asked where the restroom was, she was told that they don’t have one. Much of the rest of the blog piece is a lament on the poor training and manners of the staff.
As a native Ohioan who grew up with the brand all around me, I have a love-hate relationship to its image. While many of my friends and classmates wore A&F or worked at its shops (and eventually in its offices), I was never able to get excited about the clothes there because they never seemed to look right on my slim, 5′8″ frame. Since my body size is fairly average around these parts, I feel that Japanese men have similar issues.
Here’s a great video of one of the A&F Ginza shop’s recent spelunkers.
It could have a lot to do with the nature of the brand itself, which oozes New England, blue-blood arrogance mixed with the sweat of jocks who push geeks into lockers. Not that I was one of those geeks or anything…I’m not bitter, I swear.
It’s odd enough that the first five sales floors of the 11-story building are for men’s clothes, and 8~11 are for women. Go into nearly any other retail shop in Japan that has mixed fashion and the women’s clothes are ALWAYS first. So, the shop that has half-naked male models and eleven floors of portraits of naked sportsmen adorning the staircase is prioritizing its male customers? Why didn’t they just open up in the middle of Shinjuku ni-chome and get it over with?
To get an idea of the digital buzz around the brand, check out the official A&F Mixi group. I’m not saying that it represents all of Japan, but just the number of members compared to similar brands can provide some perspective.
In the end, it’s an interesting experiment and I wish A&F success, especially since the Asian market as a whole has better chances for finding the right consumer. Looking forward, since former company-mate Victoria’s Secret will surely be coming into the local market soon let’s see what kind of approach they take. Somehow I think that big, busty, leggy models will resonate with Japanese women the same way that blue-eyed and buff A&F models do with Japanese men.
That doesn’t mean that they can’t come to Japan, but it does mean that they need to do some research first.
We heard back in January that Sony was looking to reface itself somewhat by introducing a minty fresh retail look that takes a note or two from the Apple and Microsoft shops already in existence, and for those lucky enough to find themselves in Nagoya this weekend, you can check it out in person. March 13th marked the opening of the all new Sony Store Nagoya, and with an ample of amount of glass, white demo stands and black overhead signs, it’s certainly one of the more seductive retail shops that we’ve seen. We’d bother knocking Sony for following instead of leading, but considering just how far the brand has fallen over the past couple of years, we’re just stoked to see it putting forth an effort to turn things around.
When you think about HP, do you think about printers or maybe IT outsourcing? How about HP smartphones, ever think of them? You do know that HP still sells iPAQs right? That’s ok, we have to remind ourselves too, occasionally, and therein lies the problem: most consumers don’t have any idea what HP’s 300,000 employees are up to… or even care. (Ever encounter a rabid HP fanboy before?) While the enthusiast community is certainly anticipating the release of HP’s Slate or next Voodoo device, you’d be hard pressed to find any “normal people” who have even heard of them. So what’s HP to do?
Starting this weekend, HP will be blitzing the airwaves with its first advertising campaign in more than five years. The $40 million, eight-week “Lets Do Amazing” campaign features a number of celebs like “zany” comedian Rhys Darby and photographer Annie Leibovitz in pitches meant to give the very serious company a lighthearted makeover while explaining what it does. Hell, even HP fave Dr. Dre was convinced to shill, though knowing HP they’ll probably use his given name of Andre Romelle Young.
TOTO, a major Japanese toilet-maker, is promoting its newest product, the water-efficient Greenmax 4.8, through a robot action figure. The mobile strap toy barks eco-friendly slogans like “Protect the earth, GMAX!” (地球を守れ，GMAX!) and generally looks a Duchamp art work-cum-Transformer.
In fact, water is one of the few natural resources that Japan abounds in, which is why we haven’t seen so much in the water-saving devices and campaigns amongst our eco research. Though we are curious to see how TOTO’s toilet will fit onto the eco bandwagon, at any rate it is well known that Japanese marketers jump at any chance to use robots in a campaign.
Hey, remember how all the lawsuits got dropped over the holiday period and we thought AT&T and Verizon would finally start to coexist like mature entities engaged in a civilized industry? Yeah, that didn’t last very long. Verizon is back with a biting ad campaign that continues poking fun at AT&T’s 3G coverage. The consumer is appropriately a vampire, whereas the young maiden keen on being consumed turns out to be… well, it’s more fun if we just let you watch it without any more spoilers. Needless to say, it’s some of Verizon’s funniest work yet. Head on past the break to see it.
We’ve seen lemons power a digital clock, and we’ve seen an Orange tent energize a gaggle of Apples. But have you ever wondered how many oranges it would take to charge just a single Apple? Name games aside, we have to hand it to Imperial Leisure, the company that executed a new iPhone-centered advertisement aimed at raising awareness for Jaffa oranges. We won’t spoil the whole thing for you, but we will say that you’ll be far hungrier after watching than you are right now. Video’s past the break, per usual.
It seems that Set Japan, who wowed us with their Louis Vuitton / Murakami and Marc Jacobs promotions last year, have now been working on “built” QR codes for clients like Frisk mints, utilizing actual physical object (like the product in this case) to create the scan-able barcodes.
We just love digital tryvertising and this interactive terminal at Takashimaya department store in Shinjuku blew us away when we stumbled upon it a few months back. The Digital Cosmetic Mirror by industry giant Shiseido can be used to test make-up and recommendations without even having to pick up a mascara brush! Using augmented reality to do sampling is a novel way to involve consumers, and can be a useful technology for saving on waste as we cover in our ECO Japan innovation report.
All you do is sit down and let the camera scan your face. The terminal then gives you tailored recommendations. Pressing a few buttons on the touch-screen paints make-up onto your image in realtime, allowing you to see the results instantly. You also try out make-up that is currently making waves, along with printing out before and after photos with product information for you to go make the purchase of whichever colors caught your eye the most.
We know good and well what kind of extravagant displays are available to gawk at in New York City, but now it looks like the locals will have yet another one to check out when they’re taking a breather from the rat race. CBS Outdoor has unveiled plans to deliver two solid hours (from 11:30AM to 1:30PM throughout February) of 3D advertising on an expansive, high-definition video screen installed within Grand Central Station. Unlike the glasses-free solution that we spotted at Intel’s CES booth this year, this one will still require onlookers to rock those heinous and soul-crushing glasses in order to “see” the “effect,” and with around 70,000 commuters passing by each day, we’d guess that the spectacle manufacturer who nabbed this contract is feeling pretty good right about now.
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[Image via Insightnow.com]
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