REC YOU is a new online campaign for the latest SONY Walkman — it uses the One Seg function, popular these days on mobile phones. It looks like you can send a portrait — you’ll find more details at the REC YOU site — which will then be used later on as the project progresses. The video I’ve included in this post is a viral CM that’s part of the campaign.
Oct 22, 2007
Posters for the latest sales campaign at the Parco shopping center in Ikebukuro.
Oct 7, 2007
Great little animated short mostly made up of Takashi Murakami’s graphic work for Louis Vuitton that makes it hard to hate corporate sponsorship/ad work. Via Tokyomango.
Aug 10, 2007
TOTO, Japanese maker of high-tech toilets, gets cheeky with its latest ad campaign for their washlets. Link via City of Sound.
Jul 2, 2007
If you buy a bottle of Dakara these days, you get this tiny little figure with it. The pig is seen in recent TV commercials. There are magnets at the base of the pig and the bottle, so when you approach the bottle to the pig you can make it spin (as it does, prancing around, in the TV commercials).
Jul 2, 2007
PingMag talks branding with Moving Brands, a London/Tokyo-based creative agency.
Jun 28, 2007
How does Microsoft promote the GEARS OF WAR game in Japan? Supposedly, with these wacky viral videos.
Update
The actress in the videos has posted them on her blog, explaining that they are in fact from Microsoft.
Mar 29, 2007
Anyone know what this is all about? It’s a promotional site for Onitsuka Tiger, but I don’t really get what it’s promoting.
Update
Josh Spear has more:
Mar 27, 2007
Uniqlo lets you mix your own CM, on their flash-based MIXPLAY site. Fun — and great looking flash-based video!
Jan 3, 2007
I just saw an ad on TV for Uniqlo‘s latest line of winter coats and jackets, and it sounds like they’ve either ripped off (or, ahem, paid homage to) some Cornelius stop-start sounds, or the man himself is now doing CMs for the brand. No credit appeared (for those not aware of this, TV ads in Japan often feature music credits, since a lot of singles are launched that way). Anyone know if it’s him or not?
Nov 22, 2006
Remember the site last year that was selling pixel spacing? Someone is doing something similar for Japan, calling it Break Into Japan, with a good portion of revenues donated to charities. There’s a Japanese version as well.
May 29, 2006
Terrific new Nintendo TV commercial featuring music by Mayumi Kojima (“Hatsukoi”). Link via Kotaku.
Update
A reader points out that this is actually an old commercial from a few years ago.
May 16, 2006
I love the 6 new Apple ads, especially the one about networking with the Japanese bit.
May 2, 2006
PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens June 4.
We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.
Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.
Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.
A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.
