富士通 | FMV | 2015
That Classic Formula: Handsome Guy Meets Creepy Vibes / Fujitsu FMV "Kimura Takuya × Kishibe Ittoku" Series
Thinking about Kimura Takuya reminded me of this one. The combination of a handsome lead and genuinely unsettling weirdness left a lasting impression on me, and this series still sticks in my mind.
The problem
Fujitsu's FMV commercials started in 2000, and the series became known for the strange back-and-forth exchanges and absurd world shared by Takuya Kimura and Ittoku Kishibe. In a 2002 commercial likability survey, it ranked 4th overall and 1st in the electronics/precision equipment category.
The insight
What's interesting is how clearly you can see the ads start strong but get more strained as the series goes on, with the "selling" becoming more obvious. You can almost feel them thinking "we probably didn't want to do this '50,000 yen giveaway' thing" or "why does it have to be Ma-kun?" It's a series that lets you glimpse the gap between the ideal and the reality of product promotion.
The idea
The format became a running joke: Kishibe's "mysterious man" character would invade Kimura's everyday life in impossible ways—showing up as a stranger peering at a laptop in a family restaurant, turning up in old home videos from Kimura's childhood, appearing as a giant face on a rooftop, or crashing a guitar session with Char by barging in on bass.
What happened
The 2003 installment "Who Is Kishibe-san?" won the ACC Tokyo Creativity Award and was also a finalist at the 43rd ACC CM Festival. The series was created by Dentsu and TUGBOAT, and became such a long-running hit that Kimura Takuya himself appeared in Fujitsu's 30th commercial.
Afterthought
Luckily, both of them are still active, so I have a feeling a "Returns" installment might be coming soon. I'd love to see that absurd back-and-forth one more time.
