キューサイ | まずい！もう一杯！ | 1990
They Didn't Run Away From "It's Awful" / Kyusai "Aojiru"
In 1990, the villain actor Nobuo Yana held up a glass and scrunched up his face. "It's awful!" he said. Then: "One more glass!" I was floored that a health food commercial would go there.
The problem
Kyusai's Aojiru (green juice) had been on sale since 1982, but with its distinctive bitterness, sales weren't great. "It's awful" wasn't originally in the script—it came from the actor's honest reaction after actually drinking it during filming. When he asked, "Can I say it's awful?", the sponsor's executives held a meeting and approved it on one condition: adding "one more glass." Getting across that a health food actually "works" meant making the decision not to run away from its bad taste.
The insight
With health foods, especially products tied to people's insecurities, it's hard to draw the line between what you can and can't say. Claim too much effect and you run into pharmaceutical law; hold back too much and nothing gets across. But by admitting the flaw—"it's awful"—this commercial implicitly sent a strong message: the reason you'd still drink another glass is that it's good for your body. It's a structure that flips the old saying "good medicine tastes bitter" to its advantage. This is remarkably well-thought-out copy with clear intent, a masterpiece that hits the one point that mattered.
The idea
A man in a white suit knocks back a glass of Aojiru in one go. The instant he finishes, his face twists and he shouts, "Ahh—it's awful! One more glass!" while thrusting the empty glass forward. All of this happens in a few seconds, with the facial performance landing before any product explanation. After that, Aojiru being poured into a glass is shown, along with the text "Kyusai Aojiru." A woman's narration explains the health benefits, individually packaged sachets fan out on screen, and a caption reads "Free sample." It closes with the toll-free number 0120-39-0831, shown on screen as a play on words ("Sankyu Oyasai," sounding like "thank you, vegetables"), with "Open 24 hours" added to encourage calls. The shout stops viewers in their tracks, and the wordplay gets the number to stick. The commercial contract for the product was originally planned for three months, but due to the huge response to this unprecedented ad, the contract was extended. After the commercial aired, the phones reportedly kept ringing, with staff kept busy handling the response.
What happened
The product had been on sale since '82, but following the TV commercial, sales grew rapidly. Nobuo Yana reportedly continued to appear in the ads for 26 years after that.
Afterthought
Asking the sponsor if it was okay to say "it's awful," having a meeting called over it, and getting conditional approval—that whole sequence tells you just how strong this ad really was. Normally, it would've been rejected outright. But Kyusai's decision to run with it, plus the quick thinking to balance it out with "one more glass," produced a masterpiece that's still talked about more than 30 years later. Not running from what you can't say, but breaking through with how you say it—that's something worth learning from.
