サッポロビール | 冬物語 | 1995
Didn't Winter Used to Look So Much More Appealing in Ads? / Sapporo "Fuyu Monogatari" 1995
Don't you get the feeling there used to be a lot more commercials showing off good winter vibes like this? This is Sapporo's Fuyu Monogatari from 1995. Set to Cousin's "Fuyu no Fantasy," it shows young people spending time on a rooftop in winter.
The problem
Summer beer demand had hit a ceiling, and overall annual demand growth was actually being carried by the rise from autumn into early winter. So in 1988, Sapporo Beer launched Fuyu Monogatari, the industry's first winter-only beer. The idea was to propose a lifestyle of drinking beer in winter — to younger people, and to women too. Throughout the 1990s, the brand kept bringing in a buzzworthy artist every year, and it became a fixture of winter.
The idea
The 1995 Fuyu Monogatari commercial featured model Tomoe Kitaura, who was drawing attention at the time after coming up through CanCam, set to Cousin's song "Fuyu no Fantasy." The song became a massive hit for Cousin, selling over 700,000 copies, and it's remembered as one of the memorable Fuyu Monogatari commercial songs.
Afterthought
I feel like there are still plenty of summer ads out there — ocean! waves! swimsuits! that kind of thing. But ads that capture good winter vibes seem to have become rarer. Maybe winter-only products just don't sell as well, or maybe warmer winters have made things feel less wintery... who knows. Watching this commercial reminds me that drinking beer in winter used to feel like something special.
