東京ガス | 家族の絆 おばあちゃんの料理 | 2020
The Small Thorn Everyone Carries in Their Heart / Tokyo Gas "Family Bonds: Grandma's Cooking"
Everyone has some small regret. A word you blurted out back then. A line you can never take back. Sometimes that kind of thorn stays stuck in your heart for years without you ever pulling it out. This commercial carefully draws out that exact kind of pain over 90 seconds. By the end, you'll want to cry, and you'll want to go see someone.
The problem
Tokyo Gas's "Family Bonds" series has continued since 2008 as a corporate advertising series carrying the message "we want cooking to deepen the bonds between family members." It originally started as radio commercials, and the series has kept exploring what lies at the heart of a family through food. It airs on "Shokusai no Okoku" (TV Asahi) every Saturday at 9:30 am, and since it's meant to be watched repeatedly over the course of a year, the content is designed to hold up to repeated viewing. The project was created to help build a brand around gas, a product that's hard to picture visually.
The insight
A grandson, raised by his grandmother while his parents worked, hurts her one day as a teenager when a friend comes over: he calls her old-fashioned simmered fish dish "old-fashioned." There were viewers who said that even knowing the grandmother was a kind of idealized, saintly fictional figure, they still cried watching this. The "small thorn in the heart" is something everyone carries, and the commercial depicts the universal feeling of wanting to apologize before it's too late to reach someone. Because family is the closest, most familiar place of all, kindness and regret live side by side there.
The idea
The commercial carefully stages the passage of time from boyhood to adulthood using the same kitchen and the same flower-patterned pot. Even after years pass and the kitchen gets renovated, the grandmother still uses that same flower-patterned pot—a small detail that quietly speaks to the accumulation of time. Kensuke Owada narrates the protagonist's inner thoughts, while Reiko Kusamura plays the grandmother. The commercial closes with narration describing how he'll apologize to his grandmother, saying "I'm sorry about back then," how she'll probably just smile without a word, and how he'll want to cry as he eats her cooking. It's a structure that captures an entire life in 90 seconds, finished like a film.
What happened
The "Grandma's Cooking" installment was slated to receive the Grand Prix, and won the JAA Award (the top prize) in the TV category at the 54th JAA Advertising Awards (the Advertising Contest Chosen by Consumers). Professor Yasuhiro Haga of Aoyama Gakuin University's School of Business Administration commented, "Tokyo Gas's corporate ad series is a regular at these advertising awards. Honestly, both the judges and I found ourselves thinking 'here we go again,' but in the end our eyes still welled up—which just goes to show how good it is." The video posted on YouTube drew over 2 million views, with comments like "Wonderful," "Moving—I watched it and cried," and "It feels real and conveys the warmth of family. A great piece of work." This commercial reportedly also increased interest in Tokyo Gas among students, contributing to its popularity as an employer.
Afterthought
Regret is connected to kindness. That one line says it all. Before going somewhere you can never return from, you want to pull out that thorn first. This commercial has the power to make you feel that way. Maybe becoming an adult really just means learning how to face thorns like this. I hope, everyone, for a life without thorns. And while you still can, please go see them.
