大塚製薬 | カロリーメイト 見えないもの篇 | 2021
A year spent fighting something invisible was also a year held up by something invisible / Otsuka Pharmaceutical CALORIEMATE "Invisible Things"
2020 was a year when everyone fought an invisible virus. And CALORIEMATE still delivered its usual commercial to that year's students taking entrance exams. But things didn't go as usual. Remote classes, disinfectant, acrylic partitions, cancelled competitions. The moment Naotaro Moriyama's "Sakura" started playing, the tears wouldn't stop.
The problem
Every year, CALORIEMATE has made a series of commercials cheering on students preparing for entrance exams. But 2020 was different. Because of the new coronavirus, school life changed completely. Classes went remote, club competitions were cancelled. The everyday life everyone had taken for granted stopped being ordinary. In the middle of all that, the brand decided to portray the students heading into exams and the teachers supporting them. At a time when few ads in Japan dealt directly with the pandemic, this commercial chose not to let the world of advertising drift away from the real world.
The insight
The line "A year spent fighting something invisible was also a year held up by something invisible" says it all. The virus is invisible. Anxiety is invisible. But so is someone's thoughtfulness. The effort of a teacher who kept making teaching materials on the other side of a remote screen, the words of encouragement buried in a class video that got fast-forwarded through—these things were invisible, but they were really there. The scene where a student listens again to a teacher's words from harder times—"Pushing through anyway, that's what real strength means"—holds the whole year inside it.
The idea
The student was played by Seishiro Kato, who had been a high school student himself until the year before, and the teacher was played by Satoshi Iizuka of Tokyo 03. Naoki Ogi (known as "Ogi Mama") also appeared, as special cooperation, playing a commentator on a news program. The commercial realistically recreated the everyday scenes of the pandemic—empty classrooms, remote classes, desks being disinfected, acrylic partitions. For the music, it used a choral version of Naotaro Moriyama's "Sakura," specially re-recorded by Moriyama himself. Over 120 seconds, it carefully portrayed the bond between students and their teacher.
What happened
In June 2021, it won the TCC Award Grand Prix, and that same year it also received the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Award / ACC Grand Prix (Film Category A) at the ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS. It also led to a related project called "A Song for the Graduation Ceremony That Has No Song," a video project that spread to deliver memories and gratitude for graduation ceremonies that could no longer be sung at because of the pandemic. This commercial has been described as one that many people hope will be remembered as something that existed in Japan during this period of the pandemic.
Afterthought
Advertising is said to be a mirror of its times. But this commercial, I think, went beyond being a mirror and became the era of 2020 itself. It told everyone fighting something invisible that invisible things really do exist. It was encouragement, it was a prayer, and it was also a record. No matter how hard things get from here, I want to keep believing that someone is watching, that someone's feelings are reaching me, and keep going.
