Thirty-three years later, waving on the same platform again / JR Central "Meeting Someone Turned Out to Be Special."

The problem

During the pandemic, as people lived through endless days of wanting to see each other but not being able to, JR Central started this campaign because they wanted to reexamine the value of meeting in person. Before the pandemic, about seven out of ten Tokaido Shinkansen passengers were business travelers. In an era when telework spread and online meetings became the norm, JR Central—which had long supported people meeting one another via the Tokaido Shinkansen—wanted to make a commercial that expressed the value of meeting face to face, aimed at the business travelers who make up six out of ten of its passengers.

The insight

Kenichi Nozaki of Dentsu, who led the planning, says the spark for the project came from his own experience at work during the pandemic. He used to shoot commercials every month, but for a while that became impossible. When he finally reunited with the staff afterward, everyone was so happy they waved at each other. "In that moment, I realized that meeting everyone in person to work together was actually something special," he says. The other spark was Christmas Express. Nozaki describes the 1988 commercial as close to a documentary, in the sense that it captured the mood of an era when, even as life grew materially richer, people were reminded that the greatest happiness was simply meeting another person. "What I most wanted to carry on from Christmas Express was depicting the feeling of that era," he says. If they were going to depict today's era, he thought, they needed to show people wearing masks.

The idea

On her way back from a business trip to Osaka, Eri Fukatsu boards the bullet train bound for Tokyo. Once in her seat, she takes a sip of coffee and looks out the window, replaying the day's events in her mind. She had met with a client in person: looking over sample materials together, gesturing as she presents, the discussion full of energy. After the meeting ends, everyone exchanges farewells on the ground floor of the building. Fukatsu starts walking toward the station, then suddenly turns around. There, a little bashfully, the client is waving. Fukatsu waves back, just as shyly. The direction of removing masks to smile, the careful attention to depicting paper materials as the natural reason for meeting face to face, the restraint of treating Fukatsu as "just one character among others," the casting of the three men who appear alongside her—every choice is full of thought and consideration. Nozaki looks back on it, saying, "From the initial proposal, it took more than a year, changing shape little by little, to build this campaign."

What happened

The 60-second version first aired on January 16, 2022, during the TBS drama DCU, which recorded an average individual rating of 10.3% and a household rating of 16.8%. Because priority measures to prevent the spread of infection were applied, the ad was pulled from broadcast after five days. Hideaki Furusawa of JR Central's public relations department says, "Because we got such a strong response right from the start, we were able to make the decision to pause quickly." Even after that, the number of views on social media kept climbing. Starting January 17, outdoor ads featuring Fukatsu were also put up at stations in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. The commercial's song was a newly written track by odol called "Nozomi." The band commented, "Meeting someone in person naturally brings out a smile. We overlapped that kind of scene with who we are right now, and tried to put into song the atmosphere and warmth that truly exist there."

Afterthought

Thirty-three years since "Meeting in person is best." Eras change, but the feeling of wanting to see someone never does. This commercial quietly shows that truth through the passage of time in the life of one woman, Eri Fukatsu. Without doing anything flashy, it proves how far you can go simply by carefully portraying human emotion—work that's well worth studying. The planning, the performers, the acting, the copy, the direction down to every detail, the music, the timing—everything about it is good. It's packed with sincerity and care, and it deserves real respect.

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