大日本除虫菊 | 棒シリーズ（棒夫婦／棒親子／隣の棒夫婦／棒店員／棒隣人／二組の棒夫婦） | 2022
They Left All Their Feelings at Home / KINCHO "Deadpan Series"
The deadpan couple, the deadpan parent and child, the deadpan store clerk, the deadpan neighbor... every character in this series has left their emotions at home. These radio ads sell Mushi Konars Premium using nothing but flat, toneless conversations—a campaign built entirely on subtraction.
The idea
All six spots in the series feature characters whose titles contain the word "deadpan," and from start to finish they only ever deliver flat, expressionless lines. The deadpan couple, the deadpan parent and child, the deadpan couple next door, the deadpan store clerk, the deadpan neighbor, and finally two deadpan couples—the series repeats the same format while swapping out which characters appear together. The backbone of the whole series is that it deliberately shuts off emotional expression, the very thing radio ads are supposed to rely on through voice acting, and still manages to make the exchanges work as little comic scenes. You'd think reading everything in a flat monotone would just be dull, but the series finds its laughs purely in how it combines the characters and situations.
What happened
It's reported that the series won a GOLD award, but a search couldn't confirm exactly which award or which category. It's also unclear whether the whole set of six spots was judged together as a series, or whether individual episodes were evaluated on their own.
Afterthought
It really makes you realize that even if you strip out all the vocal inflection, a conversation can still be funny as long as its structure is interesting. Rather than getting laughs through the way people talk, this series gets laughs by taking that away—an experiment that only really works because radio ads are a purely audio medium. I love the boldness of cutting away so much and letting just the rhythm of the conversation carry everything in the end.
Awards
- ACC Gold 2022
