南陽 | ジャンケン | 2024
The idea of making heavy machinery play rock-paper-scissors / Nanyo "Janken"
This ad gets the arm of a piece of heavy machinery to do rock, scissors, and paper. And it's not CG — they actually filmed real heavy machinery moving at a real quarry.
The problem
Nanyo is a general machinery trading company based in Fukuoka. The brand has made several ads in the past that sparked conversation, and this time they aimed to create a corporate ad that would leave an even stronger impression.
The insight
People are tired of corporate ads that just talk about how great a machine's performance is. So the team thought: why not create a way to let viewers feel the power of the machine firsthand, without any explanation? By combining that with the kind of humor Nanyo is known for, they aimed to make a corporate ad unlike any other.
The idea
The idea was to treat the arm of the heavy machinery like a human arm, and have it do rock, scissors, and paper. The concept itself is simple, but actually pulling it off with real footage turned out to be a completely different level of difficult. To make a rock look like a fist and an angled movement look like scissors, the workers at the quarry operated the machinery over and over, making tiny adjustments each time.
What happened
The director was filmmaker takuma inoue, and it was produced by VSQ. It won a Gold at the ACC 64th Awards (Film Category A) and the Gold Award at the 63rd Fukuoka Advertising Association Awards (Film Advertising, 15 seconds or under). A 30-second version was also used as a recruitment ad.
Afterthought
It sounds like the set was a place where rock fragments and chunks of concrete were flying around. You start to wonder if it was even safe — but that tension is exactly what gives the footage its power. The idea that planning isn't just something you do with your head, but with your body too — that's the creative director's own philosophy, and it really comes through in this one piece.
Awards
- ACC Gold 2024
