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202 articles
江崎グリコ | smile.Glico | 2014
Satoshi Tsumabuki, dressed up as a clown, goes around turning grumpy people from all over the world into smiling ones, one after another. Because it's a long-form video, watching it leaves you with a feeling like you just finished a movie.
日清カップヌードル | SURVIVE! | 2013
In 2013, Nissin went and did something wild. A young office worker in a suit of armor charges into a Western army, shouting "Nice to meet you!" before getting blown away by a cannon. A job-hunting student gets grilled by a polar bear interviewer in a blizzard, and at the beach, a monstrous shark attacks people, demanding "likes!" It's completely absurd, yet it captures the mood of 2013 exactly as it was.
キリン のどごし〈生〉 | 夢のドリーム4 カンフー篇 | 2013
This is the best one. The one at the top of the list I look at whenever work gets so rough I think I can't go on. Mr. Ishida, his junior, Shoko Nakagawa, Jackie Chan, the production team, and above all the client who greenlit this whole thing—everyone involved here is the best.
読売新聞 | 僕の走れなかった道 | 2012
"When we were kids, everyone wanted to be an athlete." That opening line feels like it could spark real debate. But Yomiuri Shimbun ran with it anyway. And that's exactly where the strength of this campaign lies.
GOOGLE | All Is Not Lost | 2012
A browser window splits into 12 pieces, each one moving on its own, somehow coming together into a single dance. And at the end, it spells out the words you typed, using its feet. When I saw this in 2011, I literally shivered, thinking, "wait, the internet can still do this?"
SEAWEED | DESIGN NORI | 2012
Using a laser cutter to etch patterns into sheets of nori that hadn't changed in 500 years. The idea of designing the product itself, not the package, was a total blind spot.
TOYOTA | BACKSEAT DRIVER | 2012
A kid in the backseat who used to just whine "are we there yet?" now grips their own steering wheel inside an iPhone app that's linked by GPS to the real car. Boring travel time spent just tracing a parent's driving got turned into a whole game.
JRA | 20th Century Boy | 2011
No celebrities, just horses, just a riff — who knew it could look this cool.
ライオン | タイムスリップ家族 | 2011
A family photo taken in 1991, and the same family in 2011. Lined up across time, in the same place, from the same angle.
サントリー | 歌のリレー | 2011
I used to think there was no way a commercial could make someone cry. But I've had a few such moments in my life, and this was one of them.
旭化成ホームズ | 考えよう。答はある。 | 2011
This copy opens with a quiet, measured voice: "I know that if I go further out, I could have a bit more land. But still, I think I'll live in the city." I find myself stopping on these words again and again.
UNIQLO | LUCKY LINE | 2011
In 2011, UNIQLO brought the "line" online. Turning that familiar sight of people queuing outside stores from 6 a.m. into a virtual experience on Twitter and Facebook was, at the time, an unheard-of move.
NTT DOCOMO | XYLOPHONE (森の木琴) | 2011
44 meters long, built on a forest slope. A giant wooden xylophone playing Bach's Cantata No. 147. No CGI, no sound added afterward, just wooden balls rolling down and down. And yet people all over the world held their breath watching it. This is what simple really means.
KYUSHU RAILWAY COMPANY | THE 250KM WAVE（祝！九州） | 2011
On February 20, 2011 (2/20), from the window of a shinkansen running 250km from Kagoshima-Chuo Station to Hakata Station, a wild plan was carried out: film 15,000 people gathered along the route and turn it into a commercial. One shot, no retakes. If it rained, it was over. If no one showed up, it was over. But all that worry was blown away on the day all of Kyushu waved.
東京ガス | 家族の絆・お弁当メール | 2010
It's only 90 seconds long, but I cried right on the spot. I happened to catch it on TV, lucky enough to see it from the very beginning, and the tears just came. "The lunch a mother makes" is already powerful material on its own, and this ad dresses it up in something very modern: "email." To a son who barely talks anymore, the lunch his mother makes every single day becomes a one-way, but very real, "message."
au | LISMO Fes! | 2010
Around the 0:22 mark, there's a moment where Haruna Kawaguchi opens her mouth wide, and it's unbelievably cute. Her charm from back when she wasn't as famous as she is now is all packed into that single instant. Whoever on the crew captured that moment did an amazing job.
サントリーオールド | 娘の相手 | 2009
Jun Kunimura says, "I could've punched him, you know." That one line says everything. Before meeting his daughter's boyfriend, the father quietly leaves the room without saying much. When his daughter follows him out, he mutters that single line - and it's packed with so much deep love, resignation, and quiet approval all at once. I was completely won over.
ソフトバンク | SMAP大移動 | 2009
Sixty seconds, almost entirely one continuous shot. Actually, it's so good you can't even figure out why they bothered cutting away for the scene where the Father Dog goes outside. The tension comes through the screen and hits you directly, on top of being overwhelmingly entertaining.
ユニクロ | UNIQLO LUCKY SWITCH | 2009
In 2009, the method UNIQLO chose to promote its year-end sale was a bold piece of advertising that took over other people's blogs and turned them into a lottery venue without asking.
SOYJOY | 低GI | 2009
In a SOYJOY commercial from around 2009, a woman doing yoga has such a beautiful body that I just stopped and stared. Instead of "filling that little hungry gap," I think this direction is overwhelmingly better.
PlayStation | Play Face | 2009
Emotion shows on your face. That's basically what the word "expression" means, so it's obvious - but this campaign captured that obvious truth head-on. The faces of people playing a game. That's it. But that's everything.
NESTLE | KIT KAT MAIL | 2009
Putting a chocolate bar straight into a mailbox. Who would have thought that could happen? But it did — and it became the day that idea won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
YUBARI RESORT | NO MONEY BUT LOVE | 2009
How do you advertise a city that collapsed under 35 billion yen in debt? Normally, you can't. So this city didn't hide the impossible—it just said it out loud. NO MONEY BUT LOVE. No money, but love.
NHK | COTO-TAMA | 2009
Just the title, COTO-TAMA, already hints at some kind of wordplay. This is a 2009 piece for NHK made by Hakuhodo. It's about little clusters of words rolling across a computer desktop, eventually making their way onto the wall of a building at a live event.
ホンダ | オデッセイ「いいクルマが好きだ。男ですから。」 | 2008
George Clooney just walks coolly through the streets of Milan. That's all it is, and yet it's absolutely captivating.
UNIQLO | UNIQLOCK | 2008
In 2007, the clock that kept more people awake than any other was born. UNIQLOCK is a blog widget that marks time with music and dance. Once you stick it on the side of your blog, you'll find yourself watching the five-second changes for ten minutes before you know it.
江崎グリコ | OTONA GLICO 〜25年後の磯野家〜 | 2008
In 2008, Sazae-san got a live-action adaptation nobody saw coming. And the premise was wild: it was set 25 years in the future. Tadanobu Asano as Katsuo, Rie Miyazawa as Wakame, Eita as Tara-chan, Shun Oguri as Ikura-chan. The casting alone was enough to make people go "wait, you can actually do that?"—a real testament to the strength of the idea.
複数企業協賛（ツインリンクもてぎ、20世紀FOX映画、読売新聞） | Friend-Ship Project 第4弾 家族の絆「ゆうなの夏休み」 | 2008
A five-minute family story woven together by two fine actors, Nao Omori and Sachiko Sakurai. Apparently this was one of those reversed projects where the client is decided first, and then creators make a long-form commercial around them. This was the fourth installment of that project, and the density of it—packing in all of life's bitter and sweet—was really something.
SONY | REC YOU | 2008
In 2008, SONY launched "REC YOU," a campaign built around a wild experience: send in a photo of your face, and it starts singing along to music. The submitted faces flooded banner ads, street-side screens, TV shows, and blog widgets everywhere. Digital technology and cross-media power combined as a trio to show off "the new world of Walkman."
資生堂 | あたらしい私になって | 2006
She just got dumped. She's on the verge of tears. But she washes her face, pats on some lotion... and little by little, you can feel her starting to turn hopeful again. This corporate commercial, released by Shiseido in the summer of 2006, talks about the value of makeup not from the "makeup" side of things, but from the "skincare" side. Kumaki Anri's simple, warm singing voice was as delicate and beautiful as the footage itself.
ソフトバンク | ブラッド・ピット&キャメロン・ディアス シリーズ | 2006
I remember the first time I saw this on TV, I actually said "whoa" out loud. You could feel the sense that SoftBank had bought Vodafone and was coming out swinging at the market, and then boom, there's Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz. It's a commercial that's purely about looking cool, nothing else. And it taught me that sometimes just being cool is enough.
富士ゼロックス | HUMAN BEATBOX | 2004
In 2004, a man appeared on TV making the sounds of drums, bass, and scratching, all with just his mouth. The word "human beatbox" wasn't something anyone knew back then. That feeling of "what is this?" flowed straight into living rooms across the country.
ADIDAS | VERTICAL FOOTBALL | 2004
They hung people on the wall of a building and had them play soccer. That alone is enough. Just imagining the faces of the people looking up, I can't stop grinning.
ネスカフェ | 朝のリレー | 2003
There's something striking about the simple fact that "somewhere on this planet, morning is always just beginning." It's obvious when you think about it, but it still catches you off guard - and that small realization, carried by the power of a poem, sweeps the viewer far, far away in an instant.
サントリー ペプシコーラ | イチローダンス | 2002
The finest product of Japanese baseball crossed the ocean in 2001, and the next year he was first in All-Star voting, won the batting title, the stolen base title, and MVP—so perfect it was almost anticlimactic. Riding that wave of success, this commercial started airing in February 2002. Brian Setzer's rockabilly blasts at full volume while Americans dance wildly, imitating Ichiro's famous batting routine.
ホットペッパー | アフレコCMシリーズ | 2002
There's a world here that I, not being from Kansai, could never have come up with on my own, and I deeply relate to that. But at the same time, I don't think this is something only a Kansai person could make—I think it's something only one genius, Takaaki Yamazaki, could have made.
ファンタ | ファンタ学園 先生シリーズ | 2002
These Fanta commercials aired from 2002 to 2004, featuring Dragon Sensei, DJ Sensei, Leather Jacket Sensei... A series that zeroed in hard on junior high and high schoolers—especially junior high kids—and perfected the art of being ridiculous (said as a compliment).
KDDI | ポーター編 | 2001
This is from 2001, starring Etsushi Toyokawa and Ryo Kase. Even back in 2015 when I first wrote about this, I thought it "hasn't aged a bit," and watching it again now, it really still hasn't. The casting and everything else feels completely natural, with no sense of dating at all. I think that's one sign of a truly great piece of work.
トヨタ | ファンカーゴ | 2000
This is a 2000 Toyota FunCargo commercial. It's built around a rapid-fire narration that crams in benefit after benefit, then lands on the line "Where I go and what I do is my own business" followed by the sound logo "Fun-Car-Go!" Despite being packed with information, it somehow doesn't feel annoying. This ad is now 18 years old (as of this writing), but the approach would still work perfectly well today.
ジョージア | 明日があるさ | 2000
On 8/26, 2000, Coca-Cola Japan's canned coffee brand GEORGIA used Kyu Sakamoto's song "There's Always Tomorrow" in a commercial, and it became an unprecedented revival hit. Both the commercial and the campaign turned into a huge talking point. When it was later made into a TV drama, the first episode pulled a 29.0% rating — the seventh-highest debut rating ever for a commercial broadcaster's drama series, and the highest ever on Nippon TV. That's how big this was.
プロバイダーZERO | Don't Spend Money!! | 2000
It's Steve Buscemi. That alone tells you they were swinging for the fences.
サントリー | BOSS セブン 世界を敵に篇 | 1999
This ad is from 1999. Watching it again, you can't help wondering what Uno Kanda is up to these days — but more than that, this commercial takes nitpicking to an almost legendary scale and turns it into pure entertainment.
コンタクトのアイシティ | 透明人間 | 1999
In 1999, an ad with absolutely wild energy hit Japanese TV. It's 60 seconds of glasses-wearing guys who get their hands on an invisibility drug and go streaking through the city, completely naked. There's a suppository, floating glasses, and more ridiculous details than you can count — yet somehow it's hilarious, and somehow it makes perfect sense. A true classic.
日本テレビ | 日テレ営業中 | 1999
I remember watching this with a pretty detached, cynical eye, thinking: well, it's a TV station, so naturally it's open 24 hours. But this stunt with Hama-chan turned out to be amazing.
アコム | むじんくん チャント星人シリーズ | 1996
In 1996, a commercial appeared where aliens in a UFO would say "Want to stop by Earth?" and come down to borrow money from Acom. This series, which swept the nation with its catchy "La-la-la, Mujin-kun♪" phrase, was a shocking piece of work that turned the heavy subject of consumer loans into something light and casual with its sci-fi style.
NTTドコモ | ポケベル「はじめる」 | 1996
In 1996, a 15-year-old girl lying on an octopus slide in a park, humming a little tune, appeared on TVs across Japan. "I got a pager for my birthday," she said in a sweet, slightly lisping voice. Her name was Ryoko Hirosue, and this commercial turned her into an instant star.
サッポロビール | 冬物語 | 1995
Don't you get the feeling there used to be a lot more commercials showing off good winter vibes like this? This is Sapporo's Fuyu Monogatari from 1995. Set to Cousin's "Fuyu no Fantasy," it shows young people spending time on a rooftop in winter.
日清食品 | カップヌードル麻婆・五目 | 1995
The second you hear "asabaa," your brain just goes "huh?" A female employee misreads "mapo" as "asabaa," confidently adds that it comes with a refined grandma, her boss explodes in anger, and reality snaps back. All packed into just 15 seconds.