Advertising in Japan is incredibly creative, and I sometimes find myself enjoying the way a message is delivered even though I might not care about the product being offered. Often advertisers will try to come up with a label for a certain group, to make it easier to reach that group with its advertising. Clothing retailer Aoki invented the word “freshers” to describe the new crop of fresh, young university graduates who are just entering the workforce, and JR targeted the profitable segment of women over the age of 50 who take vacations in groups with the positive-sounding word “nice middy.” Train advertising is also very creative, and one way to get your message into the minds of a lot of people is to “jack” (hijack) a train, which is when a company reserves every inch of ad space, making it impossible to look at anything else while you ride. Recently the Interwebs were buzzing with pictures of the “One Piece Train” which publisher Shueisha launched to commemorate the manga’s selling 200,000,000 copies (enough to reach 4000 km into space, if you’re keeping score).
A popular Japanese advertising strategy is “train-jacking.”
