Japanese TV commercials — the word is always abbreviated as “CM” in Japanese — never fail to impress me with their creativity. Like one commercial airing right now for Georgia Coffee’s new European Blend, in which former Japanese national soccer coach Philippe Troussier moves from the Eiffel Tower across the screen to Tokyo Tower (a scale replica, proving that the Japanese secretly wish they were part of Europe) to hand a can of hot coffee to a hardworking Japanese construction worker. Or the ongoing adventures of the cute white dog Otousan (“dad”), which lady at Softbank was surprised to hear have quite a following on the Internet. Often the point of a TV commercial is to plant the name of a brand in your mind in a weird way. That’s the aim of a new CM run by the Seiyu department store/supermarket chain (incidentally owned by Walmart), which feature a Russian girl at a Japanese speech contest reading a heavily accented speech about how it’s mottainai (“a terrible waste”) that more people don’t come in and buy from the store chain.
Japanese TV commercials are always entertaining.
