Having a bad day? Watch a Japanese commercial ad.

Have you ever seen any Japanese commercial video that absolutely blew your mind after watching it? I did twice when I was browsing my news feed on Facebook. I found it very ridiculous. But then it caught my attention so I started to watch more weird, funny and all sorts of Japanese creations.

But two commercials stood out for me. Watch it for yourselves.

Gin No Sara Commercial

(Subtitle is unavailable but you’ll still enjoy it.)

Blendy coffee commercial

(subtitles are available in different languages when you click on settings)

Japanese commercial ads set a different tone from the rest. Why? Let me give you four reasons.

1. They are not afraid to be creative. The play of colors, movements, visual effects and songs create an entertainment for the audience. People’s span of attention is getting shorter. According to National Center for Biotechnology Information from 12 seconds in 2002, the average attention span in 2015 reduced to 8.25 seconds and the average length watched of a single internet video is 2 minutes and 7 seconds. Imagine how good your video must be in order for people to watch the rest.

2. They are good storytellers.  I don’t speak Japanese and I certainly can’t understand it. But I got the message of the brand. The ending is not what I have expected but the commercials took me on a journey. They tell stories I can relate to and have experienced at least once in my life. That’s the magic why people were hooked, sometimes dumbfounded, after watching  them.

3.They inject consumer behavior concepts in products such as Elaboration likelihood model. Elaboration what??? Let me explain what this is. ELM is a concept developed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo in mid-1980’s that aim to describe an attitude change brought by stimuli, either a positive or a negative one. There are two major routes to persuading the mind: the central route and the peripheral route. The central route is used when the receiver is motivated and has the capacity to think about the message. On the other hand, the peripheral route is used when the receiver has little or no interest in the topic or has lesser ability to process the message. Using humor and ambiguity in the commercial ads make a person to consciously think about what he or she has just watched and try to make sense out of it. Another interesting idea is humor being often and best used in advertising for lower risk goods, those that are consumable and routine purchases such as snacks and drinks (Weinberger, Marc G., et al., 2016).

4. Function + emotion is applied. Who would ever think of representing the feelings of a cow through a person? Or a well-rounded excellent dancer as a tuna? Commonly, products in advertisement speak about their benefits only. However in these ads, from the functional aspect they moved towards tapping the emotions of the audience.They have personified the product, created a character out of it and then built a connection to the audience. For example the Blendy commercial, instead of  using a usual celebrity drinking his or her favorite coffee in the morning, they showcased the struggles of a student who worked hard to graduate and hopefully achieve her dreams. It is given that a product must offer a benefit to the customer, however in this age, there are thousands of products out there. Therefore Japanese advertisers, through the combination of function + emotion, made sure that it stays with the audience.

I know I will continue to be entertained, most of the time dazed, by these Japanese videos. How about you? Let me know if you agree with me or not. I want to learn from you too.

tweet-buzzing all the way!

“ANO?! Buntis siya? Sino ama?” (What?! She’s pregnant? Who’s the father?)

“Masarap sa Chicken Charlie.” (Chicken Charlie has delicious food.)

“Nakapunta ka na ba sa divisoria? Ang gaganda ng damit nila ngayon at mura pa!” (Have you gone to divisoria? Their clothes are beautiful and cheap!)

Facebook: A friend or a foe?

I found this recent article of the study of the correlation of time spent in Facebook and reported grades in schools. According to this, using Facebook and student grades have this kind of relationship that is contrary to what common sense would suggest. Maybe one would think that too much Facebook cause students to lessen their study time. However, the data done by Reynol Junco states otherwise.

Superman in the Philippines

Filipino Superman

Have you heard about the Filipino who undergo a surgery just to look like Superman? If you haven’t, let me introduce Herbert Chavez, 35 years old, a huge Superman fan. I myself is a fan of Superman. To validate that,

Cyber bullying

Have you ever been bullied before? How about Cyber bullied? While I was browsing my timeline in twitter, I found this post by GMA’s “Think Before You Click Campaign”.

Cyber bullying was first invented

It’s not the same anymore.

Being an OrCom major, there are a lot of opportunities in the way. We are trained to be flexible to fields like Public Relations, Marketing, Corporate Communication, and of course, Advertising. Often said that we are “jack of all trades but master of one, which is COMMUNICATION”. Besides our major subjects like public relations, communication strategies, approaches to communication in management, technical writing and a whole lot more exciting subjects ,

Anti-Angry Birds Bill

Who wouldn’t get addicted to the game Angry birds? Once you start playing, you can not just stop. Knowing our Filipino culture, we are fond of these kind of games. We’ve been hooked with SIMS, farmville, pet society, restaurant city, and of course, PLANTS vs. ZOMBIES. Filipino netizens are leading the Facebook community in Asia and we are not far from being the most active netizens in the world.

After searching for the topic that interests me, I found this cool website, So, What’s News? It featured the proposal of Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo which is the “Anti-Angry Birds Bill”. He got irritated when he went to 168 Mall in divisoria to look for Christmas gifts and found a jam-packed full of Angry Birds items in the stores. After proposing House Bill 5316 or the anti-planking bill, here comes House Bill 5379 or the anti-angry birds bill.

Minions are real.

What’s OUT?

Division of labor.

What’s IN?

Hyperspecialization.

To give you a fun introduction about this, let me introduce the super adorable and efficient MINIONS (from the movie Despicable Me). Please watch! 🙂

Is this the SIGN?

Communication is inevitable. You cannot not communicate. We communicate to learn, express, point out ideas, warn, rebuke, correct, teach and etc. Our ability to do all these things is what separates us from other animals. We are superior indeed. But the question is how well do we use this God-given skill? Let us try to put into test some of the signs we see in different places.