Celebrities in Japanese Commercials

Japanese commercials have the habit of using American celebrities with their indirect adveritising, where most of the commercials that involve them relate nothing to what the product does.

As you can see when you watch these commercials they are do things very differently. I believe commercials offer a unique window into a culture and the Japanese commercials are no exception. You at once get to see how companies and often entire industries treat their customers. You see how the customers are handled and approached. The differences between North American and Japanese commercials are often significant, sometimes strangely similar, and not infrequently a mix of both.

I often think that Japanese commercials are very surreal, and it would appear to my untrained eye that this is due in no small part to the Japanese belief that, as a general rule, direct confrontation should be avoided. Unlike in North America you won't see any "we're better than the leading competition" or "Cleans whiter than Brand X and costs less!" in a Japanese commercial. Without this battery of carefully worded and often misleading data, Japanese commercials are forced to rely solely on visual and emotional impact to sell a product. This causes the commercials to be indirect and off topic, somewhat like Japanese business dealings. They don't care at ALL whether their commercials are grounded in reality. The sequence of sounds and images are often completely based in artistic fantasy, or use images completely unrelated to the product. Almost all of the commercials have no mention of the company, product or services until the very end. Catchy tunes, visual effects, and imagery are reccuring effects in the commercials. Some believe in Japanese culture that you should not have a lot to say, if you do, you are thought to be weird, self centered or interested; this is shown in the commercials by no mention about the product, and in some commercials there is no dialogue at all.

But this is how their commercials work. Please leave your comments below.



Here is a website that lists and shows all the commercials its called Panderers in Japan

There is also this site that lists this bloggers top 21 favorite Japanese Panderer ads

Here are some of my favorites:











From the Movie "Lost in Translation"









What do you think about these ads? Do you think the extraordinary cost of of the commercials are worth the final product?