Unimpressive Japanese commercials?
The Yomiuri reports that about 60% of commercials that air on Japanese TV are unimpressive:
The CM Research Center survey targeted 3,000 men and women aged between 6 and 89 living in the Kanto area. They were asked to write down a maximum of five TV commercials they liked or were impressed by every month.
According to the results, no respondents mentioned 10,147 ads for 777 companies out of 2,019 companies that aired TV commercials. Among those ads that went unmentioned, three companies spent as much as 300 million yen each to create and air commercials meant to publicize one product, while one company aired a commercial 905 times in a year.
Not every commercial can make it into a top 5 ranking, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those commercials are not working. The commercial embedded in this post probably wouldn’t even make it into my top 10 ranking of commercials airing on Japanese TV right now, but it has aired so many times that its song got stuck in my head – eventually convincing me to try their product (it’s actually pretty good).
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