Shimbashi Station Gets Whisky Highball Melody

If you’ve passed through Shimbashi Station recently on a JR train, you may have noticed that it’s got a new arrival melody:

According to the above clip from NTV news, it turns out that Suntory has paid JR for to change Shimbashi Station’s melody to a tune used in its whisky highball commercials. They picked Shimbashi because it is known as a hub for Tokyo’s salarymen, who are known as big consumers of alcohol. The tune will catch the attention of commuters, and seems to have also attracted national news coverage.

According to data from Suntory, the number of stores in Japan serving whisky highballs has risen from about 10,000 to 90,000 in the last two years and it is apparently a popular menu item. It may be a sign of a major change in Japanese drinking habits, or it could be just be a fad/boom that will fade away in a couple years.

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http://www.onivoro.com.br Isaac Kojima

It’s my impression or nobody see anything bad about that?
Mark in Yayoi

I hate advertising as much as the next guy, but if you’re going to do it, this is probably the best way: as unobtrusive as possible!

I avoid riding on the Oedo line for just this reason. The ubiquitous announcements are also peppered with advertisements — at the exact moment that you’re listening for the name of the station! “The next station is Blah Central. For chicken ramen, get off here.”

Now that’s just ridiculous.

I prefer the Shimbashi way. In fact, I wouldn’t even have noticed that the melody was from a commercial unless I’d seen this video.

http://www.onivoro.com.br Isaac Kojima

My point is the lack of regulation on alcoholic bevereges and cigarretes in Japan. I remember back to my time in college, some papers about alcohol culture among college students. I think alcohol abuse and cigarret addiction are two big public health issues in the country.

LB

Alcohol and tobacco are regulated in Japan, you have to be 20 years of age to legally buy either one.

http://www.onivoro.com.br Isaac Kojima

Legal age to buy alcohol and tabacco is not regulation. That’s kind of stuff you can have in any country. And we know even that kind of prohibition can be avoid with the vending machines.

What should be regulated is the advertising, with more strict rules and warnings, ban all tabacco billboards and impose image warnings in cigarette packagings, like Canada, Brazil, Australia did. Alcohol ads shouldn’t be allowed in some public spaces, nor this kind of ad, subtle should be banned too.

Vonskippy

Good for them. The sooner the inefficient salarymen drink/smoke themselves to death, the sooner they can be replaced by robots. Yes I said ROBOTS!!!!!!!!
David

This advertising sinks right into the sub conscious mind of little children. People who develope marketing know this, if they didn’t know it, it would mean they had no education, and obviously if they work for suntory marketing in Japan they are well educated and well to do, so basically they are creating a future stream of customers,, power corrupts as a rule, and suntory whiskey has obviously gone too far with a little power..

LB

That “logic” would apply to all advertising done by anyone, anywhere – Suntory, Softbank, SMBC, UNICEF, WWF… everything. So should we “think of the children” by just banning everything, period, and keeping ourselves in little hermetically sealed bubbles?
sublight

This is nothing new. Or are you claiming you never heard “plop, plop, fizz, fizz,” “tastes great, less filling,” “reach out and touch someone” every 10 minutes when you were growing up?
http://billowykimono.blogspot.com/ Senor Science

If I had a Dollar for every idiot scaremonger claiming we need to ban something for the sake of the children I’d be a millionaire by now.

http://seoul-man.blogspot.com Jon Allen

I can’t be one hundred percent certain , but I am guessing that the melody at Ebisu Yamanote line station was changed to the Theme From the Third Man by request from the local Ebisu beer company.

I read in their museum at Ebisu, that they had a very popular TV commercial in 1974 with the theme tune, so it seems far too much of a co-incidence that it features at the station.
Paul

So you can buy out JR themesongs… hmm, I wonder…

Actually, advertising or not, this is great news. Shimbashi is well overdue for its own themesong. Theres something like 3 stations in a row there with the same themesongs. Given all those stations are also transfer points on the commuter network, it seemed crazy they weren’t all unique. Does it cover all platforms (=4? slightly different themes) or just the Yamanote?

Shimbashi Station Gets Whisky Highball Melody

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