Japanese X100 ad.. wow!

this ad doesn't work for me.
i am sure it works quite well for its intended audience in japan, and it might very well do the same for the western MTV audience.
facts are more than sufficient for me; no smoke and mirrors, please ...
 
funny, i was just googling this ad to see if i could find any reference to it here in japan, and i couldn't find a single thing. this ad is not being shown in japan :confused:

the language spoken in the ad is japanese, and most of the scenes are filmed in japan, but it appears that the intended audience is china (specifically hong kong). maybe they're just more liberal down there :confused:

I can't see it being officially shown in Japan - can you? I think they might have actually made it as a viral video - maybe for a camera show or advertising space in Japan, and hong kong is using it as more of a main advertising platform
 
facts are more than sufficient for me; no smoke and mirrors, please ...

Pretty much every other camera is sold by specification - 16megapixel this and face detection that. Most of them don't have a clear target audience, let alone a target audience that makes me interested in them. For example - m4/3 started off with the e-p1 which at first seemed like it was designed as a compact/2nd camera for pro-photographers, but later it was revealed that much of the marketing direction was toward women, because of it's compact size and cute looks. The samsung nx10 is probably targeted to people who want a DSLR but want it as small as possible. The NEX is targeted towards people who go to buy a DSLR but get convinced by the sales clerk to get a NEX instead.
The thing is, I don't care about spec lists or specification that much. It doesn't show what the camera has been designed for. Half of all of the compacts on the market at the moment have been designed to tick boxes in spec sheets, but in the real world they're really flawed because they're not really masters at anything.

I think the ad is brilliant, in that it's making it's target market crystal clear. You've got Daido, black and white, street, homeless, angst, sex and underworld (tattoos/yakuza), and poetic reflective dialogue.
In that, the ad is saying to me "this is not a camera for people who want a compact DSLR. This is not a camera for people who want face detection or care about megapixels. This is not a camera for young people who see it as being fashionable to carry it around on a strap. This is a camera for people who like documenting life around them - a street photographer, and it makes no excuses being that."

And it's not smoke and mirrors either, because it IS actually quite obviously designed as a street photographers camera. An 'everymans' m9, or a digital hexar AF.
Then again, maybe you don't identify with street photography, and that's why you don't identify with the ad. There's always going to be difference of opinion on what's good and what isn't.
 
I don't care for it. Some nudity is ok, but the sex is too graphic for a camera ad. The girl is the school uniform is cliche and I certainly wouldn't put it in the same ad with sex scenes. It may not be related, but too close for comfort.

I do agree that it does the job if getting people to talk about the ad means they will talk about the camera.

An example of another ad I don't understand the appeal of is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIDaSDrO3sA
Shows the kids drinking juice but they act like they've been drinking Cokes. Kids+caffeine = need for earplugs.
 
Pretty much every other camera is sold by specification - 16megapixel this and face detection that. Most of them don't have a clear target audience, let alone a target audience that makes me interested in them. For example - m4/3 started off with the e-p1 which at first seemed like it was designed as a compact/2nd camera for pro-photographers, but later it was revealed that much of the marketing direction was toward women, because of it's compact size and cute looks. The samsung nx10 is probably targeted to people who want a DSLR but want it as small as possible. The NEX is targeted towards people who go to buy a DSLR but get convinced by the sales clerk to get a NEX instead.
The thing is, I don't care about spec lists or specification that much. It doesn't show what the camera has been designed for. Half of all of the compacts on the market at the moment have been designed to tick boxes in spec sheets, but in the real world they're really flawed because they're not really masters at anything.

I think the ad is brilliant, in that it's making it's target market crystal clear. You've got Daido, black and white, street, homeless, angst, sex and underworld (tattoos/yakuza), and poetic reflective dialogue.
In that, the ad is saying to me "this is not a camera for people who want a compact DSLR. This is not a camera for people who want face detection or care about megapixels. This is not a camera for young people who see it as being fashionable to carry it around on a strap. This is a camera for people who like documenting life around them - a street photographer, and it makes no excuses being that."

And it's not smoke and mirrors either, because it IS actually quite obviously designed as a street photographers camera. An 'everymans' m9, or a digital hexar AF.
Then again, maybe you don't identify with street photography, and that's why you don't identify with the ad. There's always going to be difference of opinion on what's good and what isn't.


Great post
 
jonmanjiro - awesome, thanks for clarification. What makes me curious is why the ad is otherwise so distinctly japanese if it's made for the chinese market?
 
jonmanjiro - awesome, thanks for clarification. What makes me curious is why the ad is otherwise so distinctly japanese if it's made for the chinese market?

Do you find it distinctly japanese ? I think the ad feeds more the cliches that foreigner have about Japan.
 
Is the other thing shown on TV at all, in Hong Kong or elsewhere? I'm under the impression that it's just a viral video to start discussions like this.

You can't compare a viral video with a TV-whitewashed ad, the latter is almost inevitably going to be boring in comparison.
 
Well, that was different. Vast, provocative, and just enough off-kilter eroticism to get people out of their chairs (whether pro or con).

I largely liked it on first impression. I'll see how I feel in a week.

(And, yes, the other ad was the polar opposite.Almost cloyingly cute.)


- Barrett
 
I haven't seen the ad on TV yet, but bus stops everywhere are covered with the tattooed girl and the "threesome" blurb.

Awesome - I love that picture they're using of the tattooed girl. So much better than the usual stuff camera companies use for advertising (a plate on a table with a bread roll on it or maybe a bridge at sunset)
 
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