This Japanese Febreze ad looks a bit like the start of a kaiju movie 【Video】
Before moving to Japan, I always liked to imagine that Japanese TV shows would be a cross between Takeshi’s Castle and Iron Chef . In reality, television here is far less entertaining , and seems to consist predominantly of carefully orchestrated panel shows and broadcasts which are so plastered with gaudy graphics and subtitles that I often feel as if I’m reading more than I’m watching when I sit in front of my TV set.
Thankfully, Japan’s primetime ads are usually far more quirky and entertaining. Take this recent commercial for odour-removal spray Febreze, for example, which features a giant, gurning sun dual-wielding bottles of the stuff.
I’ve never really understood people’s love of odour-eliminating products like Febreze. The way I see it, bad smells exist for a reason: they’re nature’s way of telling us to get as far away from the thing from which the whiff is emanating, lest it be hazardous to our health. If something’s so dirty, sweat-covered or old that it starts to smell, you either wash it or throw it away.
Still, the stuff does come in handy when you live in a shoebox apartment and everything from your couch to your curtains reeks of curry or kimchi following a particularly spicy cook-off, or after coming home from a bar with your one good dry clean-only suit smelling of cigarette smoke.
But why market your product by having people sniffing dirty things and saying how nice they smell when you can have a giant, talking sun emerging from the between the clouds like some kind of movie monster?
Take it away, Japan!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsf9lX45Kp8&w=580&h=357]
Thank you, giant sun! Now I don’t have to wash my bedsheets for another week!
Source/screenshots: YouTube – P&G Japan
