'Fantastic Anime Machine' promotes DoCoMo's range of entertainment

Client: NTT DoCoMo

Agency: Hakuhodo

Market: Japan

Details: The video draws attention to DoCoMo’s dAnime Store with an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine (a popular device in Japanese advertising). The machine is made up of multiple screens that show an assortment of anime content, including ‘Anohana: The flower we saw that day’; ‘Ouran High School Host Club’; ‘My love story’; and ‘Psycho-pass’.

A spokesperson from Hakuhodo’s Team Gari-Gari, which runs a news site dedicated to otaku (nerd) marketing, noted that many otaku enjoy creating unofficial remix videos of anime. The spokesperson said the DoCoMo initiative was riding “a wave of ‘anime-mad’ culture”.

The Rube Goldberg machine featured in the 1.5-minute video is real, and was apparently a major challenge to put together, taking 80 hours and 400 rounds of filming.

Campaign’s comment: Rube Goldberg has inspired numerous campaigns in recent years (and recent weeks: see this one from 3M), but this is an interesting take on the concept and the result is energetic and entertaining. It also clearly understands its target audience.

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CREDITS

ECD: Kazuhiro Suda
CD: Ryutaro Hayashi
Planner: Kaname Murayama / Shinnosuke Yokoyama
Account director: Yosuke Hagiwara
Producer: Go Ito
Director: Kei Takahashi