What would you tell your partner if you met them again for the first time?

Japanese condom brand Skyn has always been about ‘soft love’ (see Ad Nut’s previous review of a uniquely concepted film for the brand). This time, Skyn goes even more off-tangent with an unexpected idea by agency partner UltraSuperNew Tokyo. Ad Nut supposes someone in the creative team thought to themselves: What if we put a couple under hypnosis and get them to meet each other for the first time? Will their feelings be rekindled?

In this experiment, longtime married couple Haruka Hatakeyama and Chiaki Hatakeyama volunteered to be hypnotised with an aim to ‘forget’ each other. They were then put in a room to get to know each other for the first time. At the end of the film, both parties agreed that they would like to see each other again. Imagine if they didn’t. Now that’s something Ad Nut would like to see. Perhaps on the big screen with the Hirokazu Kore-eda treatment.

Overall, the ad is an intriguing concept but Ad Nut cannot help thinking that the process of hypnosis depicted in the film is somewhat… staged. The way this segment is filmed looks no different to a magician’s trick and appears to be highly dramatised. Perhaps if the brand had performed this treatment onto a few other couples with varying results, it would have appeared more genuine. And at the risk of appearing too literal, Ad Nut also wonders how the concept links back to the product in question, or even the motto in question: ‘soft love, for years to come’.

The film will run online, on social channels, and seven synchronised digital OOH in Shibuya until August 22.

CREDITS

Agency: Ultrasupernew
Yousuke Ozawa, Creative Director, UltraSuperNew
Daiki Shimizu, Producer, UltraSuperNew
Alexander Tatsuki, Producer, Ultrasupernew
Mana Shigeki, Web Producer, UltraSuperNew
Rebecca Chen, Art Director, UltraSuperNew
Noga, Copywriter, UltraSuperNew

Production: Amana
Director: Tomokazu Saito

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