People who work in advertising are psychologically unwell. It takes several huge leaps of illogic to construct a 30-second narrative that can catch a viewer's attention and somehow raise their awareness of a product or service. The economy of time in this format is rather hopeless. One must choose between being memorable and properly informing potential customers. A lot of advertisers are lazy, so they'll just use a licensed pop song that has nothing to do with their client's product, then bombard their audience with an assortment of loosely related images. This has resulted in some deeply misguided television ads, like the one that uses Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" to promote a family cruise package. Because if you want to convince affluent middle-class people that they can have a great time sailing the Caribbean, the best way to do it is to force them to associate your company with drug-fueled sexuality and a movie about heroin addiction.

While American ad agencies act like the West's clueless, Billy Joel fan of a dad, Japan fills the role of the world's chemically imbalanced uncle. Watching most Japanese commercials is the advertising equivalent of being the captive audience to a man who smells like beef jerky and thinks nothing could thrill you more than stories about that time he almost hooked up with "one 'a them dudes what looks like a lady".

I don't think Japanese companies want to coddle their customers into buying their products, I think they want to scare them all the way to the supermarket.

What The Hell Is Going On?

From what I can tell, some kind of food company has decided that the most effective ad campaign involves convincing customers that their products will cause them to question their own sanity. Seeing as I don't speak or read any Japanese, and my web browser is a racist that doesn't accept foreign alphabets on principle, I don't even know what this company actually sells, let alone what the dog-faced foodstuffs are saying. Every commercial follows roughly the same format. An individual of seemingly good mental health is minding his or her own business, only to be interrupted by some kind of small, round food with a face and something to say. Sometimes it's a bean, sometimes it's a pea, sometimes it's a nut. I don't think that even matters. When all is said and done, the victim of the psychotic episode lapses into an acute depression upon realizing they've finally cracked. Somehow, this makes Japanese people want to buy something.

I've tried to place the concept for these commercials in context of something I might understand. What if an American company took this same approach? Imagine this scenario: A construction worker is just going on his break. He goes to the vending machine and decides on our advertiser's product, let's say it's potato chips. When he opens the bag and reaches inside, he pulls out a chip with the face of an innocent fawn. The fawn-chip then reassures the construction worker that his decision to support his daughter's abortion was the right thing to do, that she's far too young to have a child and the adoption system is already overcrowded with needy kids. And oh, by the way, Ruffles are on sale for Labor Day.

Doesn't work for you, either, huh?

What's Actually Happening?

A company called Mame Shiba which sells, among other things, Edamame, put together an ad campaign using a play on words. Apparently, the term Mamejishiki means "trivia", while the word Mame means "bean". So, they have various bean and bean-like products regaling cartoon characters with bits of random trivia, like how smelly it is inside a kangaroo's pouch or how many bacteria exist on the average pair of lips. Somehow, this sells name-brand foods to Japanese people.

How Accurate I Was:

7/10- It's still a random, ridiculous ad campaign that has as much empathy as a Martian robot. The only mitigating factor is the pun. Even though I don't know much about Japanese, three extra syllables still seems like a stretch.