Trends in Japan - Marketing and Innovation from Tokyo

Toshiba Gives You 15 Minutes Of Love

Darrell Nelson — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:28:44 +0000

Toshiba have attempted to make battery charging sexy and attractive in their latest campaign “15 Minutes Of Love“, which lets any man experience what it is like to have not one but five attractive girls vying for your attention. A microsite set up for the campaign lets users exchange emails with girls of their dreams in the same time it takes to charge one of Toshiba’s new batteries.

The site plays on the idea of “Moteki” (meaning the period when a man is particularly popular with the opposite sex) and is currently a very popular word in Japan thanks to a film of the same name last year. The word has been banded around a lot recently and can refer to either love life, career or money and with the run up to Valentines Day Toshiba have jumped on the “moteki” bandwagon. Visitors to the site enter their name and age and the countdown begins with the five girls sending personalized mails to you trying to grab your attention. A counter at the top of the screen counts down the 15minutes you have which represents the standard time it takes to charge Toshiba’s electric batteries installed in the Mitsubishi EVs. The more you reply the more the mails encourage you, but if you can’t keep up with all five girls the mood gets increasingly impatient represented in the girls picture as they become more annoyed.

The end result of how many girls you have kept happy or more to the point who has given you the push is displayed at the end and can be tweeted out or posted to Facebook as well. It is a pretty fun campaign from Toshiba that latches onto a particularly popular catchphrase in Japan at the moment, and a novel way to turn something as dry as battery charging into something a bit more colorful.

RemembAR Facial Recognition App

Darrell Nelson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:26:37 +0000

Ever forgotten where you were when you met someone, or the name of someone you met at a party? A new app called “remembAR” uses facial recognition software making it now possible to capture the name and location of the people you meet simply by snapping their picture on your phone.

Reminiscent of something out of Minority Report the app, currently only available for Android phones, is able to bring up in real time the name and details of people who you snap, superimposing the information on the screen as you frame the subject in your camera. It can’t bring up the details of any random people you point the camera at though, the app connects to your Facebook profile and flags any of the “friends” in your network when they appear in the viewfinder. Anyone previously tagged in any photos on Facebook can be matched and the data of where you met, the time and the place are automatically recorded when you take the picture, the details can then be uploaded straight onto your Facebook wall.

The app works by utilizing face.com and Open CV along with the Facebook API, and depending on the amount of tagged photos of the person is up to about 95% accurate according to reports. The developers have tried to answer the possibility of privacy concerns by stating that it only tags those who are already in your Facebook “friends” rather than any user with a public profile at this stage. However those Facebook users who develop a large number of non-real life friends on their profile could be surprised when they take a photo at a crowded bar or area and an “online” friend’s name pops up.

The facial recognition app was developed as part of the Tokyo Startup Weekend and has a lot of potential, whether it be tying in other social media services or as part of marketing campaign. I can already imagine this type of program installed in a shop window recognizing those who have liked a certain brand’s Facebook homepage and connecting directly with them whenever they look into the display.

ZecOO Electric Bike Pushes Design Boundaries

Darrell Nelson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:04:32 +0000

Looking like something out of Tron, design company Znug have come up with a completely amazing looking electric motorbike. Called the ZecOO, the new bike is a sleek, agressive and completely unconventional design.

The bike is designed by former Toyota designer Kota Nezu and assembled and built in a custom bike shop Suehiro in Tokyo, taking only 6 months from concept to prototype. The frame is made from a combination of solid wood and alloy and looks to push the boundaries of what the future for EV bikes could be. Rather than conventional fork steering the front uses a central hub system and sits on cantilevered shock absorbers and driven by rear wheel belt. The bike’s homepage has a whole collection of images of the building process and original concept sketches that are also worth checking out.

Right now there are no indications of specs for the bike and it will be officially tested in spring of this year but the designers are promising performance that definitely matches the look of the bike, which we take to mean pretty aggressively fast. The aim was to create a bike that is not only reliable technically and inline with the future of mobility but also one that takes into account the power of design, “a design that grabs the heart”.

It is not clear when it could be commercially available but reports suggest that it could go for just under $8million, a massive price tag despite its outstanding design. Despite probably not emitting any of the usual grunts a super-bike make with the electric engine, it would certainly turn heads when riding through the streets of Tokyo.

Toyota Lets You Become A Sportscar

Darrell Nelson — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:11:47 +0000

Toyota just recently launched their latest sports car the “86″, and to promote the new vehicle before it hits the market in Spring time they have released an app, that in their words, turns your own body into the sports car. The “I am 86″ app doesn’t let you imagine life as an octogenarian as the name suggests but actually lets users race around anywhere they choose, flash their lights, honk their horns and drift around corners and record the “race”.

The free app uses the phone’s built in camera as if a windshield for the car and the accelerometer measures speed and drift around corners whilst recording the journey as a video. It is a fairly low rent game but entertaining none the less, in particular the ability to flash your lights using the phone’s camera light. You create your own routes running around any area and the phone’s speakers play the equivalent sound of an 86 engine as if you are driving. Once recorded you can log your race and enter it onto a score board for others to rate through social media. Like many games it would also come in handy to keep kids amused when stuck in traffic, or at least add some entertainment to your usual walk around the shops (or in our case in the office today).

It is interesting to see more and more brands using the free app as their choice of promotional tool recently. As smartphone’s gain more and more market penetration, a truly original and entertaining app offers a nice connection to the consumer as well as giving them added value. The obvious tie ups with social media as well can often offer more return on the brands investment.

New App Controls Your Dreams

Darrell Nelson — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:18:27 +0000

Ad agency Hakuhodo’s Future Technology Works department have come up with a new app that controls your dreams. The Yumemiru (translated as see the dream) app lets users select different scenarios to dream about and then through sound influences your thoughts while you snooze.

The free app has 8 different scenarios to choose from including a walk in the forest, at the beach, getting rich, flying and even for those romantically disposed a scenario that stimulates dreams of love tailored for both men and women. However, it might be a little perturbing having a young girls voice whispering phrases such as “I love you”, “I want to hold your hand” and “I want to be with you” in your ear all night (especially if you are with your partner!). After selecting the type of dream you want to drift off into and putting the phone to sleep the app runs in the background and detects the time passed before you go into REM, which is when you are at your most influenceable. The soundtrack is then triggered at the right time hoping to alter the users dreams.

Users can also select how influenced they want their dreams to be which alters the amount of times the sound is played. The app also has an alarm feature that will wake you up after your night of pre-determined dreaming and lets users share how good their dream was as a result of the app through social media. However if you wake up yearning to buy a new Toyota as well as the boyfriend or girlfriend you desire, it could be that Hakuhodo have slipped in some subliminal advertising with your dreams!