Advertising in Japan , a.k.a. WTF.

This was prompted by a couple of things. The first: a different thread in which I mentioned that the main “skill” possessed by “talentos” is pulling moronic faces and squealing things like かわいい, おいしい、 and へええええええ on cue. Someone responded that, in terms of the target audience, these do in fact constitute a form of talent, which I guess is true at least in semantic terms; it’s like saying that making a “reaction video” is a talent.

The other thing: yesterday I was out and about and noticed a very large advertising billboard for some company. A moving company, going by the name. The advertisement consisted of:

1) The name of the moving company, written in relatively small (but readable) text and

2) Extremely large photos of the faces of two gormless looking talentos (I think they’re a team as I’ve seen them in other such advertisements), with their mouths open extremely wide and pulling a “wacky” face.

That was it. That was the entire advertisement. A company name and two gurning talentos. My first thought was “next time I have to move house, that is literally the last company I will approach”.

So I got to wondering. I’ve heard it said that advertising, as an industry, employs people whose sole job is to study the psychology of what attracts people’s attention, what works, what doesn’t, choice of words, choice of colours, use of subconscious associations, and so on.

So either Japan has worked out how to do all of this with literally a company name and two faces, *or* Japan’s advertising industry, like it’s television industry, just doesn’t GAF and assumes that people will use any product or service as long as someone “famous” apparently endorses it.

Anyone here with an interest in / experience in this area, please chip in.

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/wues4t/advertising_in_japan_aka_wtf/