Trend: Blanket Marketing

Mixing the old with the new: Street marketing in Shibuya

It takes alot to get the attention of young people in Tokyo. With tons of flashing lights, video screens, screaming noise, and beautiful passers-by it’s kind of hard to stand out. During my visit to Shibuya last week I came across what seemed like a highly successful solution: Old people!

Shibuya in Tokyo is known for being ground zero for young, beautiful, and trendy Japanese who spend a lot of money. It’s hard, but very important to get their attention of course, but this campaign for Orange Range managed to do the job.

Orange Range (pronounced O-ren-jee Ren-jee) is a very popular J-pop group coming out with a new album called “Natural”. To promote the album the campaign set up many stations around Shibuya where promoters were wearing orange “Natural” t-shirts, announcing the album on loudspeakers, and handing out free items (I snagged an Orange Range “Natural” bag). What really caught everyone’s eye, however, was the large group of elderly people walking from station to station dressed in orange robes, afro wigs, waving to everyone, and carrying Orange Range “Natural” signs. Believe me, nothing sticks out in Shibuya like old people and this particular group had more than enough old to go around.

The result? Well, besides many people staring or following the group, many passers-by with a camera phone snapped at least a picture or two. Not only were they exposed to the ad, but they have a picture of it that they’ll show to their friends as well.

Blanket marketing like this is perfect for an area like Shibuya with high traffic and people who are shopping around more than going from Point A to Point B. They get multiple exposures and a unique experience that they’ll probably tell their friends about as well. It works in Shibuya and will certainly continue to work here, but this particular case could only work in Shibuya.

Now, if Orange Range started making decent music it might even work on me.

Rate this post:

No rating yet