Marui and FRUiTS

I’m not a very fashioned person, but i admire a lot the fashion since presented in FRUiTS magazine (an iconic street fashion magazine) and I got blown away when I read at trends in japan that FRUiTS is producing a retail space in the new Marui department store in Shinjuku. This gave me the idea to talk a little bit about the renewal of the brand Marui, or if you prefer 0101.

The case was presented by Morihiro Harano, creative director at Drill Inc.,   at Dentsu Brazil, and here are some highlights of the presentation.

The main objective was to transform Marui, a popular clothing and fashion retail store in Japan, so they were giving a fashion therapy to Japanese people.

The Capsule logo was placed everywhere in Japan, Banners, front lights, subway posters etc.

This was just a teaser. The real campaign started with capsule vending machines, and the capsules had underwear inside and candy medicine.

The third part of the campaing was the Candy restaurant , that served everything in candy form, it became a huge media sensation.

The fourth part Drill projected huge images in the facade, to indicate that Marui was undergoing a renewal and became a fashion icon store.

Over 100.ooo costumers went to the opening day and on the opening month the store had and average 70.000 visits a day, achieving 120% of the sales goal.

The campaign is considered the most successful ever produced for Marui.

For more info visit Drills web site or click HERE for the PDF with the highlights

Paying to Advertise

This is not new but vending masters Apex Corp laid out plans that will bring free or subsidized non-alcoholic drinks, here is an excerpt of the article posted in Japan Probe

“TOKYO – Thirsty Japanese will soon be able to drink coffee or other non-alcoholic beverages at a low price or even for free — as long as they watch a 30-second advertisement on the vending machines.

Vending machine operator Apex Corp. will start a service next month to turn its machines into a new medium for advertisers, who will pick up the partial or full cost of drinks.

Apex runs 35,000 vending machines across Japan that serve drinks in paper cups, generally priced at 70 to 120 yen (60 cents to one dollar) a cup.

Under the ‘MediCafe’ project, the vending machine will play an advertiser’s video for around the 30 seconds it takes to pour the drink and dispense a paper cup with an advertisement printed on it.

‘We will select the locations of vending machines which would best suit the customers targeted by advertisers,’ said an Apex company official.”

This sounds too good to be true, but a great way to do new advertising and brand development.

Oh the release was in May 2007, so probably is already working in some locations… or maybe not anymore. If anyone has more information about it tell me