When I stepped on to the Yamanote line yesterday to take the train from Shibuya to Mita where Keio University’s Mita campus is, I noticed something strange about the commercials being played on the TV monitors after a while.
They were only playing two ads or so and they were both for the same company, Docomo, a cell phone service provider. So, after getting bored with seeing these ads, I started to look around the train car and I realized that it was pretty red and white inside. In fact, all the paper ads, which cover the inside of every car, were red/white, the ads used by Docomo!
I looked down my car and into the next car and noticed that that car, too, had only Docomo ads. I don’t know if every car on that particular train was Docomo or if just the ads for those two particular cars were Docomo.
Usually, the close to a hundred paper ads in each car are taken by many, many different companies. At most, you might see one company take two spots. As for the commercials on the TV monitor, there are so many that I don’t think I see any repeats during the 15-20 minute ride I have to take.
Docomo must be doing some pretty heavy promotion to take every ad space in the car and also limit the TV monitor commercials to itself. I wonder how much that costs… probably a ridiculous amount.
Hey Robbie!
I’ve been reading your blog for a while and it’s really interesting for me as I’m planning to do an exchange semester at Keio too (starting in April 2008).
Maybe you can tell me bit more how it was in the beginning? Did you speak Japanese well? Are there many other exchange students?
(just send me an email)
Carry on with posting!
Thanks,
Sabina from Switzerland
yeah, that happens here in boston sometimes. but not to that extent. the park street train station usually gets this. i remember going in there one time and seeing nothing but tropicana ads everywhere. It does kind of make sense though; sometimes i walk by an ad, and it grabs my attention, but i’ve already walked by it and am not willing to walk back. so if the same ad weren’t repeated a couple of feet down, i’d proabably never have seen it.
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