Memo to the Top

Bucho, please choose this ad for our campaign.

To: Hirose Bucho, Advertising Division #3

From: Naito

Sir,

I know it is not my place, me being only 17 years with Suntory and all, but I wish to suggest—no, strongly yet humbly urge—that we lead with the above mock up for our late-Spring ad campaign.

First, the message is so fresh.

“On your way back? Drink at home.”

Woah. While we Japanese have been drinking alone at home maybe for hundreds of years, never before has anyone actually come right out and suggested this as a target behavior. It’s so unmarried! So bereft of friends and even acquaintances!

Suntory wants me to combini-bag some cold ones and then sit on my 4-mat carpet watching TV till I pass out.

I relate to the guy here.

Like me, he also buys his wrinkle-free clothes at Aoyama Men’s Fashion Plaza (or possibly Taka Q?), two for one, and he wears a backpack to work. With how much you and the other directors yell at me for my “millennial backpack,” I’m surprised we are going with this.

But pleased and so impressed! Don’t get me wrong!

Suntory looks like for once it actually sees 3.1 million yen a year commuter salarypeople from Higashi Urawa. Each morning this young man, like me, wedges into the 8:42AM Keihin Tohoku Line butt first, raising both hands up to clamp on the the roof of the door for final squunch-in leverage! His deer-in-the-headlights eyes also speak to me. As he comes home from work every day at 11:30PM he stares blankly ahead. He is wondering…if this is lifetime employment, why did I ever think this would be a good idea? Did I fight my way from pre-school all the way into Hitotsubashi University for this?

Hahaha. Just kidding! I love being a Suntory Man! Working here is fantastic! And this ad makes me even more proud as we embrace the True Zeitgeist of our times.

But seriously. I think we made a brilliant decision going with Joe Blow Suzuki kun here, rather than yet another (frankly, forgive me) unrealistic ad spotlighting a 54-kilo, androgenous Taiga Drama star whose only other claim to fame is singing the hit refrain “La la la, Omote Sando Niiiiiiiiiights.” We are now representing the real people. And this guy is it!

He is surrounded by faceless, blurred people. All scurrying home to their own one-room danchi, just as alone and friendless. I also note his white plastic combini bag…not even showing our Kinmugi Beer…

Wow. Can I just say it? This is an ARTIST’S eye for the dreariness of modern day living.

Poor guy. He has been yelled at all day. But now just after leaving the 7-11 he is thinking at least my job and my life give me the 612 yen needed for 4 Kinmugi Beers and an instant UFO Yakisoba. And tonight is Tuesday when all my favorite TV programs are on—so much better and different than the shows on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I will drink these 4 Kinmugi, eat these noodles (and probably the two last pieces of Snow-brand Laughing Cow Cheese wedges in my student-size fridge). And when I wake at 8:05 tomorrow I will be fresh and ready for the panic-run to my station to just barely catch the 8:42 to start my day again.

Hirose Bucho, you are a genius! (And so of course are my 21 Kachos and Kakaricho Dairis who I actually report to. Please don’t think I’m trying to do an end-run by contacting you direct…)

I’m just so moved.