Wazoo TV Commercials - Funny Japanese TV Commercials

My good friend and partner in video and cinema, Ken Nishikawa, recently finished several TV commercials for an online ticketing service in Japan called Wazoo.jp.

George Williams (top) Sheena Rogers (bottom)

I directed the commercials and camera work was by Ken Nishikawa and we both edited them together with Ken doing all the hard work and me sleeping on the sofa.


The commercials are all in Japanese (duh! This is Japan) but hopefully you can enjoy them.


The first one is a play on words and makes fun of game shows.


The main character, George Williams, says, 
"What is the best thing for your life's prosperity?"
"Cheese?"
"Kazu?" (meaning King Kazu a famous soccer player)
"Mazu?" (meaning Mazui - tastes bad)
"Wazoo!"

Starring, in order: George Williams, Wray Rogers. Michio Hashimoto, Sheena Rogers

The second in the series is a parody of a very famous 80's TV commercial. In the original TV commercial, Japanese businessmen used a stop smoking aid called "Paipo." Here is the original commercial:

The first guy holds up the Paipo and says, "With this I stopped smoking." The second guy does and says the same thing. The third guy holds up his pinky finger and says, "With this, I quit my job." In Japan, holding up a pinky finger means "having a girlfriend" or "woman." The joke is that it insinuates he is married and was having an affair at work so he was forced to quit (by his wife or boss, we don't know).


Here is our commercial parody:

We parody the same commercial, but, at the end, the third gentlemen holds up three fingers like a "W" meaning Wazoo. And he says, "With this I made an event!"  Wazoo is an D.I.Y. online social media ticketing service for events and allows regular people to sell advanced tickets for all their events, get-togethers, and seminars without having to pay outrageous sums to the standard ticket agencies. It also allows for companies to do data mining so that they can research their users. See Wazoo's site here: http://www.wazoo.jp/ (Sorry Japanese only for now). 


There's a few more commercials in the series. I hope to have some more perhaps later this year or next year. Making TV commercials is fun.


NOTE: The first TV commercial began running on the TV Tokyo network on Feb. 1, 2012. The Paipo parody was, unfortunately, banned because of political correctness as the stations said some women's group complained that the upright pinky finger is discriminatory to women.

Weird Japanese TV Ads for Pretz Crackers

What's this all about? I don't know... I wish, though, that they didn't have the guy breaking into the commercial and narrating at the end... It would have been cooler just to have these three go on and on and everyone wonder, "What the heck was that all about?"

Lark Cigarette TV Commercials in Japan in 1990's With James Coburn

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

Many famous Hollywood actors and actresses who would never appear on a TV commercial in the United States, appear on commercials in Japan. From what I hear, it is considered "cool" for the Hollywood famous to be on commercials in Japan. Besides being "cool" these stars can get paid huge amounts of money to appear in commercials while in Japan and they take a vacation while they're at it.

Throw on top of that how Asian people really don't care about these sorts of things and these stars can have their cake and eat it too as appearing in commercials for products that they would never advertise in the States is a gravy train job in Japan.

There's no risk of doing a commercial in Asia for a product that might damage one's career as people in the west will never see it.

Currently, there is a very silly TV commercial with Leonardo DiCaprio selling automobile tires here.

James Coburn

Up until the early 1990's, cigarettes commercials were still on Japanese TV. At that time an American  star, who was thought of as the epitome of the macho American actor, James Coburn appeared in many TV commercials for Lark cigarettes. In several of the later ones, he even spoke Japanese. Even Roger Moore of James Bond fame gets into the act.

Here, once again, in thanks to the Internet Archives, is a retrospect of Lark Cigarette TV commercials featuring James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Roger Moore.

DOUBLE CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SCREEN

DOUBLE CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SCREEN

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Keywords: TV Commercial, Mike Rogers, Marketing Japan, commercial, cigarettes, James Coburn, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Lark, Bronson, Roger Moore