So…here is a super weird campaign that launched this week, because uhhhhh?
We do not drink Kirin beer (though we believe we have tried it in the past), but we are fascinated by this ad due, primarily, to the implication that everyone could have a more satisfying and ultimately successful life with the help of a pet elephant.
We don’t speak Japanese, but we think we get it: the elephant helped this kid become a professional athlete. Or the elephant became a big soccer star. Or…OK, we don’t get it at all.
We came across the ad on Brandchannel–the blog run by Omnicom consultancy and former Bill Grizack employer Interbrand–yesterday. We don’t know at the moment which shop made the spot, but the Kirin “Beer Bottle Orchestra” clip that launched about a year ago was created by Hakuhodo, which claims to be the oldest agency in Japan.
We cannot seem to find much of anything about this spot online, but we have inquired with AB InBev, which is now the parent company of Kirin. We wanted to post on it primarily because we have many questions, like where the hell did this idea come from and how did the production crew manage to get the elephant to behave so well in certain portions of this ad? Also, won’t the pachyderm get much, much bigger at some point? At least we’re clear on one thing: elephants do not intentionally get drunk.
Good thing this kid didn’t have a dog or cat. As one of the worst episodes of the early, classic Simpsons taught us, “normal” pets don’t react too well to elephants.
In totally unrelated news, did you know that Kirin had to settle a suit last year admitting that American consumers who drink it are, in fact, consuming something that was brewed in the U.S.? Finally, here’s a Kirin ad from Japan starring George Clooney and the animal kingdom’s biggest Bernie Sanders fan, because why the hell not?