[Meekro]

They're not selling the product itself, but the cute Japaneseyness of it. And that's good, if they managed to target their ads to the right people. I really loved the ad, and I think I'm in the right segment: I love cute anime, and I want to live in Japan someday!

The blog post wasn't totally clear on this point, but it sounds like the problem was that YouTube's ad tools weren't good enough to get them the fine-grained targeting they needed. They'd put in "anime" as a keyword and then their ad would be shown on totally unrelated videos. There is plenty of anime on YouTube -- if they could attach their ad to that, and nothing else, I think it would have done well.

[dmix]

None of the actual (appealing) candy was shown in the ad nor was the most interesting part of his business (the personal need that drove him to created a delivery service) communicated. I was a subscriber to Candy Japan for a few months and I really felt it undersold his offering.

It should have been:

1) a personal story of him going to Japan

2) him going back the US... and missing the awesome Japanese candy you can't (easily) find in western countries

3) him starting a service to ship Candy (right from Japan!) to people every month for a (not-to-expensive) subscription!!!

That's a great story/ad. His ad was generic and soulless. And the honestly annoying childish voiceover really didn't help sell it the candy to me at all.

[lugg]

That's a good idea but I suspect you're being a little hard on a guy that went to the expense and clear trouble of getting something like this made, dropping the coin and then sharing the story for us to pick apart.

I doubt anyone gets their video based marketing right the first time - another thing an agency would have helped him avoid.

Me: I don't really care about the video or the product, I'm just glad he shared the marketing experience.

[dmix]

True, good point, it's always easier to criticize then it is to put yourself out there and create something. I should have been a bit more reserved in my judgement.

[lotyrin]

Yeah, but imagine someone who regularly visits the country, or is from there originally that wants nostalgic candy and certainly does not want to associate themselves with weeb/otaku culture.

Or someone who is a weeb but feels guilt, hides their power level and wants to indulge their inner weebness but the messaging/branding here is a step too far.

Or a proud degenerate wizard who is turned off by the quality of the animation and voice acting (perhaps it sets off his "ugh dubs" trigger despite context and logic).

I think a slideshow of actual examples of products with a quality normal adult human voiceover explaining the value prop, or a video of a normal adult human unboxing a shipment, or edited clips of several normal adult humans emoting the experience ("What are these" "I can't read what this says here... oh they're gummy haha ... mmm grape") would go a long way.