New Advertising from Japanese Super Heroes

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Secret Trick Virtual Operations

(photo credit: Bandai Official Channel on YouTube)

The range of creativity YouTube enables for its audience is mass. Music videos, online commercials, skits, you name them. Corporates are no stranger to making those contents as the video streaming website has become a major social media platform .

Actor Ukyo Matsumoto explains how to play Ganbarizing.

(photo credit: Bandai Official Channel on Youtube)

Toy company Bandai is no exception with their newly launched video series named Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Secret Trick Virtual Operations. The 10-minute video series features super heroes from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid transforming with a step by step explanation of their transformation device. The videos also have the actors demonstrate the company’s arcade game Ganbarizing as the actors themselves, rather than the characters they portray.

The “simulation” not only requires the heroes to check their suits’ power status once transformed, but also in reality, is an eye-opening form of advertisement for the following five reasons.

(photo credit: Bandai Official Channel on Youtube)

1. It demonstrates how the toy works. The fictional device used for transforming is also the toy sold at stores, so the younger audience will see how to play with it and their “want” to buy the product will be stimulated.
2. Income will generate from displayed advertisements. Advertise, promote, and getting money from doing so? Talk about making money.
3. The video borrows footage involving CGI from the show. This most likely reduces the budget to be spent to create new media content.
4. It gives actors from the show an appearance outside of TV. The actors are basically reenacting a scene from the show, just in a different way, and demonstrate how to play Ganbarizing. The more appearances, the more money for the tough survivors in the citing industry.
5. Each episode is in conjunction with the TV show’s storyline. For the older audience, it renders them to watch and follow even the slightest detail of the show.

For a brand recognized nationwide in Japan like Kamen Rider, YouTube sure has enabled the franchise to expand its audience on the Internet and create more. This certainly is a specialty the TV show and Bandai have because of the solid audience they have established for over decades. In an era where the Internet is valued by corporates, it can be said that an idea like this YouTube series is marvelous and an example corporates from any country and field may want to follow.

A short article, but something I definitely wanted to talk about.

See ya again next month!