Japanese sense of humor in marketing.

Last semester (Fall 2012), I took a global marketing class with Professor Gu and towards the end of the semester, she gave students a chance to earn extra credit by making a short presentation on topic of "marketing techniques in a certain country". One of the classmate chose Japan and showed us a video in class: I find this to compilation of commercials a very typical Japanese style sense of humor!

Almost everyone in the class was laughing when the video ran halfway through. However, I think the reason why many of them laughed was because this video is a"compilation" of all the Fanta commercials rather than just one single commercial.

I grew up in Taiwan, which is a country that has a lot of cultural exchanges with Japan; I have seen quite a few Japanese TV shows and commercials airing in Taiwanese televisions since I was a kid. I find Japanese' sense of humor to be very "creatively-nonsensical" In addition, their sense of humour is sometimes very subtle and sophisticated that will require people to think about the meaning behind it. It is sometimes hard to understand the humor if one doesn't have much understanding in Japanese culture in general. From my past experience, few people either get it and laugh, or just stare at it and be like "Huh? What was going on?"

Many people, especially people from western societies, are used to "straight in your face" kind of humor; therefore, if the video only shows 1 Fanta commercial rather than a compilation, I wonder if classmates would find it funny or even "understandable" at the very first place? Never the less, it is very interesting to see how people reacts toward other country's marketing styles and the underlying cultural differences within the commercial!