Catching attention on the world’s most busy crossing: Shibuya Hachiko

Creative marketing in Tokyo

by Gerhard Fasol

Shibuya Hachiko square (in Japan usually called “scramble”) is certainly among one of the world’s most busy street crossing, and therefore also one of the places in the world with the highest density of advertising and marketing efforts, certainly on a par or exceeding Times Square in New York. It is not trivial to catch attention for particular promotions within this environment of information overload.

Shibuya Hachiko and surrounding areas challenge the creativity of creative agencies, and many new concepts have been tested out first here, e.g. many different types of using QR-codes for advertising and marketing.

While Coca-Cola promotes Cmode vending machines with mixed success for wallet-phones and mobile payments, a promoter used the opposite extreme at the most visible spot on Shibuya’s Hachiko square recently: a human vending machine with a built-in charming human operator for the human touch (there is an upper window to serve adults and a special lower window to serve children):

Human vending machine in Tokyo/Shibuya

Human vending machine in Tokyo/Shibuya

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