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Dentsu’s top ten 2007 hit products in Japan

December 13, 2007
By Ken Worsley


Dentsu has released their list of Japan’s top ten hit products in 2007 (actually it lists their top 20), and it’s worth a look. I thought from a marketing point of view, the resurrection of Billy Blanks’ old workout videos from fifteen years ago as a new product in Japan couldn’t be beat. Let’s see how Blanks did…

  1. Touch pen portable games
  2. Innovative remote-controlled TV games
  3. Billy’s Boot Camp
  4. Digital cameras
  5. Widescreen flat-panel televisions
  6. 1-SEG compatible devices
  7. Japanese movies
  8. Cup soup
  9. Electronic money
  10. Eco goods

Personally, I can’t say I’ve bought any of these other than “Cup soup” over the last year, though I rented “Japanese movies” and I have a train pass which might count as “Electronic money” and I bought a new digital camera and widescreen TV in 2006.

What’s amazing is that #1 and #2 both relate to Nintendo - #1 refers to the DS and #2 to the Wii. I have to say that I think the DS is more innovative than the Wii, and should result in longer-term market domination.

As for Billy Blanks, one imagines in a few years he’ll be natsukashii.

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Comments

9 Responses to “Dentsu’s top ten 2007 hit products in Japan”

  1. Ken Y-N on December 13th, 2007 9:27 am

    These Dentsu translations are always hilarious:

    Fun Topic-resonant Consumption ~ The Fun Topic as a Means of Connecting and Letting Loose

    Products that fall short of perfection, leaving room for banter or excess that bring about and enliven conversations.

    Products that support people who face themselves squarely to refresh themselves or conduct soul-searching.

  2. Ken Worsley on December 13th, 2007 9:52 am

    Yeah, Ken, there are some good ones in there. “Fun topic-resonance consumption” might be my favorite.

    You’d think with all those native English speakers wandering around that building that they’d have at least one of them read through this stuff.

  3. mdlozen on December 13th, 2007 6:29 pm

    FYI, Billy’s Boot Camp series were not from 15 years ago, they were released in 2004.

  4. Ken Worsley on December 13th, 2007 8:27 pm

    mdlozen, they were out on VHS when I was in uni, and that was well before 2004.

  5. WG on December 13th, 2007 10:33 pm

    The original boot camp videos were definitely from the 90s…these DVDs might be remakes, but they’re definitely selling recycled stuff.

    Interesting there’s nothing really fashion related there, or anything about ’safe food’

  6. Garrett on December 13th, 2007 11:45 pm

    Billy’s Bootcamp is a relatively new product using the routines from his Tae Bo videos of the very early ’90s, which dated themselves by featuring Paula Abdul as celebrity endorser.

    He followed the pattern set by ’80s hair metal bands: fight irrelevance in the US for a while, disappear for nearly a decade, then come to Japan and make it big.

  7. Aaron on December 14th, 2007 1:40 pm

    Where is ASIMO???
    I love him so much,.

  8. John S on December 14th, 2007 5:28 pm

    Asimo isn’t a consumer product last time I checked…

  9. Fellen on December 15th, 2007 12:08 am

    Is electronic money really a product? Eco goods as well, sounds more like good marketing than any solid product lineup I’ve seen.

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