When we arrived at Narita Airport and went to the SoftBank counter to pick up our rental cell phone, we were greeted by a big advertisement for SoftBank, featuring Brad Pitt. During our last visit to Japan (in 2004), I remember seeing Brad Pitt on vending machines; back then, he was pitching soda or beer.We saw other US movie stars on vending machines and advertising signs. We saw Meg Ryan pitching coffee, Cameron Diaz pitching SoftBank, Tommy Lee Jones pitching beer, and Orlando Bloom something I could not determine.
It seems that US movie stars who never endorse products in advertising here in the US, routinely help market products in Japan.This practice is evidently so widespread that there is even a Wikipedia posting about "foreign celebrity advertising."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_celebrity_advertising
My guess is that Brad Pitt gets a lot of money for his ads, but he doesn't tarnish his superstar image in the US by being seeing as hawking a common product (or at least that's what his agent says).
2 comments:
http://www.japander.com/japander/index.htm actually has video of many Japanese commercials done by American Stars - they're listed by the star's name, so you can look up your favorite stars and see if they've done anything.
Thanks for sharing this URL!
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