TOKYO, JAPAN — Nissin Foods, the company behind Japan’s original instant ramen, has its very own mascot: an adorable chick named Hiyoko-chan. In 2018, Dentsu transformed Hiyoko-chan into a demonic bird to promote its new demonically spicy chicken ramen product called Akuma No Kimura. The campaign was awarded globally, and involved Noriaki Onoe, Creative Director at Dentsu Inc., who is joining AD STARS 2020 as a Final Judge.
In a Dentsu interview published by Ad Stars last year, he explained the techniques and strategies applied to this award-winning project. Here is an excerpt:
How did the idea to transform Nissin’s popular mascot character into a demon originate?
Actually, the idea originally came up in our first meeting with Nissin Foods, which wanted to attract younger consumers by creating an exciting new brand of spicy ramen called Akuma o Kimura. That was the context for the original idea.
A lot of ideas came up during our presentation, which was attended by the president of Nissin Foods. As the discussions grew more and more animated, we started talking about transforming the Hiyoko-chan character into a demonic bird.
We took the idea back to Dentsu, and under the direction of our creative director, Kota Tohata, our team decided on how to depict the mascot’s metamorphosis into a demonic bird in the TV commercial. Specifically, the commercial shows the Hiyoko-chan character raising a bowl of the Akuma no Kimura instant noodles up to the sky to summon the demon, and then suddenly undergoing a demonic transformation. Incidentally, we adopted the idea of summoning the noodles for three minutes (the time of waiting for the instant noodles to cook after filling the bowl with boiling water) based on a suggestion in the presentation. Using the specific term “Summon for three minutes” for the action of preparing the noodles made it easier for us to create a buzz on social media sites. We also incorporated this idea in the backing track of the commercial.
By itself, the TV commercial depicts the character’s sudden transformation without providing any context. That would have been too abrupt for fans of Hiyoko-chan to accept because this character has been popular for such a long time. Therefore, we created a background story in advance of airing the commercial to provide the reason for and the process of the metamorphosis. It was important to explain Hiyoko-chan’s motive for turning evil. It’s funny, but I had always felt sorry for the mascot because it is a chicken doing commercials for chicken ramen. It was also shown using eggs to make meringue cookies in a character book published in the past.
It’s rather morbid when you think about it. For that reason, we used those elements in the background story.
How was the background story of the character’s transformation created?
Around that time, many users of Twitter in Japan had been accidently posting private tweets on their public accounts. By having Hiyoko-chan do the same thing on a Twitter account, we thought such tweets would attract some interest. Indeed, Hiyoko-chan had only been tweeting like a good mascot until then, so if it suddenly started tweeting some nasty things, people would take notice.
We began by having Hiyoko-chan post a long “caw” to get attention, followed by a string of shocking tweets declaring “I’ve had enough,” “This farce is over,” and “How can a chick be advertising chicken ramen?”
After seeing these posts, many of Hiyoko-chan’s followers checked Nissin Foods’ chicken ramen website to see what was going on, only to discover the mascot’s resignation letter declaring “No more goody – goody!”
After that, other Nissin Foods product webpages were defaced with Hiyoko-chan’s rough graffiti. We also created a special website in collaboration with the magazine Mu, which specialises in the occult and unexplained mysteries, featuring content that confirmed and explained the main reasons and events leading up to the character’s transformation.
Updates were later added to the background and story of the metamorphosis, with the magazine even suggesting that the demonic version of Hiyoko-chan appeared to be Caim, one of the 72 demons listed in the Lesser Key of Solomon.
We took great care to create every detail of this campaign. Because the character is so long-established, changing it to a demon was audacious. It could even trigger a negative reaction. In that regard, if numerous aspects of the content were unclear or ambiguous, I think people encountering the campaign would, indeed, view it critically. Such criticism, however, would be unlikely if the story of the character’s transformation was explained in detail, the content left no room for other interpretations, and the overall production was strong enough to exceed people’s expectations.
Finally, what are your goals as a creative going forward?
One of my aspirations is to help create a fad. My impression is that fads prompted by advertisements have decreased compared with many years ago. Nevertheless, fads are still happening around the world. For some reason, tapioca became really trendy, and sales of hand spinners have exploded. I want to be involved in creating a fad on that scale someday.
Along with that, basically, I just want to recommend things I like to people. I hope other people come to like the things I enjoy, such as KochiKame: Tokyo Beat Cops, a very funny manga series about a middle-aged policeman. By promoting the things I like, I hope to repay their creators for the pleasure they gave me. I think really hard about how to do that. It is very simple, but to be able to work on that would be really satisfying.
