*”Buttery-smell” or “Bata-kusai” is a Japanese expression to describe a thing or a person that has Western/Caucasian touch/feel/look. Butter, and its taste, feel, and smell, must have been quite an experience for Japanese people 100-150 years ago when they started encountering lots of new things from US/Europe.
A few people have sent me questions. Here are a direct answer, and some marketing talks related to it, to one of them.
“When I watch CM’s from docomo’s Google Keita, Windows 7, or Apple iPhone, I see some consistent feel among them, “buttery-smell”. Is it effective? … The taste of film, which I do not see many Japanese companies use but lots of non-Japanese firms use, what is behind it?”
Was the question, from Sasaki-san.
Very good observation. Others like FRISK, NIKE, and XEROX, also have similar “buttery-smell”. (A lot of people do notice that they are different, vaguely though. A message to marketers is “Hey, guys, people know what you are doing or not doing.”)
There are several questions in it, so let me sort them out:
1. Where does CM’s “buttery-smell” come from?
2. Is there any intent or aim behind CM’s “buttery-smell”?
(3. Why Japanese companies do not do it?)
As for #1, I may not be a right person to answer technical matters, so I have asked Mr. Abe, a veteran producer from Sound By S, commercial production company. But, as I expected, his answer was very long (as long as his talk), contains a lot of technical terms and codes, and complaints with some real names, so that I had to sum it up anyway.
Upon that, let me answer to question #2. Will touch on #3, too.
Making the long story short, maybe too short, though, CM’s “buttery-smell” comes from the fact that it is produced by Western/Caucasian director, cameraman, and their crews. That’s why it has “buttery-smell”/Western feel. Excuse me giving you such a stupid answer. The difference is a product of difference of shooting method, choice of lenses, way of lighting, and policy or philosophy behind all of them.
Let’s dig in a bit more, of course Abe-san’s telling, though.
Caucasian’s eyes are very sensitive to intense lighting/luminosity, especially UV rays, compared to non-white guys like us, so they do not like direct lighting. They tend to use in-direct lighting like using a wall to reflect it.
On the other hand, people like direct lighting to its object in Japan.
As a result, just like a movie film from Hollywood does, oversea CM features only an object that you want to see/show, versus that of Japan shows everything bright in the frame.
Accordingly, type of lens also becomes different. In Western industry, they prefer longer lenses = narrower depth of focus = an object just on the focus point shows right but a bit off gives off-focused visual. In Japan, they use short lenses to capture everything under the light. To a layman like me, it may be easier to understand it as a difference between a tele-photo lens and a wide-angle lens.
In addition to these two biggest reasons, there are other smaller differences. And they add up to this difference of taste of films.
And somehow, it cannot be done in Japan. Though Japanese is known to have skillful hands for anything, they can hardly copy this. It is because it’s a product of totality of industry structure, techniques/skills, knowledge, experiences, people, apprenticeship behind, and their value/philosophy, I guess.
Net, if you want that “buttery-smell” CM, you have to go abroad and shoot with oversea stuff. No wonder you do not see it from Japanese companies.
Let’s move to its Marketing intent/aim/effect.
The film above is a good old Haagen Dazs ice cream commercial from 1990’s. I still remember this. In 1990’s, these high quality “buttery-smell” visuals came on TV, not as a movie but as a CM spot, and made us say “Cool!”. Vidal Sassoon, which I used to be responsible for, was introduced with very “buttery-smell” CM, too. In fact, we produced it in Hollywood.
While Haagen Dazs is of course an oversea brand, truth was that this TV commercial was made first in Japan. This “buttery-smell” CM was made by Haagen Dazs Japan, for Japanese consumers, to be aired only in Japan.
I believe there must have been clear intent for marketing for this “buttery-smell”.
And it was achieved, splendidly.
It is not a cheap ice cream for kids around, but is a high quality ice cream for adults (must-be made in Europe). The image was brilliantly engraved in our heart and mind with this one film alone. Later, they started using TV with similar film outside of Japan, I heard.
Same for Vidal Sassoon. Back then, Japan was only country in the world where the brand was spending major marketing dollars. In UK, its origin, it was one of those minor salon shampoo brands. That film established clear image that it is landing on Japan from Western world, in the middle of the Bubble economy days, as an oversea premium quality hair care brand.
Esthetic sense, feel, and image, which people watching TV get from visual and sound, are often more important than literal/word-oriented information. In this sense, Haagen Dazs is one of the best examples of effective use of “buttery-smell”.
Besides, there are other cases that they do not have any aim or intent. Some are simply using the same films used in US or Europe. And reason why Japanese firms do not produce those films could simply be that they do not have any particular reason to do so.
If there is any marketing challenge to this, it should be if you are making up two “different personalities with different sense/images” other than just a difference of touch of film, when you are producing films in Japan at one time and go abroad at some other times. Shooting oversea, especially in US, is not easy task. It costs more, eats longer time, puts harder schedule management for talents and stuff, etc. OK, so let’s do it in Japan this time. I think it is a reasonable choice. However, the question remains. If those two different types of communication show at the same time or back to back, are people watching them recognizing and remembering them as the same “personality”?
Or, simply, they may watch you saying “Somewhat cheap, this company is trying cutting corners these days.” At least, I can say, many of them notice the difference.
“O.”
