lifestyle

TV commercial of the week: adizero vs MiniSkirt

31 Comments

Girls, if you are wearing a miniskirt, don't get too close to any male sprinter wearing adidas' new adizero LAB sports shoes. You might find your skirt flipped up around your neck by a whoosh of air as he speeds by.

Japanese TV commercials are always fun to watch, though to Western viewers, the message or concept isn't always easy to figure out.

In the adidas commercial, titled adizero vs MiniSkirt, a bespectacled man puts on his adizero shoes and gets ready for a dash inside a huge warehouse. He takes his mark and waits for the starter's gun. Then he's off, tearing past a row of half-bodied mannequins, clad in colorful miniskirts. As he zooms past each one, their skirts fly up, until he gets to the end of the line where a girl, wearing a short dress, is standing. Her skirt goes up, too, but before it does, the runner has finished the race. And the winner, we are informed, is adizero.

The commercial is becoming very popular on YouTube. As of Wednesday morning, it had been played more than 855,000 times.

Some of the comments were, “I’m going to buy adidas right now," “Every man’s romance,” “This is the coolest way of flipping a skirt up," and "I'm going to run outside wearing ‘adizero’ shoes. I’ll be looking for all you girls wearing miniskirts.”

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


31 Comments
Login to comment

I dont understand. So we see a glimpse of her legs. Big deal. If one likes legs so much one can have a glimpse of one's own legs.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This commercial is not funny, imho, but in general japanese commercials are really original and hilarious, specially if compared with those of my country (Italy). I think Italian creativity is dead with Michelangelo, Raffaello, Leonardo, etc. <__<"

0 ( +0 / -0 )

that girl is so beautiful! and those shoes, well, i don't give a flying fxxxk about them.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Hey - the girls is very cute, and we get to see a glimpse of her panties - this is the perfect recipe for a very good commercial :) - thanks for the article :))

AMEN !!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I'm looking forward to hearing what Ihavegreatlegs has to say on the subject.

Taka

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I understand why they used a westerner as the athlete. A japanese guy would have just concealed cameras in his shoes and stood next to her.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Novenchama: I think France has the best commercials

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Commercials do really offer a unique window into culture. The difference between North American and Japanese commercials are often significant, sometimes strongly similar, and infrequently a mix of both. Japanese commercials are surreal, and it would appear due in no small part to the Japanese belief that as a general rule, direct confrontation should be avoided. They rely on visual and emotional impact to sell a product thus sometimes is not grounded in reality. Even sequence of sounds and images are often based in artistic fantasy, or images completely unrelated to the product and everything tends to run in genres and waves. Hence no doubt that every country has strange, weird and interesting commercials, but the Japanese take the cake with their commercials.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

There ARE some pretty funny Japanese commercials on YouTube, though. Do a search for Funny Japanese Commercials and you'll get a few. Some are, of course, NOT funny, but hey.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

in the context of an inspired article published recently "Return of hosiery", I find this commercial a bit disappointing

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It's not a bad commercial, and while I enjoyed the slow motion close-ups of the lady's skirt being blown up, it was rather gratuitous and probably wouldn't have made the cut elsewhere. She is hot, though.

"Japanese TV commercials are always fun to watch,"

Yeah... just loved all those JC commercials after the earthquake/tsunami, and the commercials where the homemakers are always constipated and take medicine only to start mopping the floors at hyper-speeds after.

"though to Western viewers, the message or concept isn’t always easy to figure out."

How's that? The only reason I can figure that a commercial is hard for a 'Western view to figure out" is if it's so inane and unfunny we can't understand what people were thinking when they decided to air it.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Chinese ads also very fun to watch... Sorry I can not follow the language but they bring some creative ideas and out-of-box thinking... :)

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The ad is just the way things should be, haha!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Nice bloomers. Would be shocking...if I were a nun.

What I like about the commercial is the Japanese girl is first smiling, then like a deer in the headlights. Typical. Typical western woman? Would have started out glaring then ended by shooting daggers from her eyes and/or smacking the geek upside the head.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

the still picture makes her look pregnant and the dude responsible is running away.................................cheers

2 ( +2 / -0 )

@IT almost look as if the 80's fashion is back!

I knew it, now I have to make the most out of the next couple of months when I actually will look cool for a change.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

IT almost look as if the 80's fashion is back!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

What a manga-esque idea. It won't work. You still have to flip skirts the old fashioned way. If you do it with legit implied permission, well, those shoes won't help you get it. If you do it without permission, well, those shoes might help you get away!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

The runner appears to jump the start, so he should be disqualified. Therefore the miniskirt wins by default. Cheers.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Cheeky ad directed toward the otaku's of the world, no doubt.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I love wearing clothes that show my legs, but if that goof ball ran past me I would not have given him a second thought. I will continue with sexy flip flops.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

As always 'crotch' sells...

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Japanese TV commercials are always fun to watch

This is untrue. They are usually very very poor.

Am I alone in finding something sad in the fact that the message of this ad seems to be that, if you run past women really quickly (i.e. without having to try to speak to them) somebody else might get a flash of her gusset?

-6 ( +3 / -9 )

The girl is cute but the runner looks like a computer geek. Would have been better with a handsome athlete.

I think that is the whole point of the commercial. -With our shoes, even a geek can get a glimpse of a woman's bare legs.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Japanese TV commercials are always fun to watch

False. Like almost everything else on the box, they are asinine, infantile and ham-fisted.

-4 ( +4 / -8 )

I'm at work reading this and can't risk watching the video :-(

Think you will need to run backwards to, um, gain the benefits intended.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Dont forget the White skin factor. Would this AD had been popular in Japan if instead of that white guy it was some ASIAN or AFRICAN guy? The creativity of AD is not so relevant so far as it has white skin guy in the AD.

I bet these shoes will sell like hot cakes in Japan.

The quality of shoes do not matter as people here would buy even POO of white guys.

Rob

-6 ( +1 / -6 )

What's up with the runner's 1970s jogging attire? And maybe he shouldn't have gone "commando" as well.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

"The winner, we are informed, is adizero."

I would say the winners are us. As long as we don't spend 10 times as much for a pair of these sneakers as another perfectly good pair of non-adidas sneakers.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

The girl is cute but the runner looks like a computer geek. Would have been better with a handsome athlete.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Hey - the girls is very cute, and we get to see a glimpse of her panties - this is the perfect recipe for a very good commercial :) - thanks for the article :))

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites