Toto Washlet Breaks New Ground in Advertising With Flash

I came across a very interesting ad from Toto introducing Washlets to the US market. It employs nudity, specifically smiling asses to drive home its point - Washlet makes your ass happy. The ad was intriguing, the website cleanishappy uses Flash to create a very interactive presentation and drives home its point well. While it can be termed as a cheap trick, nevertheless one cannot deny the appropriateness of the advertising in the context of the business. There are several techniques to learn from their presentation.

It mixes humor very well with content. Several interesting techniques were used like different images for mouseover, a carefully crafted initial video introduction with several actors in coordination, small video introductions for each menu items and so on. Nifty tricks like ability to compose a note with the menu chooser adds a nice touch too. The best part is that the faces are constantly animating creating an almost live effect, as if they are waiting for you to ask something. A brilliant and effective presentation in Flash. Oh and the product is nice too, pretty popular in Japan. Effects are nice but what really makes them excellent is a very fine tuned coordination of the technology with nuances of human interaction, a brilliant piece of work worth emulating.