You’ve watched ‘24’-Now eat the energy bar.

I always admire good marketing and one of the better efforts I’ve seen lately is a Japanese campaign using the TV show ‘24’ and the Japanese energy/meal replacement product called ‘Calorie Mate’. While I’ve actually never tired it myself, Calorie Mate is fairly popular product in Japan. Calorie Mate is one of those products that English speakers tend to notice in while in Japan because the front packaging is all in English, including the appetizing combination of the words ‘balanced food’ and ‘block’ and then the list of ingredients in small font underneath.
The product fits the character (Jack Bauer doesn’t get the chance to eat much during his busy day but needs energy to keep going) although I don’t know if the over the top nature of the character fits the product (I was impressed by this season’s transformation of Jack from a flawed hero into a no nonsense thug with no problems of beating or shooting people in order to fulfill his stated mission…At this rate, I suspect that by season six, Jack will be a part of a secret government sanctioned death squad and will be wearing a necklace of human ears…I’m not a big fan of the show but I admire that the writers create story lines and characters beyond the hackneyed ones we’ve all seen a dozens times before on TV…but I think they use the 'cell-phone-call-plot-advancement-writing-crutch' way, way too much). And I think this subway ad sums up the show in one image…a pissed off guy yelling into a cell phone.

The second TV commercial also does a nice case of summing up the Jack’s typical dialogue, yelling into a cell phone “YES!”, “NO!”,”MOVE! and it is funny to see Jack being stymied by a subway car full of J school girls.


Calorie Mate/24 web campaign with TV commercials