Search box in Japanese commercials

The past year I noticed more and more “search boxes” in Japanese commercials. More often the URL to a website is replaced by a search term. This not only happens on the Japanese television, but also on posters in trains, on street and in advertisements in magazines. Everywhere.

This idea is pretty interesting, companies seem to assume the majority of the people are comfortable using the internet and know where to search. I’ve tried a few search engines and search terms from different advertisements. All seem to return the right company as first result. So, it seems to work nicely.

I think this move is interesting. Nowadays I don’t remember all url’s anymore. There are just too many out there. Instead I type the name of the site in a search engine or visit using a bookmark. Suddenly the URL of a website is not important anymore. Nobody remembers them anymore anyway.

In the future this might even grow stronger. Even commercials are based on search terms now, something people can remember with more ease. I wonder when the rest of the world starts using this idea.

P.S. I’ll create a different blog for tech-stuff soon. Not everyone is interested in stuff like this :P