In the recent (December 2021) Winter Cup, the All-Japan High School Basketball Tournament, conducted by the Japan Basketball Association (JBA), a peculiar item made its debut.
Given the speed of the game, including rapid movements and tactical maneuvers, cleanliness of the court is crucial to ensure the safety of the players, to reduce the danger of slipping while running or jumping. So the organizers of basketball matches usually engage professional cleaners who keep the court clean at all times, including during quick breaks.
The peculiar item that made its debut during such breaks in the recent Winter Cup matches was this!
It is exactly what you see – a mop with a huge Nissin cup on the top and noodle-like yarns sticking out of it, complete with ‘decorations’, extra-large meat, shrimp, and egg ingredients that are usually part of Nissin noodles.
Now, Nissin has always been a brand with incredibly odd activations and marketing ideas.
For instance, they introduced the ‘Nissin ingredients bath toy’!
Or the ‘Cup Noodle headphones’, in partnership with HyperX
At least one of the two above was an April Fool’s joke – I’d let you figure out which one 🙂
The Nissin Cup Noodle Mop is not a joke, though its broader availability hasn’t been mentioned by the brand yet.
But even assuming it as a one-off marketing activation idea to get the brand noticed during a high-profile gaming event, I found the idea to be hugely interesting for a specific reason.
I had written about this earlier too – in one of my agency stints, we had pitched to a B2B client suggesting them to brand the airline water-serving paper cups to promote a high-profile event. The idea was to brand paper cups presented only to the business class flyers (even if the airlines served in ceramic cups, present at least one form of beverage, perhaps specially curated, in this brand, fancy paper cup).
The client said they wouldn’t do that because their brand guidelines do not allow them to put the logo in a place where it can end up as garbage (use-and-throw). You could extend that logic to other opportunities for branding like tickets, bills, etc. since all of them end up as garbage after limited use.
However, there are brands that advertise in bills/receipts of departmental stores/malls. So the context of the brand use perhaps depends on the kind/nature of the brand – for example, a food brand (like a cereal bar, perhaps) wouldn’t mind advertising in the bill/receipt of a departmental store since the context of use is very close to a mode of purchase (though after the purchase is over! Next purchase, perhaps?)
Nissin’s cup noodle mop is the last place a food brand may put its logo and brand identity on. The purpose of the mop is to clean filth, literally. To portray a food brand as a mop cleaning filth is the kind of brand reputation hara-kiri that no self-respecting brand manager (this idea was conceived in-house) would ideally commit.
I have trawled through the internet for opinions on this activation idea and it ranges from,
‘Whoa, how cute’, to…
‘What a fabulous idea!’, to…
‘Where can I get this?’, to…
‘Eeew, that looks like someone vomited and Nissin is cleaning it up’, to…
‘A college match is a good place to expect vomit, but why is Nissin cleaning it?’, to…
‘The next time I take the Nissin-loaded fork close to my mouth, I’m going to think about this mop and feel like vomiting’.
For context, consider the fact that an actual cleaning solutions brand like Sanikleen has a tie-up with Kawasaki Brave Thunders (please translate this page using Chrome/Edge’s automatic translation option), a Japanese professional basketball team, so that normal mops with Sanikleen branding could be used during the matches to keep the court clean. This makes perfect contextual sense!
Nissin and Softbank are the main sponsors of the Winter Cup, incidentally. I love this creative visual, by the way – the way the player forgets the ball and is aiming to dunk the hot water into the noodles cup 🙂
It’s one thing for a cleaning solutions brand to advertise through the mop, but entirely another level bizarre for a food brand to advertise on a mop. And not merely place their logo on the mop (which, in itself, would be very, very odd) – Nissin has spent time crafting special kinds of mop yarns, filled with Nissin Cup Noodle ingredients! This literally makes it seem like a mop cleaning up spilled/vomited Nissin Cup Noodle, depending on your vantage point 🙂
I assume we could slot this under
(a) brave, or
(b) Japanese quirkiness that may not make sense outside the country, or
(c) intentionally polarizing idea to evoke a lot of reaction and attract attention.
Again, for context, have other brands put their logo in situations that tend to not end up well, or be seen as brave?
A couple of examples that I have written about earlier too.
HDFC put its logo on the floor for people to step on (in terms of social distancing) during the peak first wave in 2020. But there was no actual HDFC name, just an element of its logo that the bank and its agency, Leo Burnett, believed that people would identify.
Step on our brand!
AIA, the insurance brand, advertised in a newspaper in Sri Lanka where they asked people to use their double-page spread as a prayer mat, to sit on!
Sit on our brand (and pray):
NT News, a newspaper, printed toilet paper sheets during the peak first wave in 2020 when there was a toilet paper crisis in the US due to hoarding by people.
Use our brand to clean your shit!