Lol Miku Hatsune in a Toyota Commercial.

[mechana2015]

I've noticed recently that almost all the ads on Hulu (like Verizon) seem to be a bit more ethnically market targeted than I remember before, so it seems like some marketing person somewhere may have decided that anime stuff = US asian market?

[Yamamaya]

The saga continues.

Oh man, that was....words cannot describe.

Wouldn't the random hotdog guy call her Miku Hatsune instead of Hatsune Miku? Even Amurrican fans tend not to use the Japanese order of names. Of course, this is a complaint I have with all the commercials.

[mechana2015]

Actually I've never heard her called Miku Hatsune. It's always been Miku, or Hatusune Miku.

[blkmage]

I'd assume that Vocaloid fans tend to fall into that Japanese name order and honourific using (among other things) stereotype.

[UniqueAngelStar]

The saga continues.

Wow. The newer commercials of Miku are even more wierder(The hot dog one .__.''), but they are pretty funny though, especially the other one who Miku slaps the guys with the leek!

I guess toyota is really promoting her.

I guess after the Miku concert in CA, she might do a tour in other parts of America? I guess so....

[Davidizer13]

Let's look at these things from a business standpoint, shall we? For sake of argument, we'll assume that these commercials are actually selling a car rather than being the LOL RANDUM attempts to force a viral video that they are, but still include Miku Hatsune as a selling point.

First, the Vocaloid subculture in the US is very, very small. A few people would go "MIKU-CHAAAAAAAAN" when they saw it, but everyone else would see some blue-haired cartoon that they're apparently supposed to recognize but don't and go "wut." Try explaining Vocaloid to someone outside of Japanese culture fandoms: they're singing computer programs that somebody drew a picture of and now they're minor Internet pop stars.

Yeah. The whole concept doesn't appeal to me personally, someone who knows about the background behind this stuff, so how is it going to appeal to someone who doesn't?

Second, the fandom itself, from what I've seen of it, consists primarily of teenagers and young adults/college kids. Usually, people in these groups either a) don't have a whole lot of spending money or b) can't drive in the first place, so why would they spend thousands of dollars for a brand new car, even from a company that makes cheaper ones, like Toyota?

But all this doesn't really matter since the ads themselves are cringe-worthy attempts by some suits in marketing somewhere to be hip with the young parsons and their Intarweb culture, and have failed miserably. GJ Toyota.