Infants less than a year old stop crying when they watch the advertisement for "Takemoto Piano"
Puppet of the singer and dancer in the ad. They play music from the Takemoto Piano ad
Many Japanese people, especial people from the Kansai region (Japan’s west), have seen this ad. It’s from a Japanese company called Osaka that buys second-hand pianos and exports them to over 36 countries around the world.
It’s a very peculiar ad: a singer repeats the company’s name over and over again, Takemoto Piano, while dancers wearing silvery outfits put on a strange performance with a rather surrealist feel to it. Aside from this, the ad was made famous by the curious phenomenon it provoked: infants less than a year old, would stop crying when they saw this ad.
The TV program"Tantei Night Scoop" investigated to find out whether this was true or just a rumor. To do so, they gathered 70 babies less than a year old in a room. The room was full of noise and the babies would not stop crying and screaming…
However, when the ad’s music began to play, the children stopped crying.
These are the advertisements for “Takemoto Piano”. There are 2 versions:
It’s a very strange phenomenon. The video doesn’t explain why this happens, but one of the participants on the TV program was a sound expert from Japan Acoustic Lab who explained that the following points were key: “the singer’s voice is around 440Hz, which is the sound that babies like. Also, the sound varies a lot and includes lots of sounds that grab hold of your attention, and it also changes rhythm halfway through the song.” Babies are very restless and untiring, that’s why these points were key to grabbing hold of their attention.
When it realized that the song worked with babies, the company began to commercialize the advertisement’s CD and DVD. Toy company, Takara Tommy, also jumped on the bandwagon and invented the "baby-calming button", the Baby Kerotto Switch, which produces a melody that has the same effect as the advertisement. This company worked with Japan Acoustic Lab to create dolls that help pacify babies.
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Puppet of the singer and dancer in the ad. They play music from the Takemoto Piano ad
