What I found inside was bread. Nine pieces of bread… It’s not everyday that I receive home deliveries full of nothing but bread, so you could say that it’s quite a momentous occasion.

It turns out that this is yet another promotional gimmick by Animax Asia, a regional branch of Sony’s Animax satellite network. They will soon be airing Yakitate! Ja-pan in Singapore and other Asian countries where the channel operates. In Singapore, they have partnered up with BreadTalk to promote the show.

BreadTalk is a really popular bread and pastry franchise in Singapore. It was founded in 2000 and has now expanded to other Asian countries. You can read about the in-store promotions on Anime Desho Desho?.

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By the way, if you’ve not heard of Yakitate! Ja-pan, it is an anime/manga series about people making bread. That’s about it. It’s also oddly successful, but not my cup of tea. The “Ja-pan” part in the title is a pun as “pan” also means bread in Japanese.

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While I think it’s great that Animax Asia has recently been going all out to engage the anime fan community in Singapore (as opposed to the other guy), I question the effectiveness of their chosen methods. Of course, I am grateful for the free bread and all, but I would’ve preferred something that is more relevant to the series itself…

But I guess this can’t be helped. Animax Asia is just a cable channel and not a DVD distributor, so they are disadvantaged by the fact that they don’t have actual physical product samples which they can give away to reviewers. Still, I wonder if there are better ways to go about this whole viral marketing approach.

That said, I was feeling particularly lazy to buy dinner today, so the timing is just perfect! Thanks for the free bread guys! :P

On another note, this is the only real reason why you should watch Yakitate! Ja-pan:

The bread came with a two-page press release but oddly the air schedule is nowhere to be found. According to the website, Yakitate! Japan will start airing on Animax Asia from 28th November at 8.00pm. So uh, watch it! If you want to… Or something.

I can’t believe I am selling out for bread. This blog has hit a new low.