"About 10 years ago, the managers of NHK, the public television station in Japan, decided that it needed a new advertising icon to help connect with younger viewers. The result was Domo-kun (“kun” being an informal honorific for young people in Japanese), who starred in a series of station-identification breaks for the channel. He became a sensation: Japanese consumers snapped up dolls, accessories and hundreds of other products featuring his undeniably cute likeness. Perhaps not seeing any reason why U.S. or European consumers would be interested in a Japanese ad icon, NHK didn’t devote any particular effort to reaching them."
Read more. And here's Domokun at Flickr, and at DeviantArt.
