Photo report: Darth Vader promotes DoCoMo cell phones in weird campaign

NTT DoComo, Japan’s largest cell phone carrier (55 million customers), is currently running a pretty bizarre viral promotion campaign in this country (both on- and offline). The company has set up a weird website [JP] that, for some strange reason, shows Darth Vader running around Tokyo and asking who’s his boss (“Who is my boss” is the official tag line of the campaign).

You can upload your own picture and name on the site to test if you are Darth Vader’s boss. Once you’re done, you can see a flash video in which Darth Vader starts walking around Tokyo again, but this time he’s seeing your picture on billboards plastered around town (see screengrab with John Biggs above). At the end, you can hear him mumbling “You are not my boss.” in English. Don’t ask me what this means.

I took the offline pictures of Docomo’s Darth Vader posters in Tokyo two days ago. It seems the company is investing a lot of money in its campaign, which is scheduled to end in ten days.