TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NTT DOCOMO, Inc. (“DOCOMO”; Head Office: Chiyoda, Tokyo) has group
companies that provide services and online content connected to diverse
aspects of everyday life that range from food and health to learning,
music, and fashion. DOCOMO works with these companies in different
sectors to promote group-wide projects to offer unprecedented products
and services designed to not only make customers’ life easier, but offer
emotional value.
We liken the synergies the DOCOMO Group generates
to the famous classical music piece Boléro that contains depth
created by sounds of different musical instruments. In this project, we
organized an orchestra that consisted of 80 employees in total from 15
major companies in the DOCOMO Group. These employees played Boléro
using “items” connected with their companies’ services under the baton
of Kazuhiro Yoshizawa, DOCOMO’s new president who just assumed the post
in June 2016.
Yoshiyasu Ichikawa and Invisible Design Lab worked on
sound production. Mr. Ichikawa is a composer and lyricist who has
written numerous hit songs; Invisible Design Lab is a music production
company that has won a Cannes Lion. Their collaboration created this
miraculous piece of orchestral music.
We hope you will enjoy DOCOMO
Boléro played by the DOCOMO Group’s magical orchestra.
The
famous piece Boléro opens with a snare drum beat, then one
instrumental sound joins after another toward the splendid ending.
The
first player in the DOCOMO Group’s magical orchestra is from ABC Cooking
Studio Co., Ltd. She taps out a fast and steady rhythm with two kitchen
knives instead of snare drum sticks. Then the player from Radishbo-ya
CO., Ltd plays a mellifluous melody with a vegetable flute made of a
carrot and asparagus; those from Oak Lawn Marketing Inc. utter beautiful
voices as they exercise on Wonder Core® Smart machines; and all the
other players contribute sounds that symbolize their companies to create
the symphony of DOCOMO Boléro.
We know you have lots of
questions about the “sounds”: What type of unique sounds are we talking
about? Which companies make these sounds? Do the sounds really succeed
in playing Boléro?
Our goal as a corporate group is to offer
considerable value to customers by generating synergies between
different features of companies in the DOCOMO Group, just as Boléro
is created with synergies between different instrumental sounds. We hope
the video conveys our commitment to all the efforts we make to achieve
the goal.
Story behind the Video
The uniqueness of instruments that played DOCOMO Boléro caused
difficulties that a normal orchestra would never have to deal with. The
vegetable flute made of a carrot and asparagus began to wither and
discolor during the filming, so we had to make a “vegetable change,”
instead of a “tape change,” over and over. Tuning the instruments was
also a hard part; we had to continue getting the instruments ready while
the shooting went on. The player who bit into a cucumber to make a
unique sound ended up eating so many cucumbers in a number of takes that
he almost retired before the filming ended. “I can’t eat any more
cucumbers!” he said.
The players from docomo Healthcare, Inc.
marched rhythmically in place, and those from DOCOMO BIKESHARE, INC.,
kept pedaling bicycles. They groaned with exhaustion after the end of
the shoot: “We never thought being filmed as orchestral players would
require this much stamina.”
We hope you will enjoy all these
“sounds” in DOCOMO Boléro created in all the takes.
Comment by President Yoshizawa
Maurice Ravel’s Boléro is one of my favorite orchestral pieces,
so I held the baton with all my heart.
The DOCOMO Group works in
solidarity to continue offering our customers “Ever-Improving Value.”
I
hope this video helps customers see and feel our Group’s solidarity.