Advertising tissues

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Advertising tissues are a phenomenon in Tokyo, Japan that some would consider a mode of guerilla marketing, using tissues to move advertising copy. These tissues are distributed on the streets, largely outside of subway stations.

Where the more traditional fliers are often discarded without being read, advertising tissues add functionality and thus ensure that the advertisement-bearing tissues are retained for longer. The tissues are most popular in Autumn and Winter, to cater to those suffering from colds, but also in the Spring when hay fever supplies a high demand. As Tokyo is also a city that seldom supplies hand towels in public conveniences, the tissues prove perennially useful.

In Tokyo's Kabuki-cho the tissues are often used to advertise adult oriented products, such as explicit phone lines.

Summer yields a variant in the form of the advertising fan - a disposable plastic and paper hand fan bearing the image and logo of any given company. The fan has the advantage of displaying its message to the hundreds of passersby on the busy Tokyo streets.