KINCHO's 'Adolescence Sketches' radio spots sell roach spray through awkwardness — ACC GP

KINCHO's Gokiburi Mounder is Japan's household roach spray, sold every summer, and its radio work has become a fixture on Japanese stations. The 2025 series 'Adolescence Sketches' (思春期スケッチ) aimed at something pest-control ads rarely attempt — family life as it actually sounds, with all its awkward silences.

Written by Masayuki Furukawa of Dentsu Creative KANSAI, the series is four 60-second spots: 'Pocket Change', 'Kiss Mark', 'Tongue Click' and 'Hole in the Wall'. Each dramatizes the standoff between a rebellious middle-schooler and his mother — he ignores her calls, dodges a question about a kiss mark, clicks his tongue, and has punched a hole in the wall.

The twist is the product. In 'Pocket Change', the mother reveals a cockroach, hands him money and asks him to buy Gokiburi Mounder before dinner; he grumbles through his 'rebellious phase' and goes anyway. The spray is not the enemy of the scene — it is the one errand the family can still share, and the narrator thanks the boy at the end.

The bet landed: the series won the Grand Prix in the Radio & Audio category at ACC TOKYO 2025, Hits Corp's third consecutive and seventh overall radio Grand Prix, with double Golds and craft awards, and the OCC Award Grand Prix followed in 2026. For a brand whose radio work had already won Galaxy Awards repeatedly, the series became a rare case of an insecticide commercial people actually look forward to hearing.