The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
Suntory Craft Boss crowns squeezed middle managers as heroes in Tokyo OOH
Craft Boss put a 'Middle Boss Hero' in Tokyo's Shimbashi station — a salute to everyone squeezed between bosses, work and life.
Suntory (Craft Boss)
What it had to solve
At the end of a year in which countless workers had been squeezed between bosses and subordinates, ideals and reality, work and private life, Suntory's coffee brand Craft Boss wanted to salute the people who keep society running from the middle.
How it works
Craft Boss, Suntory's coffee brand, has long positioned itself as the working person's partner. Its December campaign picked a group advertising almost never celebrates: the middle manager, squeezed between an boss and a subordinate, between ideals and reality, between work and private life.
Named 'MIDDLE BOSS HERO', the campaign argued that the people caught in those gaps are actually the heroes at society's centre. The key visual showed a hero firing off solutions like the 'special move: compromise' while squeezed between a boss and a subordinate.
From 22 to 28 December 2025 the hero appeared in a symbolic OOH installation at Shimbashi Station, Tokyo's iconic office-worker district. Around it, Craft Boss posted fake-OOH videos on social media — a hero squeezed between words in real building gaps and elevator doors — and released an original music video cheering on everyone who keeps working while being pressed from all sides.
The campaign turned the most exhausted figure of the Japanese workplace into the brand's hero for the final week of the year, and its OOH work took a Bronze in Integrated Outdoor Campaign at ADFEST 2026.
Why it lands
- Celebrating the middle manager instead of the CEO gave Craft Boss an audience most brands talk past, making the message feel personal.
- The Shimbashi location placed the campaign inside the audience's own daily commute, where the joke and the empathy landed together.
- Fake OOH stunts on social media extended the idea beyond one station, letting office workers find 'their' hero squeezed between everyday words.
- The 'special moves' framing turned office suffering into playful heroism — respect without preaching, humour without mockery.
What it did
The campaign saluted squeezed workers through late December 2025 and spread across Craft Boss's official X account. The work took a Bronze in Integrated Outdoor Campaign at ADFEST 2026.
What you can take
A brand can earn affection by naming the group everyone overlooks: choosing the squeezed middle manager — not the hero CEO — made the campaign feel like it was for the audience, not about them.
Since then
MIDDLE BOSS HERO ran through the final working week of 2025 and became part of Craft Boss's long-running salute to working people, extending the brand's 'partner of the working person' platform from product advertising into cultural empathy. The ADFEST 2026 Outdoor jury gave its integrated OOH campaign a Bronze, adding a regional award to the campaign's reception in Japan.
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