Acccording to a poll carried out by the Institute for Advertising Research Softbank’s Shirato Family series of commercials have been voted most popular with Japanese audiences for the third year running. To decide the nation's favorite ad, the institute interviewed 3,000 respondents, ages 6 to 89. The campaigns in second and third place also came from cell-phone companies: KDDI and NTT DoCoMo, respectively. Fourth place went to Lotte for their extremely successful Fit's viral-video dance campaign, which featured a catchy song-and-dance routine and challenged viewers to perform the dance themselves and upload it to YouTube.
Much of the success of the Shirato campaign has been attributed to the charms of pop idol/actress Aya Ueto (who plays the family’s younger sister character), but what really makes the commercials stand out is that, despite its depiction of a "typical" Japanese family, the women rule the roost, otousan (father) just happens to be a white dog and onisan (elder brother) is played by African-American actor Dante Carver.