James Bowskill is a British Art Director at A.C.O. Tokyo, where he develops brands on-line.

He also collects Japanese packaging, occasionally writes articles for Tokyo's web magazine PingMag, and is a member of London design team Superblue.

I ♥ NEW TOKYO Feb 19 2005

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, New Yorkers in Tokyo should feel very pleased with themselves at the moment. For in a bid to encourage Tokyo-ites to love their city as much as New Yorkers do their own, some bright spark has decided to start an "I ♥ NEW TOKYO" campaign throughout the city.

Posters are all over the place, on billboards and filling trains, with a currupted Milton Glaser heart logo, if you're really lucky, accompanied by Richard Gere. Of all the advertising campaigns going on at any one minute here, from all the ideas and all the skills here, why take the route that shows one of the more depressing aspects of the Japanese mentality? When you're trying to build pride in your city, why take cues from (or rather simply copy) the one country half the nation has a complex about?

Just a few weeks earlier, trains were filled with posters advertising the "Hakone Ekiden" marathon, the branding for which puts I ♥ NEW TOKYO to shame. Without even being able to read the copy, I could see more pride and nostalgia in the logo and photos of the last twenty years of the race than in this entire campaign to raise Tokyo's spirits. But perhaps I've missed the point. There could well be thousands heading over to ilovenewtokyo.com as I type, all eager to get their hands on the special towels, cups, and minus ion air filters available. And as their apartments are quietly purified, perhaps they'll sit back and reflect how they love their city.