The Campaign

Christmas time was chosen as a time to share love and express feelings. There were two seemingly contradicting needs that spurred the idea: the urge to convey immediately what people felt then and there with their loved ones, plus the recognition of how nice it would be to physically send this as a handwritten message. By merging the smartphone and the traditional postcard, the idea of the world’s very first Smartphone Postcard was developed.

Creative Execution

A special postcard system was developed, where people could send the handwritten message through a QR code. The QR code would be pasted onto the postcard and sent physically through post. Upon receiving the postcard, the recipient would then place the postcard on their smartphone, tap Play, and the movie and personal handwritten message would appear. This was a method devised uniting the paper postcard with digital technology.

Results

This challenge gained high level of media exposure, worth 120 million JPY (1.17million USD). The Smartphone Postcard was accepted as a new form of communication tool by the young and the old, people of all ages. Japan Post sees potential in this new business are, and is trying to advance the smartphone postcard to a new regular service offering.

Trying to convey the value of handwritten messages through advertising does not resonate easily in the current environment where SNS usage is mainstream. So by combining the postcard with the smartphone, which is how messages are regularly exchanged, we were able to create an opportunity where the unique value of the handwritten message could be experienced. The creation of the Smartphone Postcard not only led to people sending this new type of postcard. People who received the Smartphone Postcard sent postcards in reply, creating message correspondence utilizing handwritten messages.

The target audience was everyone who had forgotten the joys of sending and receiving handwritten postcards, and who now mainly use smartphones as means of communication. It was important not to regard the smartphone as a threat, but to utilize it as an opportunity. By combining what seemed like opposites, the old (postcard) and the new (smartphone), an experience that could not be achieved with just the postcard, or just the smartphone would be successfully created. The strategy was also based on insight that people still treasured handwritten messages, especially from their loved ones.