The Campaign

We took advantage of one of Kobayashi’s unique features. It is dialect. Our idea is "Dialect Entertainment"?.In this movie a Frenchman introduces Kobayashi city with his commentary about it. However, language he spoke isn’t French but ...Dialect spoken by Kobayashi people. In this movie a Frenchman who has lived in Kobayashi city for a long time talks about his city by Kobayashi dialect which is like French. In the last part of this movie you can realize the language he spoke is not French but the Kobayashi dialect. You can also find it’s Japanese dialect when you turn on the subtitle in YouTube functions.

Execution

Before the recording of narration, we checked and revised the script and how to read over and over so that the viewers misinterpret Kobayashi dialect as French language. Opened on YouTube on 27th August 2015. Achieved 1,000,000 views in the 10 days. Also Kobayashi dialect drew high attention and many TV stations visited Kobayashi city continuously. They reported opinions and lives in Kobayashi city precisely. Not only Kobayashi dialect but also other features of Kobayashi were reported. Finally so many people in Japan get to know about Kobayashi and their features. People who watched the movie didn't reveal the ending of the movie. After aired on so many TV programs, people shared positive tweets and posts are. This "Kobayashi movement" kept spreading almost half a year to people in Japan through TV programs and SNS.

This movie worked surprisingly. Viewers watch it again and again to check it was really in Kobayashi dialect. Even without any ads, it marked over 1.9 million views only in domestic. Advertising Value Equivalency is also more than 10million dollars (its 400 times of production budget!). More than 50 TV programs broadcast about it. Almost all media are positive about this news. As a result visitors of Kobayashi city web site are ten times of before, questionnaires of moving to Kobayashi are three times. The campaign got 487 million media impressions. so many movements followed the movie. It encouraged other rural cities to promote with viral movies. People in Kobayashi got to be proud of their own city. They Kobayashi voluntarily help Kobayashi. This idea also created so many other promotions by Kobayashi people. And the city established a new department to further boost this promotion.

The Situation

Kobayashi city, an unknown rural city in Japan, has got rapidly famous all over Japan by this promotion that used its dialect. The media and SNS made people get interested in Kobayashi city, and the number of people who want to move and live there actually increased. Besides, people in Kobayashi have got proud of their own city and have started new promotions by themselves. And the city established a new department to further boost this promotion.

The Strategy

That's why we thought viral movie online work in this case. An investigation says 60% people who want to move to rural cities don't decided which city they go to. The targets are them. Online approaches are very effective. Because people who want to move tend to get the information online. But we had two big problems. The first was money. Amount budget was only around $30,000. The second was the competitors. Many rural cities were alike in Japan. The Kobayashi dialect has very strong accent and people outside Kobayashi can hardly understand it. Sometimes it is said that sounds like French. Finally, we got the idea to use this unique dialect to realize the following viral phenomena. * Many viewers watch it again and again to confirm Kobayashi dialect spoken. * The movie works successfully and goes viral surprisingly to get more TV publicity than expectation.