Results and Effectiveness

People were surprised and delighted to see the leaves and acorns carrying our message 'Let's live with nature,' the logo, and the product. There were mothers who started collecting them and using them as bookmarks. Thus we were able to draw greater interest from the nature-oriented target than we expected. The promotion we conducted produced no waste, cost nearly zero for media, and was a huge success. And the BONMAISON store in Ushiku was the only store that recorded more than a 1.5 times sales increase over the same month in the previous year among the twelve BONMAISON stores.

Creative Execution

Since the promotion was for a store that handles products made of natural materials, it had to be environmentally friendly. On the other hand, we had virtually no media budget for this promotion. We addressed these two issues by deciding to make all promotional items with materials that would eventually return to the soil. The material we used was fallen leaves, which you can find anywhere in the city or in the park. We had printed on the fallen leaves (ginkgo leaves and acorn shells) our slogan 'Let's live with nature' together with the corporate logo and the product name. We placed them wherever one expected to see leaves on benches in the city, in phone booths, in a bicycle basket, on the mailbox, on the hood of a car and in front of stores.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

BONMAISON operates 12 lifestyle variety shops in Japan under the motto, 'Let's live with nature.' The shops handle more than 10,000 items all made of environmentally friendly natural materials. In November 2008, we conducted a promotional campaign to enhance awareness of the BONMAISON store in Ushiku City, as well as the BONMAISON brand as a whole. Our target was married women between the ages of 30 to 50 residing in Ushiku City, especially nature-oriented young women. With minimum budget, our focus was on how to carry out a promotion that gives consideration to the natural environment.