The Campaign

It is almost 40 years since the birth of the popular Japan Animation character Lupin III, the world’s greatest thief. Lupin III content extending into many fields, from fashion and games to pachinko (Japanese pinball) machines, to TV specials was to be rolled out in 2009–2010. Our brief was to increase interest in the character and boost sales in the various related content areas. Our idea was "Big Steal is Big Entertainment and Big Advertisement.". On the concept idea, we executed rows of "Big Steals" type of advertisement in all over Japan.

Success of the Campaign

As a result of the campaign, the level of recognition for Lupin III heightened, and the related products achieved the sales quota. The special television broadcast of the program exceeded the viewing rate of the previous year, improving it from 12% to 17.6%. The Big Steal became a hot topic among the mass media. It not only made it as the top news of Yahoo!, but was introduced in more than 230 TV shows, newspapers and magazines. generating a big hype. At the scene of the steals, people gathered to witness the Big Steals and took pictures. The story was taken up on more than 800 blogs.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We started the communication from Japanese biggest SNS site "mixi". Lupin III opened his account in the SNS and started to reveal his plan of big steals and at the same time, ordered to Anime fans to suggest ideas what to steal in Japan. A scenario of "Big Steals" was built selecting some ideas of Anime fans. The first big steal was executed in a big city in Tokyo, Shibuya. The second one in Osaka. And Harajuku, Sapporo and and...... An advance notice of the steal was put out in outdoor posters and late night TV commercials. The statements of the steals were announced on outdoor screens and newspaper ads. And at the same time, progression of the steal was reported in real-time on the project website, SNS, YouTube, Twitter and flickr.