The Campaign

Introducing a totally original insurance for Sneaker Freaks. To the fashion conscious consumers of Japan we introduced a product that safeguards their fashion investment – their Sneakers. As a nation of dog lovers, they do not love it when they constantly have to clean their soles. “Sneaker Freaker,” a magazine and web site devoted to sneaker lovers (i.e. sneaker freakers), has created an insurance policy called ‘Dog Poop Insurance’. Consumers are requested to vote online, the more votes the more ‘Sneaker Freaker’ will support the insurance claims.

Success of the Campaign

‘Dog Poop Insurance’ YouTube video received over 30000 views from its official launch on 2nd March within a week. During the month of March, It ranked in the ‘Top 10’ on Yahoo Japan’s popular video ranking and within 3 weeks from its official launch, Google Search reached over 500000 hits. This effect was not only confined to Japan, with the video being covered by sneaker and fashion blogs from all over the world. The campaign recorded extraordinarily large buzz for an independent magazine. Woody, the founder of Sneaker Freaker, said, “it’s been the most successful campaign in the history of the brand”.

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

A viral video was developed that communicated the concept of ‘Dog Poop Insurance’. Uploaded onto our ‘campaign’ site and on YouTube, it had an embedded ‘vote button’ that would start test-marketing the insurance and would become live after 100000 votes. The voting results were displayed on the web site in real time. Moreover, in an attempt to expand buzz effectively, we linked the web site with Facebook, Twitter and Mixi (Japanese SNS). Magazine and in-store communication was also created to support the campaign.