The Campaign

Branded content is very widely evolved in Japan. From manga, to TV shows to music recording all forms of media are used. There has also been fast growth of branded Facebook and other social media platforms. So the problem is not branding content, but doing so in a way that stands out in a crowded market. Increasingly branded platforms are cross media and have ongoing " consumer involvement" with interactive consumer programs. The use of branded gaming content is becoming very normal.

Results

Regarding gum category in Japanese market, long lasting flavor, which is one of the unique features of the brand, has become less-competitive as competitors launch similar products. To regain unique position in the market, our strategic objective was to create new fans to the brand by offering long lasting fun experience which is based on a feature of the new product. The main concept of the campaign was "mystery" which comes from the characteristics of the gum product whose flavor is unknown. By focusing on this mysterious feature of the product, we decided to design a large scale online game to make people get fully immersed in the branded world of mystery through treasure hunting and to make them share the experience with their peers. We launched a campaign in which people do treasure hunting to search for 120 thousand USD cash “buried” somewhere online. Inspired by the symbol character of the brand, monkey, we used historically well-known mysterious monkey sculpture in the TVC as a main visual of the campaign in a tone of enigma to stir up a feeling of curiosity of the target. The TVC invited the target to the campaign by implying that the monkeys buried 120 million USD cash somewhere and announcing that the clue to the treasure is provided on the Facebook fan page of the brand. By becoming friends with the brand page on Facebook, users can get various hints from the fan page weekly to get to the treasure. The fan page had been managed by a brand character Stride Saru (Stride Monkey) and visitors could get reply from him. The hints for the treasure hunting were also provided by this Stride Saru.

As people started participating in the campaign and cooperated with each other on the Facebook fan page to decode the hints, dozens of pages were created on one of the biggest BBS sites in the world called “2 channel.” Thousands of comments regarding the campaign were exchanged including the ones that try to cheat others. Some other people disclosed there ideas on their blogs to show their power of deduction. Even after announcing the winner, a lot of participants thanked the brand character on Facebook for providing the game and most of them requested for the second round.

From the client’s side, we succeeded in increasing the number of fans on Facebook page of the brand by 200% up to 120 thousand. It was ranked as the top growth rate fan page among all Japanese brand fan pages. The campaign became a huge topic among the target. From the consumers’ point of view, a lot of users not just participated in the campaign but also actively involved in the event and talked about the campaign apart from the brand’s platform. About 20% of the fans posted their comments, links and Likes on Facebook regarding the topics of the treasure hunting campaign and a lot of discussion pages were created on one of the biggest BBS sites in the world called “2 channel.”