The Brief

A small jewelry shop in a northern town in Japan wanted to promote the idea of giving a ‘second’ ring to your wife as a way to commemorate your 10-year anniversary. However, men in northern Japan are very silent, and hardly accustomed to openly expressing their feelings of love and care. To sell the rings, we needed to introduce an easy first step to encourage them to show how they really care about their wives.

Creative Execution

To encourage husbands to offer a ring to their wives, we wanted them to pay care and attention to the fingers of the wives, where our rings have to fit in. By borrowing images and functions of a band-aid - a simple daily product, we inspired them to start showing appreciation to the wives' everyday's support in an easy way, and invited them to buy a second ring.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

The solution was ‘heal-Ring’ - a band-aid with a ring visual. Wives in this cold town often suffered from dried chapped hands. That is unmistakable evidence of the continued love and support they have shown to their husbands. With heal-Rings husbands can easily show their appreciation to their partners by putting it on their fingers. Each set of heal-Rings are mailed to a married man in his 10th year of marriage on our customer list, along with a message to encourage him to show his appreciation by using it and an invitation to offer his wife a real second ring.

Results

We saw a great impact on sales, the number of store visitors, and notably, the husbands’ behavior. - Weekly ring sales among married men in the 30s & 40s were up by 62.5% (YOY basis) - Weekly store visitors were up by 73.8% (YOY basis) - The shopkeeper said he saw a record number of older couples in the store holding hands