The Brief

About a year after the Tohoku Earthquake, people’s interest in providing relief for the disaster areas was thinning. Japan Weather Association, a weather forecast organization that provides cherry blossom blooming information every spring, wanted to conduct a promotion that reached out to people’s hearts in order to collect donations for planting cherry trees in the disaster areas. Our objective was to communicate people the following message “each of us giving a small donation can make cherry trees in full bloom” and encourage them to donate.

Creative Execution

The 100-yen coin with the cherry blossom engraving is carried by all Japanese and is the most familiar cherry blossom item to the people. Also, as a national trait, Japanese people love and celebrate cherry blossoms in full bloom. Based on these two facts, we surmised that a billboard with a flower-less cherry tree will draw their attention and will motivate them to make it in full bloom with 100-yen coins.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We noticed that cherry blossoms are engraved on the surface of the 100-yen coin (About 1USD). Then, we created a billboard with a flower-less cherry tree so that people will donate 100-yen coins to make the tree in full bloom. In April 2012, we placed the billboard at a cherry blossom festival in Yurakucho, situated in the heart of Tokyo, that is attended by many cherry blossom lovers.

Results

About 4,000 people participated in this one-week campaign, which collected about 450,000 yen (About 4,500USD) in donations. We planted 30 seedlings in the city of Higashi Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, one of the districts that were heavily damaged by the tsunami. The trees will live for over 100 years. That’s 100 years of encouragement from just 100 yen coins.