Results and Effectiveness

Approximately 4,000 people participated in this one-week campaign, which collected about 450,000 yen (About 4,500USD) in donations. This is worth 150 cherry tree seedlings. In May 2012, we planted 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.

Creative Execution

We noticed that cherry blossoms are engraved on the surface of the 100-yen coin (About 1USD). Then, we created a special 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.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

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. We came up to the idea from a national trait: Japanese people love and celebrate cherry blossoms in full bloom.