THE FIELD TRIP OF THE DREAMS!

TitleTHE FIELD TRIP OF THE DREAMS!
BrandCALBEE
Product / ServiceCALBEE
CategoryA05. Best Use or Integration of Experiential Events
EntrantDAIKO ADVERTISING Tokyo, JAPAN
Entrant Company DAIKO ADVERTISING Tokyo, JAPAN
Contributing Company DAIKO ADVERTISING Tokyo, JAPAN
Production Company AVALANCHE Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Yasutaka Suzuki Avalanche Ltd./The Company Event Director
Shigetoshi Kumamoto Avalanche Ltd./The Company Event Producer
Yusuke Ueda Daiko Advertising Inc. Web Director
Tetsuya Obara Daiko Advertising Inc. Art Director
Shinsaku Koro Daiko Advertising Inc. Producer

The Campaign

The Japanese branding entertainment has shifted its mainstream focus from “real experience” to “virtual simulated experience”. The reason for this is that young people are primarily developing a sense of distrust towards typical “advertising” disseminated unilaterally by companies through TV and newspapers, but instead responding to the changing times when they make purchase judgment for themselves based upon their own word-of-mouth information or reviews. Additionally, the trend in branding entertainment suggests that utilisation of nerd culture represented by “animation” has been gaining momentum in the virtual world and has become the norm. On the other hand, there has been less use of traditional methods and opportunities of experiences from human contact to bring out our innate emotions and feelings of exhilaration. In recent years, this has been regarded as a problem reflecting the Japanese society as a whole.

Results

Calbee is the Japan’s leading company in the snack manufacturing industry and one of their key products – potato chips have been considered synonymous with snacks among the Japanese public. However, due to the diversification of their product range and Japanese values, their familiar corporate image has been on the decline in recent years. The objective through the in-store prize campaign is to acquaint consumers with their brand image of “pleasure”, “familiarity” and solidify the company’s position as the top snack manufacturer. Calbee then focuses attention on the Japanese "field trip". By taking the school’s practice of extra curriculum “field trip” activity along with their snacks and converting this into a branding entertainment on a dream-like unprecedented scale, and making it the campaign premium, we aim to convey the message of “familiarity” and “pleasure” in a wide, much-talked-about manner. Four dream programmes are in place for kids to realise. "All-you-can-eat-snack bus, the Calbee Bus” "The special one-day train, the Calbee Train" "Experiencing Japan’s most beautiful nature in Hokkaido" "Wrapping up their dream with the accomplishment of a Guinness World Record for making the world’s biggest potato chips". Via these 4 dream field trip programmes, the media news, and the popularity among the public, the broad communication of "pleasure","familiarity", and the branding targets are expected to be achieved.

Consumers could find the announcements of the event for those selected by lot displayed on in-store packaging and pop tools. At the same time, Calbee displayed information relating to the campaign on their homepage. Moreover, the post-campaign information was available to consumers for the winners-only event via TV and newspapers, and web media such as yahoo! Japan, youtube, and facebook.

The Dream Field Trip has made an impression of Calbee’s “familiarity” and “pleasure” all over Japan.The campaign premium i.e. field trip attracted 760,000 entries and turned out to be a big success. It created a big buzz in that all-you-can-eat-snack “Calbee Bus” and one day “Calbee Train” have been uploaded on blogs and video sites, and the news that these kids had accomplished the Guinness World Record for making the world’s biggest potato chips have made headlines all across the nation. The news about the Calbee’s field trip, during the 12 months from the launch of the campaign till the completion of the event, spread all across the nation, and therefore the brand image of Calbee, Inc. has improved greatly. What made Calbee happy more than the results was that they were able to create a once-in-a-lifetime memory for kids, as written in many letters received from them after the field trip.