Brief Explanation

“The Secret Idol” The Brief Despite its long selling history of 25years, the fruit gelato ice cream, “Ice no Mi” was suffering in sales. To grab the attention of the target, we created a virtual idol whose name was “Aimi” (taken from”Ice no Mi”). Aimi made a great impact by making her debut as a member of the most famous idol group of Japan, AKB48. Led by Japanese media, the mysterious new member of AKB48 became the most heated topic of Japan, until when we broke the news that she was created by CGI, revitalizing the popularity of “Ice no mi”. The Solution To revitalize the sales of “Ice no mi”, we needed a groundbreaking campaign that would not only draw attention of the media but also stir up the word of mouth by people. We decided to create a virtual idol and name her Aimi after “Ice no mi”. Then, we contacted AKB48, the most famous idol group in Japan, about our plan to make Aimi debut as the new member of AKB48. We planned Aimi’s mysterious debut carefully so that people would become curious of her identity, reminding themselves of the name, Aimi as well as Ice no mi. The Results As Aimi started to appear in Magazines, Posters, and TV commercials, she became the immediate star causing the media sensation. As Aimi’s popularity hit the peak, we let the secret out that her face was a composite of AKB48 members’ faces. She appeared in 94 TV news reports, as well as in written news and magazines reports of 270articles. News website reported 1158 articles. 58000 tweets attracted 1million followers. The Ice no mi website received close to 74million views or 60% of the population of Japan. In our “Create Your Own Idol” website, 2.3 million idols were born after Aimi.