GIVE BACK THE LOVE ARIGATO BENTO

Short List
TitleGIVE BACK THE LOVE ARIGATO BENTO
BrandHIBIYA-KADAN FLORAL
Product / ServiceARIGATO BENTO
CategoryA04. Best Use of Ambient Media: Small Scale
EntrantI&S BBDO Tokyo, JAPAN
Entrant Company I&S BBDO Tokyo, JAPAN
Advertising Agency I&S BBDO Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Kanaru Hatakeyama Jam Associates Copy Writer
You Kuwabara Amana Production Manager
Shinichi Kuwabara Amana Producer
Koji Onishi I&S BBDO Strategic Planning Director
Yusuke Ito I&S BBDO Copy Writer
Yoshiyuki Kaneko I&S BBDO Art Director/Planner
Keiichi Uemura I&S BBDO Creative Director
Yoshihisa Ogata I&S BBDO Executive Creative Director

Results and Effectiveness

The campaign provided great opportunities for the Japanese men to convey their love and affection to the daily little things that their wives do for them. The experience with tiny investment of less than JPY 1 mil immediately spread into the whole society, bringing over JPY 23 mil worth media exposure as the result – the event was picked up by the nationwide TV programs, newspapers as well as digital spaces. By creating great amount of conversations between men and women, the campaign inspired people about the power of flowers that can convey daily love and appreciation to the partners.

Creative Execution

To inspire a new habit of giving flowers to women among our target audiences, just telling them to Give Back the Love was not enough. We wanted men to actually experience the power of flowers that can help them convey their true feelings in the way that fits with our cultural context. We discovered that a Bento Box – lunch box – handed over between the wives and the husbands every day could be our ideal medium that symbolizes wives’ unrewarded daily love. That’s where flowers could play a perfect role in helping husbands convey their unexpressed emotions in covert yet touching manner. On the Wives’ Day, we introduced a new service that offers to arrange beautiful flowers in the finished lunch box at Hibiya Park in the heart of the Tokyo’s business district where many businessmen gathers to eat Bento, together with the message of “Give Back The Love”.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Wives’ dedication is often left unthanked in Japan. Hibiya Kadan, a nationwide flower shop, wanted to encourage Japanese male audience to express love and appreciation to the daily little things wives do for them using flowers. Our objective is to inspire our society about the power of flowers in order to grow daily flower consumption habit on top of current ceremonial usage. However, Japanese men are reluctant to give flowers to the women in overt manner, behind which, there is cultural belief that true intimate emotion should be kept inside. So if you suddenly surprise your wife with a flower bouquet in a plain weekday, it can be taken as superficial, or even, untrue. With Give Back the Love campaign, we needed to introduce men a socially acceptable approach that allows them to uncover their unexpressed daily appreciation to the wives using flowers.