The Campaign

Hibiya Kadan, a nationwide flower shop, wanted to encourage Japanese male audience to use flowers in order to express love and appreciation to the daily little things wives do for them, which, in Japan, are often left unthanked as part of daily routine. However, Japanese men are reluctant to give flowers to the women in overt manner for cultural reasons. Given the difficulty of the challenges to change consumers’ attitude and habit, we needed to create a very powerful experiential PR content, and to leverage PR to spread the experience nationwide. We identified 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. With our “Give Back The Love” campaign that started on the Wives’ Day, we launched a unique service that offers to arrange beautiful flowers in the finished lunch box at Hibiya Park in the heart of the Tokyo where many businessmen gathers to eat Bento. The campaign provided great opportunities for the Japanese men to convey their love 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 Brief

Our objective is to inspire our society, especially male workers in their 30s & 40s, about the new possible usage of flowers in order to grow daily flower consumption habit. 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. Given the difficulty of the challenges to change consumers’ attitude and habit, we needed to create a very powerful experiential content, and to leverage power of PR to spread the experience among nationwide audience.

Results

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.

Execution

On the Wives’ Day, we introduced a new campaign named “Give Back The Love”, with a unique 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. Posters in the park and banners on the website are used as teaser. But mostly we simply relied on our live audience gathers in every lunch time to maximize our buzz seeds. While the campaign continued for a week, we invited TV programs, newspapers, and bloggers to witness the event.

The Situation

Hibiya Kadan, a nationwide flower shop, wanted to encourage Japanese male audience to use flowers in order to express love and appreciation to the daily little things wives do for them, which, in Japan, are often left unthanked as part of daily routine. However flowers in Japan are mostly consumed for ceremonial purpose such as funeral and marriage, and people tend to perceive flowers as something for non-daily, special occasions. We needed to change people’s view toward flowers and somehow invite them to use flowers in daily, casual occasions.

The Strategy

In rolling out this campaign, we needed to a strong experiential PR content that can capture the essence of our messages in culturally resonating manner. We identified 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. We decided to roll out the campaign on the Wives’ Day, the moment when media attention to the related topics will be maximized.