The Campaign

In Japan the cost of TV media is so expensive for a local public body. And our mission is to communicate Matsuyama city to all around Japanese young people. Japanese young people’s main media is not TV but Youtube on smartphone already. So we launched this branded content on Youtube. What’s more, we wish this branded content to spread over Japan to the other country.

Results

Matsuyama is a regional city located 700 kilometers from Tokyo. A traditional, tourist destination, it is home to Japan’s oldest hot spring, Matsuyama Castle, and many other sights. The very problem, however, is this “old,” “traditional,” and “historic.” An image solidified over many years, the city did not appeal to young people. The concept was “reconstruction of Matsuyama,” based on the production of an action-adventure anime set in Matsuyama and featuring seven “hidden gems” of the city. This pure entertainment about 10-minute anime was released on the Web. And in Japan, young people like to visit the locations of their favorite animations as a way to extend the viewing experience. Accordingly, one month after the release of our anime we released a AR app. Based on a map like the anime itself, when each of the locations of the “hidden gems” is reached the anime characters pop up in the actual scene.

We released the PR news on websites that young people like about this content. Many Japanese young people like anime, manga, so they read anime & manga news on internet usually. They drew this content from PR news on website. And we did some advertisement placement on Yahoo, Youtube.

This content was done by enlisting the services of an Academy Award-winning animation company. The young people enjoyed the content on their smartphone. The anime video recorded over 50,000 views in one week. Across the whole campaign, more than 1,300 tweets were recorded and $1.2 million was achieved in ad placements. The campaign attracted interest from local bodies around the whole country as a new way of vitalizing Japan’s regional cities, which continue to suffer outflows of their young people. Attracted by this anime video and app, numbers of young visitors to Matsuyama are steadily increasing.