The Campaign

It is normally very difficult to have newspaper extras printed for fictional events, or to make use of government buildings, cultural facilities or historical remains. Yet special permission is often provided for highly public advertising campaigns that will present a good opportunity for contributing to greater tourism, creating publicity exposure or economic flow-on effects.

Results

●The challenge, and objective Convey the tourist appeal of beach resort Miyako Island during the off-season. ●Issues The issue was the drop in the number of tourists during winter when it was no longer ideal beach weather. The island’s economy relies heavily on tourism, and the decline in tourist numbers has a direct impact on a slowing down of the economy there. ●Strategy We focused on the fact that Miyako Island is an adventure-packed place with a mysterious culture and unknown ruins. To convey this appeal, we actually took a paradoxicial approach and “shut down the whole island.” To achieve this, Miyako Island was transformed into an adventure attraction with a unique background of “‘the Shut down Island’ where nobody could escape without solving the mysteries that lie hidden within ruins.” Our plan was to make the tourists and local islanders, who participated in the attractions, into explorers who would search through the ruins and culture of Miyako Island. The explorers encountered the unknown appeal and tourist sites of Miyako Island in the course of solving the island’s mystery. ●Planning We had local newspapers release news extras featuring ‘the Shut down Island’ to portray it like a real event. Participants enjoyed the appeal of the island and discovered many unknown tourist sites while solving the many mysteries hidden around the island. Finally, the participant who had solved the riddle had to chant a spell with the clues that they had found to “liberate the island” and receive lots of gifts from the locals.

With no advertising budget available, content was created for two stages of publicity. The first stage of publicity began 10 weeks before the launch. Releasing the high-impact headline “Miyako Island was shut down!” helped to put the public spotlight on Miyako Island. The second stage of publicity was run to suit the time people started planning their winter holiday destinations. With the use of mass media, news was sent out about the truth behind the fact that “Miyako Island – ‘the Shut down Island’ – had turned into an entertainment stage” in order to evoke a sense of excitement.

●Publicity exposure News related to ‘the Shut down Island’ and Miyako Island was exposed in mass media around the world and the news of the unknown appeal and tourist sits of Miyako Island achieved an amount equivalent to USD$5.93 million of free publicity. ●Global opinions The event was highly regarded as an innovative model to save the resort in the off-season, with comments including “The event held a strong significance from the perspective of revitalizing the community. This is because it also served to ‘generate a major source of tourism.’” (Gadget Communications). ●Economic knock-on effects Economic knock-on effects of an estimated USD$2 million have been generated with this content, and certainly had a positive impact on the island’s economy. This figure is 10-times the USD$200,000 required to create the attractions, achieving a staggering 1000% ROI. ●Attraction participants Approximately 3,000 tourists signed up, equivalent to 300% more than the target figure. ●Social reach The discovered tourist spots were reported by explorers who uploaded them to social media. As a result, ‘the Shut down Island’ succeeded in becoming a hot topic on social media. Word of the event reached a total of 7.5 million users based on Twitter users.