The Brief

In Japan the pinup girl, or Gravure model, is more than a casual fancy. It’s a national past-time, it’s almost iconic. Salary men, too busy for other hobbies, spend their free moments searching for new stars. Because these salary-men are on most part shy and reserved, they never had the habit of talking about their favorite pin-up girl with somebody else. With the coming of mobile-devices, people are more than ever enjoying the gravure models privately, on their own. Our client is a small-sized agency who was looking to make the best of their limited budget in the hope to maximize popularity or fans of the model they were overseeing. We focused on a particular people behavior which is ‘enjoying gravure models on their own’, and challenged to create a new gravure model experience that can only be enjoyed with other people, hoping this will create more fans for the model as well as to invent a never-seen mobile communication. (Beta version service, Budget: 1 million yen, Team: Creative Agency + University of Technology - Interactive Media Lab)

We focused on an existing technology that allows you to ‘pinch’ the screen of the device to connect multiple screens. By combining a Human Idea, this technology elevated to become a new experience device. We added the Human Idea of ‘stimulating people’s instincts to change their behavior’, and incorporated the art-direction of ‘cropping the movie in an inviting manner’ and that is how we invented “Pinch Pinup” that connects people. The following points were modified to the existing technology so that people can easily and intuitively experience pinching the screen before seeing the 2 screens connect to form 1 big screen. When the user uses the 2 fingers to pinch across the 2 screens, both of the 2 devices will acknowledge that they’ve been touched simultaneously. Each of the devices also acknowledges that the adjacent screen exists in the direction that the finger moved in, and calculates the coordinates so that the finger-contacted points will be re-positioned on the same straight line. This enabled for an intuitive interface where people can easily understand pinching equals seeing more of the screen. We are considering expanding the use of this technology for it to be applied to various photogenic subjects, releasing the Android version, and enabling connection with other types of screens.

Pinch Pinup turned the page for one budding agent and his star. His pinup girl’s Twitter followers jumped up 130% and blog Page views rose 180% soon after launch. Launch was only earlier this year. Our long-term goal would be to distribute and make widely available among all consumers with a mobile device, other various free-of-charge apps that connect people with people. When these free-apps have permeated through to the consumers, we hope to have changed the entertainment culture in Japan and ultimately expanded the possibilities for mobile communications.