Results and Effectiveness

The project successfully attracted 251,320 visitors, about 30 times the population of the village and sales jumped dramatically. This movement even moved the government to build a special train station for the visitors. Also the homepage access of the village increased 8 times more than the usual times. The power of rice revitalized the village again.Ground, the human’s most primitive outdoor media, became the newest.

Creative Execution

Using our rice filed as the media, we created huge rice art pictures in it, by planting different colors of rice. We then developed a new technology called “rice-code,” which let visitors scan the rice art with their phones like a QR code and purchase the rice. “Rice-code” transformed a scene that people naturally want to photograph into a brand new selling place. Also, we maximized the power of social media to spread the information and selling place, as visitors and the media share the photo of the rice art.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

A small village in northeast Japan famous for rice, Inakadate, was struggling with aging and declining population along with drop in rice sales. Nevertheless, the village’s main income source remains rice, so we tried to re-energize the village by shining a new light on its rice production. We created huge art pictures in rice field. We then developed a new technology called “rice-code,” which let visitors scan the rice art with their phones like a QR code and purchase the rice. “Rice-code” transformed a scene into a brand new selling place. The project successfully attracted 251,320 visitors, about 30 times the population of the village and sales jumped. “Rice-code” met both consumer and client needs, that rice was too heavy for the visitors to bring back home for souvenir but the village also wanted to sell rice to revitalized the village.