The Campaign

In Japan, Branded Entertainment is still considered as an immature industry. The most common is the traditional way of sponsoring the TV program and only a few clients and entertainment companies has worked together directly.

Results

UNI-CUB is a new personal mobility device developed by Honda. For its global branding effort, they created a 'collaborative music video' with popular band, OK Go. The entire video was filmed in one continuous shot with a drone from 0 meters to 700 meters above ground. In 10 hours the video reached 1 million views. In 6 days, 10 million and currently 20 million and counting. The microsite provided the making-of, product information and an interactive video which allowed users to design their own mass game. The sequential launches kept the campaign viral for a long period of time.

The mass-game performance by the band and dancers on the UNI-CUBs, the footage shot by the custom-made drone ― those 'never-before-seen' images captured the global audiences instantly. The video was filmed without any cuts from 0 meter up till 700 meter above the ground and this 'single-shot' footage amazed the viewers.

We reached the client's target, 1,000,000 views, in 10 hours after the launch. Our target was challenging , 10,000,000 views, but reached this in one week. Now the video has earned over 20,000,000 views. The global audiences love the film, and praise Honda for supporting the production. The page views of the campaign website reached 241,000, the unique users counted to 211,000, and over 62,000 user-generated videos have been created so far. The number of access to Honda's UNI-CUB global website increased by 1,487% compared with the same time last year. (19,637 PV March 2014, and 291,968 PV, March 2015)

Most notably, this collaborative output pushed the relationship between 'the artist and brand' to the next level. In most cases, the production process of music video requires only an artist and film director, and the primary role of a sponsor is limited to product placement. However in this case, the creative director from agency was at the centre of creative process; neither the client nor the artist compromises the output and found the best solution. Honda's involvement on this project was not so-called 'product placement', but played an essential role to make this entertainment happen, and brought about an outcomes more that what we all envisioned.