The Campaign

Japanese companies are still relatively conservative and rely heavily on traditional communication channels like TV advertising, on which they spend almost 3 times more (¥ 2,939 billion) compared to internet advertising (¥ 1,052 billion) in 2014 according to Dentsu. Yet, research by Millward Brown showed that, the same year, Japanese consumers spent nearly 4 hours daily on the web (laptop, smartphone and tablet) compared to 2 hours in front of their TV. With the rise of a participatory consumer culture and social networks, as well as new services brought by innovative advertising agencies, brands start to realize that Branded Entertainment can be a highly valuable way to entertain and engage consumers around their brands. While major global brands with Japanese origins (Toyota, Panasonic, Nissan…) have already engaged in user-generated content creation and co-created brand campaigns, domestic brands like DAILY CLUB now consider this to be a low-risk and engaging way to communicate among young consumers outside of the traditional channels. This is what decided the brand to take the plunge and involve consumers globally in a Japanese campaign for a Japanese brand targeting Japanese consumers.

Results

DAILY CLUB tea is the top brand of the tea bag category in Japan. While Japanese consumers trust and like the market leader, the brand also expects to be challenged by the competition of other beverages and formats such as coffee, green tea or powder tea. After redesigning its DAILY CLUB packaging in order to remain attractive and relevant in this competitive environment, the company sought to refresh its brand image and increase brand awareness. DAILY CLUB wanted fresh and creative ways to talk about the tea drinking culture in Japan in a way that would interest young Japanese consumers; and engaging creative Millennials from across the globe was an opportunity to do so. In order to give tea a makeover and make it appear fun and contemporary to young consumers, DAILY CLUB launched a creative competition, asking creators from across the world to submit creative videos that would shake off the boring image of tea drinking. The prize money for winning participants was of EUR 20,000, split in 3 prizes. In 7 weeks, over 470 people joined the contest to read the entire creative brief and guidelines, and DAILY CLUB received over 40 videos from 18 countries (none from Japan!). The brand rewarded 3 videos that have been submitted by consumers from Russia, the Netherlands and the United States of America. DAILY CLUB then published 13 selected videos on YouTube and displayed them on a dedicated campaign page called “Just 4 Fun” and hosted on the brand’s website. To push the idea of displaying award-winning, consumer-created video content, the campaign page’s layout was inspired like a Hollywood-themed movie poster. The campaign page was designed to be read and attractive to Japanese consumers, giving DAILY CLUB a modern and cosmopolitan image by displaying consumer-created content from various countries.

Consumers who participated in the first campaign step, the DAILY CLUB video contest, were all part of a leading crowdsourcing platform and autonomously decided to participate. For the second step, to engage consumers, banner ads on all the company’s websites directed visitors to the “Just 4 Fun” micro-site. As DAILY CLUB’s target audience for the overall campaign were women in their 20’s and 30’s, DAILY CLUB also reached out to influential social media users and bloggers that spoke to this audience (AppWoman, Grapee, Joshi Spa!, WW Online, IT Mama etc.) to attract them to the “Just 4 Fun” page.

Videos were viewed over 200,000 times without any paid amplification on YouTube; on Facebook DAILY CLUB reached 42,000 people with engagement rates 3 times higher than the benchmarks; and through Twitter the campaign reached over 530,000 people. Over 150 blog posts generated, 1/3rd of which were read by Japanese consumers on their mobile devices, generated a total PR value of more than ¥ 26 million – six-fold the initial investment. Two of Japan’s most watched TV channels covered DAILY CLUB’s campaign and praised it as being an innovative and viable future marketing model in front of over 3.2 million consumers.

DAILY CLUB was looking for creative video content that would shake off the sometimes boring image of tea in an entertaining way. The objective was to entertain young consumers, who spent a lot of time on mobile devices, to engage them around the brand’s product and to re-ignite their interest in a century-old Japanese tea brand. To do so, the brand and its agency imagined a campaign that would be (1) to launch a crowdsourcing campaign asking consumers globally to submit engaging videos about tea, and (2) to host this content on DAILY CLUB’s website, and (3) to spread the word about it on blogs and social media channels in order to appeal to the brand’s target audience. By putting the consumer at the heart of its campaign, DAILY CLUB took a leap in a country that is known to be conservative in its advertising.