Brief Explanation

This highly creative and unique campaign aimed to promote Kumamoto prefecture in western Japan as a major food-producing region, especially of red-colored foods like tomatoes, and in the process encourage Japanese consumers to link Kumamoto with the color red. Central to the campaign would be the prefecture’s mascot, ‘Kumamon’, a cute bear-like character and whose red cheeks – representing Kumamoto’s red produce – mysteriously “disappear”. The public was encouraged to join the quest to find the cheeks, creating a new, strong awareness of Kumamoto’s red agricultural produce, especially its tomatoes. The idea for Kumamon losing his cheeks originated from a Japanese saying, that eating delicious food makes your cheeks drop. In the campaign’s initial stage, a variety of mainstream and online media reported the loss and Kumamon appeared in public minus his trademark red cheeks. Special posters and fliers invited consumers to join the search, with social media sites like Twitter used to build and maintain momentum. Once the cheeks were found, media announcements and a dedicated campaign website drew the link between Kumamoto and delicious produce. The creative and multimedia nature of the campaign was essential to capture the public’s imagination. In the campaign’s initial phase to generate mystery, no link was overtly drawn between the disappearance and the delicious-food-means-falling-cheeks analogy. Besides the cheek-less and forlorn Kumamon fronting TV shows and public events, strong visual impact was achieved elsewhere on social media with Kumamon’s cheeks temporarily removed from his Facebook and Twitter profiles. This unusual and quirky story, supported by Kumamon’s celebrity power, would serve to boost Kumamoto’s profile among consumers. The campaign earned Kumamoto wide media exposure as a food-producing region, with over 400 websites, 23 TV shows and 30 newspaper articles carrying the story. The campaign ran only in October-November yet it so successfully promoted Kumamoto produce that full-year Kumamon-branded food sales surged 10% in 2013. And whereas in 2012 the Japanese public had mostly associated the color green with the prefecture, by 2013 red was firmly established as its No.1 brand image color. The prefecture’s top daily newspaper, the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun, praised the “success of this unique PR campaign focusing on Kumamon’s missing cheeks”.