The Campaign

Nikon needs to build affinity with the younger photography enthusiasts today who are constantly looking for the coolest innovation. With minimal budget of US$15,000, we need something exciting to start the conversation on social media that would excite them and get them to appreciate Nikon's brand philosophy of "At the heart of the image" again. We created a new camera accessory that allows the camera to take a picture whenever the heart is excited. To launch this project, we applied it on a dog to demonstrate this new innovation which allows anyone or anything to take a photo. This experience of the dog was captured in a charming online film shared on social media such as Nikon's Facebook network, that drives traffic to a microsite which demonstrates how this technology works and people can sign up to trial the prototype. On the website, more forms of innovative photography is shared. The video garnered 863,441 views in just 4 weeks and the campaign created worldwide buzz for Nikon valued at more than $3million worth of PR. It was covered by the likes of CNET, Fortune, AOL, YahooTech and more than 1,180 other websites across the globe such as US, Japan, Russia, Italy, China etc. The video was shared more than 6,000 times and created more than 10,000 comments of which 6:1 are positive towards Nikon. This is an amazing result for $0 media spent and is the most effective campaign for Nikon.

The Brief

With only USD15,000, we needed an idea that would tug the heart-strings of our audience online in order to get them talking and sharing the brand again. With a very small budget and an ambitious goal to get the world's notice, we invested all our budgets into the digital space. A simple research on what makes the internet tick these days reinforces that the message of innovation is highly relevant but it needed a softer, "entertainment" factor for it to travel.

Results

The video garnered 863,441 views in just 4 weeks and the campaign created worldwide buzz for Nikon valued at more than $3million worth of PR. It was covered by the likes of CNET, Fortune, AOL, YahooTech and more than 1,180 other websites across the globe such as US, Japan, Russia, Italy, China etc. The video was shared more than 6,000 times and created more than 10,000 comments of which 6:1 are positive towards Nikon. This is an amazing result for $0 media spent and is the most effective campaign for Nikon.

Execution

Heartography is powered by a heart-rate band that measures the heart beat and sends this data via blue-tooth to a specially created camera accessory attached to the Nikon camera which triggers a picture. To launch this project, we applied it on a dog and allowed it to snap pictures whenever it got excited. This experience of the dog was captured in a charming online film shared on social media such as Nikon's Facebook network, that drives traffic to a website which demonstrates how this technology works and people can sign up to trial the prototype. On the website, more forms of innovative photography is shared. The PR strategy was very selective as we needed the most important and trusted sites to feature it first. Despite the campaign being created in Singapore, we shared with 2 international photography and tech blogs first to gain worldwide credibility.

The Situation

Nikon has been a leader in photography since 1917 and they were seen as one of the inventors of photography. But in the last 10years, it has been losing market shares to other brands such as Canon and Samsung. With product specifications and price-points being very similar between brands, consumers look towards blogs, gadget forums etc. for opinions and WOM. It comes down to brand affinity to help move products. We believe that Nikon's heritage and believe in innovation is more relevant today then ever but we need to get people talking about the brand again.

The Strategy

Inorder to get the right people talking, we have to create something new and compelling for online leaders of photography to want to feature this new Nikon campaign. These are the connoisseurs of photography so we had to really push the boundaries where photography has never went before. Not forgetting what we had set out to do, we need to excite the audience about Nikon's brand philosophy and what it stands for - Nikon's brand tagline "Heart Of The Image". They believe that each and every person has a unique sense of the world - joy, sorrow, wonder, hope etc. And images can capture these nuances of the heart vividly in the visible world. This believe drives Nikon’s constant innovation to capture better pictures/videos. To demonstrate this, we created Heartography - An innovative camera accessory that enables Nikon cameras to capture pictures triggered by what excites the heart.