Brief Explanation

The goal of this campaign is to increase the tourist flow from Southeast Asia to Japan. Nowadays "Japanese food" has been the main reason for Southeast Asian people to visit Japan, and “Ramen” is extremely popular in this region representing Japanese culture. Based on this fact, we built a campaign website, the world’s first “Ramen University”, in which Southeast Asian people can actively participate to get to know Japanese culture and spirit while learning about ramen. In six months, we introduced a wide range of university curriculums, such as “Ramen-ology” course, studying ramen in Japan and fieldwork, which contributed to attract site visitors, had them feel the charm of Japanese culture, and increased their motivation to visit Japan. As the result, 1,015,000 people visited the campaign website. The campaign contributed to increase the number of visitors from six Asian countries to Japan by 135% in comparison to the previous year.

The Brief

The goal of this campaign is to increase the tourist flow from Southeast Asia to Japan. To achieve this, it is necessary to attract middle class young people besides the affluent population which has been the main target previously. It is then indispensable to appeal the new value of visiting Japan. We noticed that those young people eat ramen as casual and local Japanese food, and are keen to learn more about Japan. We therefore built the campaign web site which can easily reach to them and have them notice the charm of Japanese culture while learning about ramen.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

*This web site contributed to increase Southeast Asian tourists to Japan by 135% (by 650,000 visitors) in comparison to the previous year during the campaign. (Total number of visitors from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Philippines over 4 months sourced by Japan National Tourist Organization) *1,015,000 visits to Ramen University campaign site *Unique users over 200,000 accessed to ramen experience movies and posted movies

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

We established the world’s first “Ramen University” online. Various university contents were prepared on this campaign site during October 2014 to March 2015 for Southeast Asian people to lean about ramen while knowing Japanese culture and climate. This web site offered “Ramen-ology” course to exhort the relation between ramen and Japanese culture, as well as executed contest to invite "ramen students" from Southeast Asia to Japan. Through ramen quiz and “Enjoying Ramen” movie selection, six young people from six countries were invited to actually tour around Japan to experience having ramen nationwide. Such lucky people were taken a lot of movies of while touring Japan and enjoying ramen, and we diffused them all over through SNS. In addition, we also had photo contest of “My Favorite Ramen”, which was called fieldwork, and aroused Southeast Asian people’s interest to ramen as well as to visit Japan.