The Campaign

Using the nail art, a fashion trend extremely popular among Japanese women of all ages, background and occupation, we invented a catalog of original nail art designs, each one representing one of those endangered species. The designs were introduced to more than 100 nail salons all over Japan. The aim was to develop a campaign that allows people to learn about endangered species and make donations while getting their nails done. Moreover, the donators were welcome to share their experience and new nail art design on their SNS.

Creative Execution

First of all, we created original nail designs representing species that are references under a very high risk of extinction. We chose a minimalistic design with simple lines and curves to illustrate those animals. 8 of the fingers were painted with that original design and the two remaining ring fingers were painted in red, the symbol of the “Red List” endangered species program. The salons that agreed to participate in the campaign were officially offering those original designs in their stores. Moreover, the donators were welcome to share their experience and new nail art design on their SNS in order to support and promote the Donail project.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

During the three months that followed the launch of the campaign, many influencers of the Beauty and Fashion industries have experienced Donail, leading to a great flow of posts. In addition of our campaign shared on SNS and blogs such as Instagram, Donail was also featured in a large number of Fashion related and national newspapers as well as TV programs. Without using any traditional advertising, the campaign managed a total of 199 million impressions and 15 million reach. Moreover, the famous Ueno zoo agreed to hold regularly a nail art event in its park and even the Minister of Environment gave her support to our project, leading to a new movement of donation across the country. Japanese people who were less familiar with donation got to know more about the critical situations of many species, and to contribute to their protection with this new stylish platform.

We decided to target potential donators with a strong interest in fashion but who haven’t had a chance to participate in environmental protection campaigns. The idea focused on trend-conscious women who are likely to “share” their experiences and therefore create the impulsion needed for environmental protection awareness in Japan. Moreover, many focus on the influence of women as they are considered to be leading influencers on various trends nowadays in Japan. The aim was also to gain natural “shares” on SNS and online media that women tend to use frequently. Since the campaign had a potential as a viral content in social networking services that our targeted audience uses, such as Instagram and blogs, the aim was also to gain “organic” reaches and not to depend too much on paid ads. The idea of using nail art as a campaign was seen as very Instagram-genic and trendy.