The Campaign

On December 25, without any warning, photos of their kids began popping up in place of ad banners on the work computers of many dads. Naturally, the banners were delivered only to the specific dad’s computer. All the banner areas on the screen were taken over by photos of their kids. Clicking a banner brought up messages from their wife and the kids. This was a totally new creative approach: The more the dads worked, the more they were reminded of their family and the more they wanted to go home.

Creative Execution

Together with Google, we devised a totally private delivery system with a unique approach. We recruited mums at the beginning of December. With participants from across Japan, we started delivering banners to dads en masse on December 25.

Compared to the normal banner click rate of two percent, more than 80 percent of dads who saw the banners clicked on a banner, and 72 percent of these dads said they actually went home earlier than usual. The purchase volume of confectionery category was occupied by kids, and female, who are usually main purchasers. This time, we shifted the communication target to male. As a result, male purchaser ratio among one of Glico's major products increased, and it led to the sales increasing 10%.

The target audience was workaholic dads. They being normally difficult to approach, we reached them directly through their work computers. Our approach took advantage of the dads’ workaholic tendencies: the more they worked, the more photos of their cherished kids were delivered to the computer screen. Without the dads’ knowledge, the screens were shared with their work colleagues, who also urged the dads to go home. By pairing the essence of human love with technology, we successfully devised a system with ultimate targeting and creativity the target audience was very likely to respond to.