The Campaign

Introducing 'Donate Your Signature', to let you experience the frustration of illiterate people for yourself by creating ‘unwritable’ receipts out of special paper that repels ink so it could not be signed. For most people in developed countries, it's difficult to empathize with the frustration of not being able to read or write. These abilities are so ingrained within them, they seldom consciously consider the problem. Especially in Japan a country where 99% of people are literate. So we offer the ‘real’ frustration in order to raise awareness and donation against the global illiteracy.

Creative Execution

We created 'unwritable' receipts out of special paper that repels ink so it could not be signed. On the back of the receipt, your signature appears with the message to evoke donations; ‘Would you like to donate ¥500(=about 5 dollars) to improve the literacy of people who cannot even write their name?’ Customers could then tick a box and this donation would be added to their bill. And to make this idea even more powerful, we partnered with the renowned ‘literacy bar’ for aficionados of all forms of writing to congregate.

92% of people chose to donate when settling their bill. 100+ coverage by online news and blogs. 21% increase in individual donations from previous year.

We turned the common receipts at store into a seamless donation system. The creative idea is about unwritable receipt used as a functional media.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Targets audience is all literate people in Japan, especially people who have higher literacy as 'literate' influencers (e.g. writers, editors, etc). As we needed to highlight the moments of being illiterate, we created a simple solution related to an occasion where they write something without thinking, when they sign for their credit card payments.