The Campaign

The moment when an instant photo comes out of a camera and reveals an image is always magical and powerful enough to catch anyone attentions. With this insight in mind, the creative idea was to turn this magical moment into something amazing and spectacular by making it in giant format, in an unexpected place and moment. In other words, the idea was to turn the sun shades, on top of all Photo Kanon stores, into a gigantic instant photo and make pedestrians feel like they were the ones “taking the photo” by simply walking past. The act of “printing the sunshades into the street” was achieved with an automatic mechanism triggered by anyone walking in front of the shop.

Creative Execution

We reinvented the traditional and ignored sun shades on top of all the stores of Photo Kanon around Tokyo. (Photo Kanon is a premium range of camera shops specializing in instant cameras like Polaroid and Fuji Instax) First we took several portraits of trendy youngsters. The best were then printed, with the iconic white frame, on a giant scale and made into sunshades. Finally, we hung the sunshades on the exterior of the Photo Kanon shops. As people walked past they triggered the instant photo automatic mechanism accompanied with the distinctive sound of an instant photo being taken, and the shade came out as if printing an instant photo into the street. The interactive outdoor is now permanent on all Photo Kanon stores.

We increased the Photo Kanon shop’s traffic in all the key positions around town by 24%, which resulted in an 8.5% sales increase from the same quarter in the previous year.

Instant Shades is a campaign routed in media, as we reinvented the traditional sun shades on top of all the stores of Photo Kanon around Tokyo. (Photo Kanon is a premium range of camera shops specializing in instant cameras) The re-invention of this media turned the outdoor space that usually only carries the name and the logo of the shop into a live and interactive outdoor, showcasing a stunning product demonstration. A passive overlooked outdoor became a new medium that showed the magic of instant photography, in unexpected way, to all the pedestrians passing in front of Photo Kanon stores.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

There’s a revival of instant photography in Japan but it’s still restricted to a niche young audience. This has created the opportunity for several medium businesses like Photo Kanon to flourish but to grow even more there’s a need to reach out to a much bigger audience. This campaign targeted young adults that always lived with digital photography, love the “Polaroid” look on Instagram, but never owned and instant camera. We wanted to capture the attention of those who already take hundreds of photos a day and show them how special instant photography can be. As Photo Kanon stores are located in trendy shopping streets with heavy traffic, we’ve decided to engage those already passing by all our locations with an interactive outdoor, magical enough to make anyone stop. With minimal investment we transformed a forgotten media into a surprising product demonstration; substantially increasing new interest in instant photography.