The Campaign

To promote direct communication among small-scale local food producers and urban consumers, we decided to establish Tôhoku Taberu Magazine*, magazine with food (* Taberu means “edible” in Japanese.) Once a month, the magazine is delivered to readers’ house, with stories about a carefully selected farmer or fisherman in Tôhoku region and the food they harvested. The readers enjoy the stories, cooking the food, and tasting it. At the same time, we established a Facebook page where readers can post dishes they cooked with the delivered food and, we released the page to the food producers. Yes, food producers have finally found the place where they can see how their foods are eaten! Local food producers and urban consumers began to share messages and got to know each other through Facebook page. And finally, they started to meet face to face, and produce their meeting events voluntarily.

Execution

The first publication of this magazine with almost no budget, a media team sent out samples of magazine and food to all the bloggers who had connections to the team and also had relevancy to the targeted audiences. We contemplated the exposure through the bloggers writing articles about the magazine and the food. At the same time, our chief editor was interviewed by local newspapers telling his passion of this project and used it as an advertisement instead. And at the time of arisen the connection between local food producers and urban consumers, we announced Tôhoku Taberu Magazine’s project nationwide using the news of winning well-known award, Good Design Award. The total amount of EAV through TV exposure in 2015 exceeds US$ 8,658,801. It also gathered attention from neighboring countries having the same problems and, a book writing about our activity is going to be published in Korea and Taiwan.

This attempt caught into the news in various media, and after 18 months, procured 1,500 of toll periodical subscribers (1,500 was our KGI and readers’ withdrawal rate kept 3% (industry standard is 10%)). Interaction of food producers and readers brisked up through the Facebook page and annually, more than 300 readers visited food producers. Encouraged by them, some farmers even increased the amount of food they harvest each year. Looking at our success, enthusiastic volunteers in other local areas began to issue Taberu Magazine of their hometown. At this point, their magazines have been published in 20 other areas nationwide and more areas are about to join. Under the umbrella of “Japan Taberu Magazine League”, this attempt has become a national sensation and their total readership is over 6,460 now. The junior high civics textbook depicts our attempt as “new movement to open up the future of Japanese agriculture”.

The Situation

Because this initiative has brought perceptual and behavioral change between local food producers and urban consumers by inventing the world’s first magazine with real food. This attempt was started to solve regional social problems in Tôhoku region but now, it is widely recognized as a hopeful model which can solve the same problem all over Japan. (Since this campaign runs over an extended period of time with multiple implementation dates, we put some additional information on the optional supporting materials to provide proof of the campaign’s adequate evolution from year to year, as “GENERAL RULES: ENTRANT POSITION” point 12 suggests.)

The Strategy

Main targets of Tôhoku Taberu Magazine (24US$ per month) are the intelligentsia who live in city and gather acquaintanceship with a good command of using SNS such as Facebook. A very unique product plan people never heard of, a monthly magazine comes with food, or a system that people can easily become friends with farmers and fishermen through a members-only Facebook page, were planned to rouse the targets and bloggers. We advised food producers to communicate with readers more aggressively on the Facebook page, while stimulating readers’ motivation by featuring a heart-warming story of a farmer or a fisherman and picturesque recipes of food in each issue. The media strategy was to make autonomic exposure without paying redundant cost. The annual budget we spent for advertisement in 2015 was only US$ 800 for Facebook Ads.