The Campaign

“Shusui” means both beautifully clean, and honed-mind, which represents the Japanese sword itself. With this in mind, we believed that the visualization of “Shusui” would lead people to have a more profound understanding of Japanese swords. We also thought about the process of making a sword as a story in itself and decided to apply this to film in order to achieve our goal.

Creative Execution

We applied elements of the Japanese sword in our design and expressed the concept of “Shusui” through motion graphics. The elements used in the design were iron, as the sword’s material; steel, used after heating up the iron; and an array of sword patterns, which varied depending on the era the sword was created, as well as the manufacturing process. By using sophisticated designs and animation instead of live-action footage, the branded film became a work of art, much like the Japanese sword, which it set out to depict. Additionally, having audiences image the patterns of the sword from Tateyama’s mountain landscape is representative of Toyama, where the museum is located and is a sword manufacturing area.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

This branded film helped to increase people’s awareness of “Shusui” as well as Toyama prefecture as a sword manufacturing area. After the film’s release, the museum has seen many visitors coming from outside of Toyama, as well as visitors from overseas. The film not only helped the museum become an attraction that Toyama residents are proud of but helped to enhance the client’s brand image.

Creating a branded film for a private museum was a unique opportunity, albeit a challenging task, since there are few precedents. Most people may think that releasing a branded film on only YouTube or as a TV commercial is not creatively new approach. However, we believed that releasing this film, as a TV commercial would leave a bigger impact on the audience. Additionally, we believed that screening the film at museum events would be an effective way of showing the museum’s visitors that swords are in fact, works of art. Our strategy to set ourselves apart from other museums involved careful consideration of the most efficient ways to approach our target without being too influenced by current advertising trends.