The Campaign

We built a Super-size pinball machine that required strategic and collaborative gameplay. The JACKPOTato gaming process was made from the end-to-end potato story; from the farm to the table and into the mouths of the whole family. We created a playful activation, crafting a potato field and a 10-feet tall (3 meters) giant pinball machine from old wooden and cardboard boxes. To play the game, contestants had to dig up a potato from the nearby 'potato field' and maneuver it through the potato-journey pinball machine. The path of the potato narrates the story of a potato' s lifecycle: from seed to the plate. Hitting the "JACKPOTato" could win the challenger up to 100 potatoes to take home and share with neighbors.

Creative Execution

The JACKPOTato giant pinball machine was crafted entirely from 100% recycled materials such as cardboard and wood boxes. We created a replica potato field within the festival which could be harvested by the kids. Once they had their potato they had to transport it to our machine and hoist it to the top in order to commence the journey. Kids then had to play the game and in so doing follow the story of the organic potato from farm to table. At the end of the journey each potato fell into a roulette wheel to reveal the winnings. Potatoes won were taken home in branded, recycled paper bags. An added benefit to the educational fun was that JACKPOTato used non-retail-standard produce thereby saving hundreds of small-grown potatoes of impeccable organic quality from the garbage bin - the usual destination for produce that's even slightly off standard.

Results

For 2 days, the queue in front of JACKPOTato stretched through the festival. Among the more than 500 excited challengers were also celebrities, high-ranking politicians from the national ministry of agriculture and Forestry. THE TOKYO HARVEST event was well attended and our JACKPOTato was a big draw: this time around, approximately 40,000 visitors were estimated to have visited - 10,000 more than previous year. Beyond the immediate awareness building created by the event and activation we delivered $300K of earned media impressions. But most importantly for 2 days, big smiles gleamed as kids carried their brown paper bags full of potato winnings. The event was dedicated with gratefulness towards the farmers of the country and went some way to developing sustainability mindfulness amongst Tokyo's families.

We transformed the seemingly mundane process of growing organic potatoes into stimulating edutainment for urban kids. The kids played the giant pinball machine we created directly touching the potatoes and learning the process of growing vegetables through the game. Each participant was served up a tasty potato treat at the end of every game and also took the potatoes back home in branded, recycled paper bags with the special potato recipes so they could appreciate the benefits of their labors. JACKPOTato is an educational game from farm to table through fun.

Typical visitors to the annual festival are young parents and their kids. Our strategy was to create an environment where the whole family could be involved and impacted. We required an enjoyable experience that was informative and thought provoking for the parents yet fun and educational for the kids. It was important bring agriculture to life while keep it simple yet still challenging enough to engage all visitors. Our business objective was to raise awareness of the benefits of sustainable farming practices while driving support for the Tokyo Harvest Cooperative. The marketing objective demanded that we develop an activation that would create media talkability thereby maximizing the one-time investment and spreading the sustainability theme throughout the media landscape.