GENDER SWITCHING VR

Short List
TitleGENDER SWITCHING VR
BrandOKAMOTO INDUSTRIES
Product / ServiceOKAMOTO ZERO ONE
CategoryD02. Interactive Video
EntrantBIRDMAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation BIRDMAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation 2 NIBAN-KOBO PRODUCTIONS Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation 3 OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation 4 TOHOKUSHINSHA FILM CORPORATION Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation 5 DENTSU AD-GEAR Tokyo, JAPAN
PR AUR Tokyo, JAPAN
Production BIRDMAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 2 NIBAN-KOBO PRODUCTIONS Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 3 OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 4 TFC PLUS Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 5 TOHOKUSHINSHA FILM CORPORATION Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Takahiro Kamei DENTSU AD-GEAR INC. Exective Creative Director
Roy Ryo Tsukiji BIRDMAN INC. Creative Director
Hojin Ishii NIBAN KOBO INC. Chief Producer
Masaki Kikuchi OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. VR Producer
Kohei Yoshino - Director
Yuki Morikawa BIRDMAN INC. Web Director
Yoshimune Takamatsu NIBAN KOBO INC. Producer
Akitoshi Yamada TFC Plus Corporation Director of Photography
Shudai Matsumoto BIRDMAN INC. Technical Director
Shohei Yamaguchi OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. VR Technical Director
Ryotaro Nakano BIRDMAN INC. Product Designer
Hikaru Futagami - Cast
Kaori Matsuda - Cast
Tetsuji Hasegawa Copywriter INC. Copywriter
Maho Okamoto BIRDMAN INC. Copywriter
Sawa Takeda TOHOKUSHINSHA FILM CORPORATION Planner
Yosuke Fujimoto BIRDMAN INC. Developer
Sho Kakazu BIRDMAN INC. Movie Designer
YUUKI KAWAKAMI OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. CG DESIGNER
HIROMI NAOE - LIGHT
HIROYUKI KUMAGAI OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. POST PRODUCTION MANAGER
Yuka Sasaki OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. Onset Technical
Yuki Nagao OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. Editor
Makoto Tomizawa OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. Mixer
RYOTA KOBAYASHI OMNIBUS JAPAN INC. Colorist
Yuki Obata NIBAN KOBO INC. Production Manager
Nobuki Morikawa NIBAN KOBO INC.​ Production Manager
Iku Ando BIRDMAN INC. Project Manager
Kento Osawa AUR, Inc. Media Promoter
Mai Abe AUR, Inc. PR Director
Yamashina Yuji DENTSU AD-GEAR INC. Planner
Daisuke Watanabe BIRDMAN INC. Art Director

The Campaign

Men and Women are creatures that can’t understand each other. They happen to completely fail at guessing what the other is thinking. Furthermore, the Japanese virtue of speaking less and “reading emotions” as well as “giving way to others”, are making the misunderstandings that occur between couples more complicated. Our goal is to standardize condom use by letting people experience what their partners are feeling when that time comes to wear a condom. We decided to create a VR content allowing the users to experience the true feelings o their partners: “Gender Switching VR”. This VR movie allows you to take a look into your partner’s head, and hear its ‘inner voice’ as the story proceeds. Turn the VR headset or smartphone left to right, the user can switch the point of view between female or male and experience the inner conflict that occurs around relationships.

Creative Execution

Gender Switching VR content allows the user to hear the inner voice of the main character. They can switch the point of view between the male character or the female character anytime during the movie by rotating 90° to either left or right. Instead of CG animation, we chose live action to create a realistic experience. The immersive movie was realised with rigs we taylor made to attach the fisheye equipped GoPro directly onto the actors to comply with the 360° VR environment. For perfect synchronisation of each male and female footage, we played the dialogues out from the speaker during the shoot as markers. This content was mainly developed for VR headsets, but we also made it to adapt to smartphone's gyro sensors. In spite of the strict restrictions of advertising condoms in Japanese media platform, the movie has obtained massive media attention and social media coverage.

This series of projects have been covered by countless media. The project alone gained over 1.2 million page views and media value of 60 million yen. In total the with the previous projects, it reached 40 million page views and media value of 43 billion yen. Most importantly the campain went viral, and was widely spread among young generations through twitter and other social media platform. While the media exposure for condom is highly restricted, we have created an opportunity for people to start talking more openly about condoms. Overall it has gained brand awareness and improved the company image.

We conducted a survey of condom usage to over 400 people residing in Japan, and revealed the result on our project website. From the result, we developed a hypothesis of why the condom use rate is low, and started this project. This time we focused on the misunderstandings between men and women that occurs before an intercourse, and created an educational content aiming to diminish the issue of not knowing what your partner is thinking. The ‘gender switch’ theme was directly inspired by an animated movie that became a global hit during the planning stage of this project. The movie was popular among young people, and we saw it as a great chance to grab young people’s attention.

Links

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