The Campaign

There are approximately 240,000 taxis driving around the streets in Japan and 5.4 million people use them every day. The rides are comfortable, the drivers are polite and the doors open and close automatically. Japanese taxis are known for their high-quality services and is utilized by a wide variety of people from business persons to tourists and partygoers. Nevertheless, Japanese taxis have a problem. A problem with smell.

Creative Execution

According to a consumer survey, more than 90% of the taxi riders responded that they have experienced being bothered by smell. However, the true issue is that taxi users will never know whether a taxi is smelly or not until they get one. It is like Russian roulette. But what if you could know beforehand? Our strategy is to make fresh-smelling taxis recognizable so that taxi users can deliberately choose them.

?We distributed the products to a leading taxi company, Nihon-Kotsu, and in a joint effort, dispatched the "Febreze Taxis" with stickers making them recognizable from outside. ?We also co-launched an original taxi hailing app where the users can detect, track down and book Febreze Taxis from the app. We did not use this project via paid media. ? Media: This was mainly announced via newsletters from P&G and Nihon-Kotsu. (no paid media) ?Timeline: 30/08/2016 – 29/09/2017

Taxi users will not know whether a taxi is smelly or not until they actually ride one. Our creative solution is to turn smelly taxis into fresh-smelling ones with Febreze car air refresher and make them recognizable prior to hailing one. We named these fresh-smelling taxis, “Febreze Taxi”. We also developed original taxi-hailing app where taxi users can detect, track down and book Febreze Taxis whenever they want.