The Campaign

In order to create an opportunity to expose young people to the brand, we first developed a simple rap game that can be played on browsers. The lyrics describe the benefits of Yomeishu, and players can earn gifts based on their score. The gifts are original products that convey Yomeishu’s benefits in order to further increase engagement with customers.

Creative Execution

We launched a website for the game on December 1, 2016. The game went viral, and an overwhelming number of media outlets contacted us to cover the game. For two weeks a video about the game was played on the giant screens on the buildings overlooking the Shibuya scramble crossing in Tokyo, and in February 2017 game-play videos organically appeared on YouTube (with 124,000 views). It became one of the most trending contents in Japan, and was even listed on Yahoo! Japan’s Wadai Nau (“trending topics,” a section on its website which lists the top trending keywords from Twitter)

Reach increased to 70.4% of the target market, young people, far exceeding the previous reach of only 7%. Understanding of the brand’s benefits rose to 88.7%, with 88.9% responding that they “feel Yomeishu is approachable.” The number of people that played the game was 308,130, and 40,543 people entered to receive gifts. And in terms of buzz generated, there were 15,480,000 impressions on Twitter.

The reason we chose smartphones as the platform for the game is that the number of young people using smartphones has increased exponentially—to the point that smartphone media reach is almost equal to TV media reach. We advertised the game with display ads on social media targeting men and women from 20 to 39 years old instead of placing ads on traditional media such as TV and magazines in order to organically generate buzz so the target market would become familiar with the brand.