Title	GLICODE
Client	EZAKI GLICO CO., LTD.
Product / Service	CORPORATE
Category	D01. Use of Digital Platforms
Entrant	DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation	DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
PR	DENTSU PUBLIC RELATIONS Tokyo, JAPAN
Production	COCONOE Okayama, JAPAN
Production 2	BIRDMAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 3	ROBOT COMMUNICATIONS Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 4	DENTSU TEC Tokyo, JAPAN
Additional Company	GOOGLE ZOO Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name	Company	Position
Yasuharu Sasaki	DENTSU INC.	Executive Creative Director
Hiroshi Koike	DENTSU INC.	Creative Director
Ryutaro Seki, Kazuyoshi Ochi, Moe Goto	DENTSU INC.	Planner
Kentaro Sagara	DENTSU INC.	Art Director
Yoshihiro So	coconoe inc.	Art Director
Shintaro Murakami	DENTSU INC.	Technical Director
Gene Brutty	Google Zoo	Creative
Tim Seddon	Google Zoo	Creative
Joe Fry	Google Zoo	Creative Strategy
Bryan Tanaka	Google Zoo	Creative Coordinator
Naru Kudo	DENTSU TEC INC.	Producer
Yosuke Suzuki	Google Zoo	Producer
Kojiro Fukami	Google Zoo	Producer
Yoichi Kanazawa	BIRDMAN Inc.	Director
Yoshimi Kano	coconoe inc.	Designer
Yohei Kajiwara	BIRDMAN Inc.	App Developer
Takanori Kawai	BIRDMAN Inc.	App Developer
Hayato Kuno	BIRDMAN Inc.	App Developer
Naoki Aso	BIRDMAN Inc.	App Developer
Takashi Okada	coconoe inc.	System Engineer
Yuta Yamada	BIRDMAN Inc.	CG Designer
Haruka Yokokawa	BIRDMAN Inc.	Project Manager
Yuki Ono	WONDROUS inc.	Music SE
Mitsugu Matsumoto	Freelance	Director
Yasuhiro Kawasaki	ROBOT COMMUNICATIONS INC.	Executive Producer
Akihiro Yoshida	SPEC	Camera
Ryu Matsumura	Freelance	Gaffer
Masahiko Okuzaki	coconoe inc.	Markup Engineer
Shinji Nomura	ROBOT COMMUNICATIONS INC.	Project Manager
Reiko Igo	coconoe inc.	Markup Engineer
Keiji Hayashi	DENTSU PUBLIC RELATIONS INC.	PR planner
Mitsuki Yoshida, Shigenari Kato	DENTSU INC.	Account Executive

The Campaign

GLICODE is the first ever educational app that uses advanced image recognition to turn real candy into code to teach kids the fundamentals of programming. Every packet of Pocky, Bisco and Almond Peak turns into bite-sized programming lessons where kids can lay out and arrange their snacks, capture the sequence and watch it turn into code that moves a character through increasingly complex challenges. The app covers three basic programming principles: "BASIC SYNTAX", "LOOPS" and "IF STATEMENTS". We designed this easy to understand visual language so that kids can automate repetitive instructions and assign actions to specific triggers, making GLICODE a real programming language with endless possibilities.

Creative Execution

GLICODE is the first ever educational app that uses advanced image recognition to turn candy into code to teach kids the fundamentals of programming. We turned Glico’s most popular products, Pocky, Almond Peak and Bisco into a new visual language that represent three fundamentals - BASIC SYNTAX, IF STATEMENTS and LOOPS. The use of physical objects helps younger children learn more intuitively. They simply need to lay out candy sequences to instruct the game’s character how to move. Once laid out, capture the physical sequence and the mobile app automatically transforms it into executable code! We launched GLICODE across Japan working with elementary schools to get these bite-sized coding lessons into classrooms. We also distributed starter packs and lesson plans to school teachers and programming schools around the country and are continuing to work with Google’s Hour of Code initiative to champion computer science and programming amongst children and parents.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

GLICODE generated a lot of attention both in and outside of Japan, earning praise from computer science organizations such as Hour of Code for fostering programming education in such an innovative way. More than 200 local and international media sites published the story, and together with its social media reach, produced an estimated media value of over 300 million yen. Japan’s Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications even saw the potential of turning candy into code, giving GLICODE an MIC grant and adopting it as an official government program. GLICODE reached over 10,000 downloads in the first 3 months and continues to grow as more schools adopt it into their curriculums. Across the hundreds of initial workshops we conducted, 95% of children who experienced the application answered "It was fun" and continued the educational game at home. 75% of parents replied that "I think GLICODE is useful programming education."

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

For 95 years, Glico has been famous for including toys with their products. This year, we wanted to include something a little more meaningful. GLICODE is an educational mobile app that uses advanced image recognition to turn real Glico products into bite-sized coding lessons so children can learn the basics of computer programming whilst they snack.

Computer science and programming has become compulsory in curriculums around the world as people realize the power and potential that coding unlocks. But because of Japan’s dated curriculum computer science isn’t going to be made mandatory in schools until 2020. Existing educational programming tools are prohibitively expensive and aimed at older students and consequently elementary school children in Japan have little to no awareness of it. So we proposed a new, cheap and accessible utility to teach kids aged 5-12 the basics of algorithmic thinking and programming. Using physical objects helps children learn more intuitively, it just so happens these objects were also their favourite snacks. GLICODE turns every packet of Pocky, Bisco and Almond Peak into a bite-sized programming lessons which children can take with them anywhere - home or school. We needed something educational and newsworthy, but ultimately we wanted to bring the 2020 deadline forward to 2017. Website URL