COSPLAY ENCYCLOPEDIA

TitleCOSPLAY ENCYCLOPEDIA
BrandKODANSHA
Product / ServiceANIMAL ENCYCLOPEDIA "MOVE"
CategoryA09. Media / Entertainment
EntrantDENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
Idea Creation DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
Media Placement DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
PR DENTSU INC. Tokyo, JAPAN
Production DENTSU TEC Tokyo, JAPAN
Production 2 GEEK PICTURES Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Hirozumi Takakusaki Dentsu Inc Creative Director
Nobuko Funaki Dentsu Inc Creative Director
Shotaro Takizawa Dentsu Inc Art Director
Ikumo Endo Dentsu Inc Art Director
Kinami Hasegawa Dentsu Inc Copywritter
Yusuke Shimano Dentsu Inc Planner
Mina Fukasawa Dentsu Inc Planner
Kazuhito Ochi Dentsu Inc Planner
Keigo Hayashi Dentsu Inc Producer
Naoya Tsukamoto Dentsu Live Producer
Yuri Saito Dentsu Live Producer
Abe Kosuke Sorame Retoucher

The Campaign

We introduced a Cosplay Encyclopedia, in other words, wearable encyclopedia, We picked several animals which can interest children from different categories such as pill-bugs, penguins, lions and basilisks. Taking a hint from Cosplay culture, for instance, pill-bug suits had well-designed hard shells to look charming when they roll into a ball. To create a realistic jungle, we prepared sound effects of forest and roar to make you soak into the story’s world. Moreover, this event is designed to learn the laws of nature. Not only fun facts on animals, but also telling children of their real life such as penguins go into shark’s mouth. At each display panel and attraction as well, children can learn more detailed information about animal life. By using every sense of their body, the feelings and life of animals are gained not as knowledge but as physical experience.

Execution

This interactive exhibition was held at National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, which is one of the greatest organizations in education. Succeeding to raise their sympathy with our mission of biodiversity protection, this exhibition had a long run of six months. We approached elementary schools and kindergartens by delivering parents/teachers special brochures to enlighten the attractiveness of the exhibition in light of educational purpose. This led to group-visits as their extracurricular activity. Photo spots with wearable animal body parts were prepared such as Morpho Butterfly, Mantis and Shellfish, as well as original café menus with motif of penguins or pill bugs. It created a lot of Social mentions. Furthermore, a special promotion was implemented on UN World Wildlife Day, March 3rd, giving out personalized animal encyclopedia with a photo of you on the front cover. This personalized book became a topic and succeeded growing awareness toward protecting wild life.

As of March 2018, the number of visitors has exceeded 120,000. Many elementary schools and people from abroad came to visit the event. This campaign earned 3,022 media coverage and 23,779 mentions or shares online. The posts of the original covered books were widely spread by virtue of the March 3rd promotion. Moreover, numerous videos of children cosplaying and acting like animals were uploaded. In the survey conducted at the exhibition, 97% of visitors answered that they were able to learn about the habit and techniques to live of the animals and 92% of visitors mentioned their increased interest in the animal’s diversity and ecosystem. Moreover, the encyclopedia sold 2,790,000 total units. Kodansha’s animal encyclopedia created this remarkable sensation and is now receiving offers for opening exhibitions from all over the world. Through the experience of acting like animals, the children’s interests in animal life increased.

The Situation

Cosplay Encyclopedia contributed to changing the relationship between children and nature. Sustainable development is more valued and required nowadays considering the current situation that our whole globe faces various environmental problems. By transforming the way of enjoying animal encyclopedia from reading to WEARING, we made it possible for children to feel a realistic animal life which would lead remind them of the importance of biodiversity conservation. As we are now receiving offers for opening exhibitions from all over the world, Cosplay Encyclopedia would expand globally and possible to change our global environment.

The Strategy

Now in Japan, over a half population lives in cities like Tokyo. The children, accordingly, have little chance to be exposed to nature such as mountain-climbing or insect-collecting in daily life. Thus we set the target on children surrounded by rapid urbanization. But it is clear that usual encyclopedia can hardly make children get interested in biodiversity. Here we challenged developing a new concept of encyclopedia for many children to experience the issues that animals face. In developing new concept of encyclopedia, we focused on Japanese world-famous “Cosplay-culture”. By wearing a special costume to identify with a specific character (cosplaying), people can understand its story or its world deeply. This cosplay culture is increasing its presence around the world as you know. We took it as a hint and created a brand-new animal encyclopedia to increase children’s interest in animal life as well as to understand the animal life deeply.

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