The Campaign

The Washable Book is a low-tech innovation that transforms reading into physical learning, to inspire behavioral change. The book’s characters reach their colorful futures only by having their dirty hands physically washed on the pages. The repeated action helps the children make the connection between hand washing and reaching their own future goals. The book leverages color watermark printing, a new technology printed in 3 layers: when the character’s dirty hand on the top layer is exposed to water and soap, the special white ink of the middle layer becomes transparent, allowing the colorful future image of the character on the bottom layer to show through. Since it doesn't require batteries or expensive hardware, the book is reusable once it dries out - allowing many more children to learn that hand washing leads to healthier futures.

The Brief

The overall budget was JPY2M (approx. USD20K). Out of the budget, we spend JPY1.7M (approx. UDS17K) to create 500 copies of Washable Book. The limited and remaining JPY300K was fee for the work that we did with our internal resources including idea generation, design, copy writing, PR activity and so forth. It is a low budget project, but it went to reprinting and is leading to business expansion.

Creative Execution

As the first phase, 500 books were published in December 2017 to be gifted into the hands of children at elementary schools in rural areas of Cambodia - together with the germicidal soap. We partnered with two NGOs, 'SHARE' and 'Japan Philanthropic Association', to teach children the importance of hand washing with the Washable Book at schools and even in their own homes.

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

Over 1.5 billion media impressions in 3 weeks resulted in 18 times more bars of soap being gifted than projected. And reprinting is in progress for roll-out to other developing countries. But most importantly, the Washable Book is changing children’s futures, by changing their behavior.

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

ANGFA, the Japanese health and hygiene company, has its brand vision to make the better and healthier future for people through offering its preventive medicine products. In the project ANGFA wished to change children's future in developing countries by improving their behavioral habits of hand-washing with its germicidal soap.

In many developing countries where illiteracy is a common problem and digital infrastructure is still limited, hand-washing is simply not a part of the culture. So we needed an intuitive, low-tech educational way to cross language, literacy and cultural barriers in order to positively change children's hand-washing behavior. We found it in a storybook where physically washing the pages is the only way to truly enjoy the story. Going beyond simple hygiene education, children are provided with first-hand experience of hand-washing through the story and how that action could lead to achieving and expanding their own future possibilities.