Describe any restrictions or regulations regarding Healthcare/RX/Pharma communications in your country/region including:

Even if it supports children 's health, corporate product promotion is prohibited in schools (educational institutions) in Japan. So, as an Otsuka Pharmaceutical, we realized our approach to children by creating content that supports children's education, not product promotion. It was adopted as a school teaching material.

Describe the target audience and why your work is relevant to them.

'New malnutrition' is becoming a larger problem for children in developed countries including Japan because of their unbalanced diet. Families spend less time together during mealtime, so children have less opportunities to create healthy eating habits. Otsuka therefore tried to improve their eating habits through fun experiences.

Background

This is a corporate branding campaign for Otsuka, the leading company in the field of pharmaceuticals and nutrition in Japan. Unhealthy eating habits for children has been a recent problem even in developed countries like Japan, mainly because they usually don't eat what they don't like. Even when parents try to emphasize the importance of balanced meals, children hardly listen and still choose snacks over eating vegetables. In the spirit of their corporate philosophy "Creating new products for better health worldwide", Otsuka set out to improve nutrition education for children in a fun and delicious way.

Describe the creative idea

Children love using their imaginations to draw what they wish they could have. So how could we leverage what children already love doing to increase their appetite for healthy meals? The answer was creating a smartphone app 'SketchCook' that turns imaginary dishes drawn by children into healthy recipes. By leveraging Google's machine learning technology, the app automatically analyzes the childrens' drawings, matches it to a recipe most similar to the original drawing and also recommends healthy side dishes to complete a balanced meal. This magical experience and interaction helps children become naturally interested in healthy, balanced meals through fun! Otsuka's nutrition expert knowledge was also carefully integrated into the app experience, enabling children to learn the importance of healthy meals while having fun.

Describe the strategy

Nutrition education has been taught at schools and from parents at home, but has not been interactive or a fun experience for children. As a result, children didn't change their dietary behaviors and continued eating only what they like without considering nutrition. Otsuka wanted to find a way to motivate children with a solution to improve their daily eating habits through an interactive, fun experience by starting with something that they already love to do - drawing! Therefore we developed SketchCook that helps children change their eating habits in a fun and practical way.

Describe the execution

Otsuka launched the free app 'SketchCook' on May 18, 2018 in both Google Play Store and iTunes. Providing magical experiences, SketchCook helped children to naturally learn about the importance of a healthy, balanced diet on smartphones - a device they're already familiar with. Besides the app, the 'SketchCook Restaurant' opened on May 19 & 20, where children drew dishes they loved and through the app had professional chefs bring their dishes to life! The SketchCook app has been used not only at homes, but also at elementary schools in Japan as a supporting tool in nutrition education classes.

List the results

Launching the app in May 2018 generated over 350 stories by local and international media sites and achieved more than $2M USD in media impressions. Due to high popularity, the SketchCook app has been used at an increasing number of elementary schools in Japan. After using the app, 100% of children responded positively in surveys with comments like "SketchCook is fun!" and ”I learned about nutrition". Most of children have repeatedly used the app and improving their eating habits. Through SketchCook, Otsuka has made nutritional education fun for children and supporting them to a healthier future.