Why is this work relevant for PR?

While diversity has been a national concern in Japan, penguins too are full of diversity– but visitors could never notice that in a short stay at an aquarium. By visualizing unique characteristics and socialities of 59 penguins, revealed through a long-term close observation by keepers, we drew a great deal of public attention without relying on any media, but only by announcing information inside the aquarium and through SNS.

Background

While penguins have always been one of the most popular animals at an aquarium, they’re very difficult to distinguish from one another and therefore the people visiting the aquarium were also having trouble finding their favorite. In order to change the situation, we thought publicizing penguins’ characteristics and socialities only the keepers know is needed so that visitors can understand individuals in detail and find their special one.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Main idea was to translate ecology and behaviors of penguins, unveiled by repeatedly interviewing keepers, into penguins’ “private life”. We created a map called Penguins’ Diversity Map showing their personalities and social connections which are almost same as that of people’s –such as being in a relationship, breaking up, having an affair, love triangle, being a hikikomori (a person avoiding social contact), a marriage between same sex, friendship or the end of friendship. By uncovering their dramatic private life, the map aimed at attracting attention to each penguin.

Describe the strategy (30% of vote)

Through understanding each penguin’s characteristics and his/her connections to others in detail, visitors are now able to find their favorite. They are no longer “watching” penguins but “meeting” them. The strategy of designing and changing the attitude of visitors towards animals has made a clear distinction from other aquariums and helped building unique brand image. Moreover, to efficiently making it into a hot topic in a limited budget we placed the map inside the aquarium so that the visitors may voluntarily tweet/post about it on SNS, accelerating people’s attention.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

While placing Penguins’ Diversity Map in front of the penguin’s pool, we also kept tweeting information including the map itself from the official account. As a result, both visitors and twitter users enjoyed finding their favorite ones and “debating” about penguins on SNS. In addition, we created Instagram account for each penguin where keepers posted photos and daily topics. These accounts greatly contributed to making a map as a long-term trending topic.

List the results (30% of vote) – must include at least two of the following tiers:

Visitors’ tweets triggered off a great attention from media- more than 600 media covered Penguins’ Diversity Map including 14 TV programs as well as resulted in more than 260000 tweets, becoming a trending topic. The customer satisfaction and brand image have both grown by 10%+ and the average time visitors spent at the penguin’s pool has also increased. Penguins’ Diversity Map has also made a huge impact on entire aquarium industry by presenting a new way of introducing animals. For instance, quite a few aquariums followed our success and tried to create their own version of maps.