Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

“Bamboo Sweets” drove people by creating a new innovative brand that transforms abandoned bamboo into sustainable food and created an eco-system to solve the issue of abandoned bamboo.

Background

Bamboo has been essential material for the lives of Japanese, being used for buildings and crafts. On the other hand, bamboo is facing a decline in demand, and with the aging of its producers, now the bamboo forests are being abandoned. What has this brought? Destruction and disaster to the eco-system. For the Sustainable Development Goals, LIFULL, a leading real estate information company in Japan, brought a solution to this issue.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

“Bamboo Sweets” is the world’s first series of sustainable sweets made of abandoned bamboo. LIFULL collaborated with bamboo producers, researchers and chefs, to develop a sustainable eco-system supporting production of the new idea. LIFULL offered the eating experience at its own restaurant, as well as through online and offline stores.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Our creative strategy is to transform abandoned bamboo into sustainable food. Our sweets use bamboo for more than 20% of its ingredient. The more customers buy and eat Bamboo Sweets, the more consumption of the abandoned material reduces the cases of bamboo incidents and supports a sustainable ecosystem. 

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

Bamboo Sweets is a creative idea to transform abandoned bamboo into sustainable food. Our sweets use bamboo for more than 20% of its ingredient. The more customers buy and eat Bamboo Sweets, the more consumption of the abandoned material reduces the cases of bamboo incidents and supports a sustainable ecosystem.  Three key innovations: 1. Technology; Bamboo trees collected from the abandoned forests were processed through drying, grinding and turned into powder to be edible. 2. Collaboration with famous chefs; The strong focus was not only environmental preservation, but also the gastronomic quality which was highly appreciated and gained extensive coverage in lifestyle media. 3. Sustainability; The sweets are served at our restaurant and also sold as ”galette” cakes via online and wholesale. Extended distribution to hotels and art museums has been delayed due to the pandemic, but meanwhile we are discussing opportunities to collaborate with globally renowned sweets brands.

List the results (30% of vote)

・300 thousand of abandoned trees have been consumed as food ingredient ・Over 6000 square meters of the natural environment has been conserved ・Profit earned from the project is returned to the collaborators to fund continued and expanded efforts for this challenge. We are currently working to increase production capacity to fill the back orders and make further significant contribution to solving the bamboo damage issues.

Please tell us about the brand in relation to the locality or market where the product / service is distributed

As we mentioned earlier, bamboo trees has been essential material for the lives of Japanese. At the same time, Bamboo forests have been decreasing in demand from the 1980s onwards, and with the aging heirless generation of bamboo producers, the issue of abandoned bamboo forests has become more serious and severe. Bamboo trees are known to be the fastest growing plant in the world and they stretch longer than one meter everyday. Bamboo is also so extremely strong in reproduction power that it is officially top-ranked in the most uncontrollable plants. Bamboo roots are natured to grow by spreading wide and shallow, keeping a lot of water in the soil, which loosens the ground and makes its prone to landslides. The damage caused by these slides has become a serious social problem in Japan.