Background

Itachoco Ice, which was developed for adults, has a very good reputation for its taste. However, the awareness of the product for both retailers and consumers was quite low because of no media exposure of mass media like TV commercials. The purpose of campaign was increasing the number of trial users as many as possible within a limited budget.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

We devised a package-design which makes consumers want to take a photo of it and stands out in ice-cream sections. Designing the side of ice cream package to resemble the spine of Japanese comic books as if the comic books were lined up in the ice cream sections, we turned the action of lining up the products in freezer into entertaining experience.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

We have faithfully reproduced the design of the real comics so that when the packages are lined up in the ice cream sections, it looks like a real comics lined up. In pursuit of reality, we designed this package with a professional comics binding designer, not an advertising designer. Also, we focused on Japanese comic culture “OTONA-GAI” which means buying all the volumes at once when you grow up and get a job. We promoted the product as 10 volumes impossible to buy at bookstores of the extremely popular comic books “Attack on Titan” which has a larger circulation over one hundred million.

List the results (20% of vote)

As we expected, pictures of the products lined up in ice-cream sections ,which look like bookstores, and freezers at home ,filled with a bulk purchase of the products, which look like bookshelves spread quickly on SNS. it was covered by a lot of news media. The sales of the month, in which the campaign was launched (April), was 7.06 million pieces. It had increased to 392% compared to the average sales of the last three months. (the sales of January:1.64 million, February:1.80million and March:1.97million.) The number of stores introducing the product increased to 250% and the sales per store increased to over 160%.