Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

Our work highlighted and conveyed to young people the message of the brand "UNLOCK YOU", and enhanced engagement in new ways. Specifically, we used top players in street sports; which is a typical form of youth culture, and released the contents extracted from the playing data without revealing their identities in the beginning. By doing so, our work left people wondering "Who is that?" and became a topic of conversation. Also, it expressed insights of street sports community "not to skate in parks, in competitions or in ads, but through the streets, where the sport comes from."

Background

Young people do not feel the need to have a watch as long as they have a smartphone (even if they were to wear one, it would be a smartwatch.) Promoting the new street watch brand WW simply as a watch will not resonate with them. With that in mind, we publicize WW’s branded contents as the symbol of the community of people who are expressing themselves on the streets.

Describe the creative idea

We focused on the street sports community, which is often used in ads by youth-oriented brands and used their insight, “We want to skate on the streets, where the sport comes from, not just in parks and in competitions or in ads.” We released a web movie “Who Owns the Streets?” which showed the brand’s mascot WW Man in a mask skating freely through Shibuya, Tokyo, the epicenter of Japan’s street culture. At the same time, we placed figurines of WW Man in action throughout Shibuya. We also opened WW Man's Instagram account. We posted images of him living in Shibuya.By producing the brand's mascot and branded contents that embody their insight by combining reality (live-action), fiction (VFX), offline (streets), and online (Web), we bolstered the image of the "WW brand that unlocks (Unlock You) you."

Describe the strategy

WW has redefined the role of watches for young people from "flaunting social status" to "a symbol of community and friends aspiring towards the same values". We now turn our attention to sports. Various brands use skaters in parks and on the streets in their advertising campaigns, but in reality, it has become very difficult to enjoy street skating. Skaters want to enjoy their roots of skating in the city on a daily basis, and not in parks, competitions or advertising fiction. By creating brand characters and branded content embodying their insights in a combination of real (live-action), fiction (VFX), offline (city) and online (Web) settings, we were able to make a strong impression of WW signifying the idea of "Unlock You" and spreading this idea from people who believed in it. This allowed WW to become a brand that symbolized a community aspiring towards the same values.

Describe the execution

We developed the masked mascot WW man and released a web movie, "who owns the streets?" which showed him skating freely through shibuya, tokyo, the epicenter of japan's street culture. At the same time, we placed figurines of WW man in action throughout shibuya. Anyone finding one could see an ar movie by scanning it with their smartphone, which prompted them to visit a special site where they could see WW man skating the streets unchallenged. We also opened WW man's instagram account. We posted images of him living in shibuya. We later revealed that the masked man was japan's top inline skater, and brought an element of surprise and created a topic of conversation by also disclosing that we used WW man's motion capture data in the VFX scenes.

Describe the outcome

WW was accepted by japan's street culture community, and famous street sports people came out in full force to post selfies with WW man on their instagram pages. It attracted the endorsement of Zeebra, a legend in japan's hip hop circle, and the sympathy of skaters all over the world, and turned the campaign into one that was most supported by young people in seiko's history, as the engagement score exceeded 1.5 million in a month, and the target expressed that the ad represented their voices.