In Japan, branded entertainment is a popular way of advertising. Entertainment, such as short films or TV dramas, animations, and movies, are financed or supported by corporations. Product placement is not so popular but it is still done on TV programs or in games.

As many forms of branded entertainment exist in Japan, we wanted to challenge the advertising with a ground-breaking idea of new branded content that is ‘an idol’, who has the name of a product.

To create the viral effect in our campaign, we used each media at the best timing.Aimi's debut was made with Ice no mi posters placed around Shibuya, the city of the young.At the same day, she made the cover of the popular magazine with her interview article. Then, we sent her interview movie to the entertainment news programs that reported the birth of new AKB48 member as a cover story. As her website started, we announced that she would be the main cast in our upcoming Ice no mi TV commercial.As the topic of a mysterious new member of AKB48 heated up, awaited TV commercial was finally aired, making Aimi a social phenomenon.After disclosing Aimi's secret, we launched "Oshimen Maker" (Create your own idol) website for users to create their own idols mixing facial parts of different AKB48 members.

TV news reports, 94 programsNews and magazines reports, 270 articlesNews websites reports, 1,158 sites58,000 tweets, attracting 1m followersThe Ice no mi website received close to 74m views or 60% of the population of Japan. The promotional value of this campaign has come to roughly ¥3bn. Because of the campaign, sales doubled from the previous year.In the end, we've succeeded in rewriting Ice no Mi's old image, which was ‘outdated ice cream products’ to a new, exciting and challenging product with positive energy.