Train lines operated by Japan Railway form the backbone of public transportation infrastructure in Japan. They traverse the entire country, and have made life more convenient and helped society grow for 150 years. In fact, they are so integral to daily life that people often take them for granted. To address this issue, we were asked to develop a campaign that would reconnect Japan Railway with its customers in a personal way. Despite the fact that Japan is a small island nation, only 6% of Japanese have visited all 47 prefectures. So our objectives were twofold: 1) to maximise interest in domestic travel that had grown during the pandemic and encourage people to visit Japan's scenic attractions, and 2) to inject an element of fun into rail travel and engage people in an interactive activity that enabled them to create their own personal "My Japan Railway".

Our creative idea was to imbue train stations all across Japan with their own unique identity, transforming them from simple transportation access points into destinations of personal significance that people could feel a strong emotional connection to. We began by researching railway stations across the country, reviewing historical records, newspaper articles, archival and current photos and social media. Based on our research, we created woodcut-style stamps for some 600 stations nationwide, and a web app for collecting the stamps on a smartphone. Metadata displayed with the stamps also allows people to see how many others have collected the same stamp, creating a sense of shared experience with other travellers.

Our strategy was to focus on how people thought about railway infrastructure—particularly the train stations that serve as access points to railway services. We knew that stations were perceived as public spaces, not as places to which people felt any personal attachment, and that this caused people to think about railways simply as an everyday means of public transportation. By creating distinctive, collectable stamps for each station, we increased the value of the everyday commuting experience by transforming it into an adventurous treasure hunt. This gave people a reason to talk about their favourite stations and railway adventures with others. Previously, it was only avid railway fans who loved trains and train stations enough to post about them on social media. But with the attractive content we provided, even ordinary commuters began to share their love, becoming a vast network public relations hubs for the railway.

To execute our stamp designs, we used the signature colours of the six companies that comprise the nationwide Japan Railway network. Although the medium of stamp delivery is digital, we gave the stamps a warm, analogue feel by using woodcut-style lettering and imagery, and enabled people to personalise the stamp images by varying the ‘stamping force’ according to how long the smartphone app screen is pressed. This fusion of analogue and digital technology creates an online/offline experience is at once retro and trendsetting. Stamps can be displayed in the order they were collected, by rarity or popularity, or as a personalised map of the user's travels. To support the campaign we used in-station billboards showing all of the stamps arranged to form a map of Japan, and to heighten user engagement, we created stamp books, posters, and promotional items that can be obtained by completing in-app tasks.

Our campaign successfully supercharged interest in domestic travel during the pandemic, when restrictions on international travel had caused people to adopt a ‘stay home’ mentality. This not only benefitted the railways, of course, but also helped boost regional economies nationwide. In a survey of campaign participants, 71% said “It made traveling around Japan by train more fun,” and 68% said “It made me want to visit places I hadn’t visited before.” In addition to bringing about this positive change in attitude, the campaign has also garnered over 16,000 mentions and over 18,000,000 impressions on social media and been featured in magazine and newspaper articles. During the campaign to date, some 770,000 users have collected over 2,000,000 stamps, strengthening the brand-customer relationship and entertaining railway passengers of all ages.