The ice cream industry is in a never-ending race to invent the next great flavor. As a result, it has become a lot more difficult to market traditional flavors—a situation that did not benefit Lotte’s SOH vanilla ice cream.

We wondered whether there was a way to rebrand vanilla—so we re-examined the product and discovered something. Due to its unique cube packaging, SOH had the look of a marble block—something a sculptor might fashion into a work of art. So, we invited the public to “play with their food” by creating sculptures out of our SOH ice cream. We wanted to create an entirely new kind of eating experience—one that combined eating food with making art.

To encourage the public to get on board with our campaign, we developed special ice cream spoons with sculpting tools on each end, and gave them to our customers for free. Essentially, these were toys designed to trigger our customers’ creative impulses—and to remind them that there was a time in their childhoods when they used to play with their food with total abandon. Our goal was twofold. One was to create a user-led campaign in which customers generated conversation about the campaign by uploading their favorite works of ice cream art to social media. The second goal was to rebrand SOH vanilla ice cream as an exciting experiential product that led itself to creative works of food art.

Following a press conference and video launch, we distributed 480,000 spoons to supermarkets around Japan, where they were handed out for free to customers who bought our ice cream. TV ads showed famous people displaying their SOH ice cream art. Meanwhile, we solicited works from thirty celebrities—including illustrators, comedians, rock bands, and baseball players—and asked them to upload their ice cream art to social media. We then incorporated these works in outdoor and online advertising. We also organized SOH ice cream sculpting events in areas of central Tokyo that get a lot of foot traffic, and we displayed works created by the public. In the process, we generated enthusiasm for a brand new eating experience that involved playing with one’s food.

From cute works by children to surprisingly detailed sculptures, many images of SOH ice cream art were uploaded to social media, garnering 100,000 likes and nearly 8 million social media impressions. The campaign also received exposure on over 1,000 online and offline media, including on TV, which provided publicity worth $5 million. YouTube celebrities uploaded unsolicited videos of themselves creating SOH ice cream art. Eighty percent of surveyed customers said that playing with their ice cream in this way made them feel happy. We created a user-led campaign in which customers generated conversation about the campaign by uploading their favorite works of ice cream art to social media. We rebranded SOH vanilla ice cream as an exciting experiential product that led itself to creative works of food art. Following the campaign, sales of SOH ice cream at stores increased 142%.