Cannes Lions
STORIES, Tokyo / SUBARU / 2020
Overview
Entries
Credits
Background
This is the latest installment in our SUBARU "Your story with" series, a long-running Branded Entertainment Project aiming to send the message that SUBARU makes cars by thinking of people and their stories.
We were tasked with creating a 90-second brand film that would convey the value and philosophy of Subaru as a car that can be a part of consumers’ lives for a long time, and the value of owning your own car even amidst the widespread proliferation of rideshare services in Japan.
Idea
We came up with a bold idea to convey the value of Subaru and having “my car.”
We created a branded entertainment film without any new cars, instead highlighting a 20+ years-old model not even available oin the market.
We wanted to tell the life story of a family along with mysterious numbers on the screen such as 1994, 1998, and growing continuously larger to eventually reveal that they’re the SUBARU's odometer.
The Subaru Legacy has always been in their life for 20+ years and 200,000 kilometers.
We conveyed the philosophy of the brand, always being as close to the owner as their own family.
When purchasing a new car, who wouldn’t consider a brand that believes in their product twenty years and 200,000km down the road?
Additionally: odometer numbers have double meanings in Japanese. (3470: Goodbye when couple fight. 20589: Two are engaged. 31588: Best father and mother, etc.)
Strategy
Rather than take a traditional approach by highlighting new models, we instead featured a no-longer-on-the-market Subaru Legacy as we told the story in order to show the tremendous value a car can add over time, while encapsulating Subaru's brand philosophy of being a part of the family. By telling the story of the brand instead of selling the latest product, we believed we were projecting tremendous confidence to the viewer and making the value of SUBARU both self-evident and emotional.
Execution
The commercial aired on primetime television on nation-wide network TV and was featured on the Subaru corporate website as well as youtube, and ran from 3/27/20 - 12/25/20.
Each on-air had acquired an average of 10% of the national viewership of Japan (13M views).
Outcome
The project aired across Japan and reached an accumulative 130 million people over 10+ airings on major network TV.
Because of the impact and creativity of the project, every time the project aired, it always trended on twitter in Japan.
The project garnered over 200,000 views on youtube, with 4000+ likes and over five hundred enthusiastic comments in addition to trending online. During the course of our SUBARU Your story with the campaign, SUBARU became the #1 most relatable Japanese car brand.
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