Regardless of whether TV commercials or online advertisements they are made for, branded contents are widely adopted by every advertiser in Japan. However, not all products will gain publicly recognition as a result. The well-known products which people talk about are those introduced repeatedly by information programs on TV.

Challenge:

The DoCoMo’s LTE network is regarded as the fastest service in Japan, however, it was not being well recognized by the people. This largest wireless carrier has had its’ image as a serious and an old fashioned company. Moreover, its’ communication strategy was not a news hook type either.

Objective:

1. Let viewers build excitement and thrill about the butt of a joke movie and effectively created the viral marketing with the viewer’s poke fun at the movie.

2. Sweep out the strong image of an old fashioned company of DoCoMo and lead the DoCoMo brand come much closer to the internet users and make them feel as if it is the “yours”.

3. Create a total attitude change of the user by getting interest in DoCoMo and shared the idea of “the DoCoMo’s network = Fastest in Japan”.

Strategy:

We took advantage of the outdated stereotypes image of DoCoMo, created an “absolutely absurd and ludicrous contents”, in which DoCoMo has never come up before, gave a fresh astonishment and succeeded in building the relationship strategy aiming to get the internet users.

Execution:

We developed the world’s fastest cooking device, “Shrimp Frying Cannon” and uploaded on YouTube Channel of "DoCoMo" at the end of Nov 2014.

Responding to an awaiting flood of expectant voices for the next episode to come out over the internet and TV programs, we have developed another device 3 months later to shoot the “3-second fried dumpling”, which model was being introduced as the next episode of the “3-second frying shrimp”.

With the 1st episode, it was to promote the two bandwidths dedicated to the LTE network, while, the 2nd episode was to claim the carrier aggregation technology that DoCoMo has succeeded to provide the fastest network by combining the two bandwidths.

Beating the viewers’ prediction, 3 second cooking instruction gave an astonishing moment and laughter.

Expected poke comments on the movie were raised from many of the viewers like, “Not fully cooked!”, “it’s not a deep-frying!”, “LOL. What a waste of technology!”, “It’s a FRY not a FLY” and the movie was shared and retweeted to the social media channels.

Media nor PR budgets were been allocated, however the viewers record of the “Shrimp Frying Cannon” was over 1.4 million, total of 19 million+ for both the episodes, which was the greatest record in advertising history. TV and web news media coverage was skyrocketed; the free publicity was reported as US$4,000,000.

Action/Business Impact:

1. The access to the new LTE website was boosted by 15 times more, compared to the normal running time.

2. Over 660,000 shared on Facebook and Twitter. Gossips were raised as “DoCoMo official website’s gone crazy.” “Wanna switch over to DoCoMo!” “What a waste of technology!”

The super-speed cooking device was created to promote the speed of DoCoMo network. We used a dual-barreled canon to promote that there are two 4G networks in the deep-fried shrimps version; and, on the other hand, to feature the technology that enables the network speed runs faster by bundling the two 4G networks in one, we used a canon that is able to combine two ingredients, the meat and the vegetables, to make a piece of dumpling in the dumpling version.