This was the first ever major advertising campaign launched for the Japanese comic series "The Fable". Because of the graphic nature of the comic with many scenes with guns and knives, it made it very difficult to market advertise with the strict regulations in Japan. Not just for OOH but digital media as well. This campaign is a great example of how creativity was used to take advantage of the "restrictions" of advertising regulations, organically engaging illustrators and influencers on social media to create their own user generated content, and creating an explosive buzz.

The Fable is a popular Japanese manga about a legendary hitman that is in its second seasons. Although the series had a big cult following, it was still relatively unknown to the general public. In order to further increase its readership, it was necessary to reach out to former readers and new readers who were dormant or had not yet read the manga.

Kodansha, the publisher of the series wanted to generate buzz for The Fable throughout Japan and gain national recognition. We were asked to come up with a bold and crazy idea to promote the release of a new issue of The Fable, loaded with violent guns and knife action.

Japan is a country that follows many rules and regulations, and the same is true for advertising.

To avoid public backlash and controversy, all media, including online media are increasingly becoming strictly regulated. As a result, advertising is losing its freedom of expression.

“Edit out the inappropriate content," is a common ask from Japanese censors.

Unfortunately, ads that follow the regulations end up boring or unfaithful to the source material, hiding guns or cleavage in an unnatural way that is shown in the original content.

We broke through the advertising censorship by replacing the guns with mackerel fish.

But why mackerel? It was main protagonist's favorite food, and the fish resembled the shape of a gun. We knew this middle finger to the ad regulators would spark the public's curiosity. That is why we designed the campaign to create a thematic contrast to intense manga panels by replacing the weapons with mackerel. To emphasize the fact that we couldn't advertise the content of "The Fable" without altering it as we did, we added a large disclaimer so everyone will notice. "※We had to replace guns with mackerel due to ad regulations."

For Kodansha, promoting "The Fable" proved to be a difficult task.

In this manga, which depicts intense gun fights, the scenes with guns are the strongest moments of the series. However, in Japan, ads featuring guns, tattoos, and violence are prohibited in public spaces such as train stations and inside trains, due to the nature of the ads being seen by everybody. In fact, when we submitted ads using panels from a comic book, as expected, all panels containing guns or weapons were rejected and censored as inappropriate.

F#$% the rules!!

Our strategy was to take the restrictive rules, and use it as the gimmick to get publicity. In other words, we hack the rules!!

To coincide with the release of the new issue of The Fable, we hijacked the streets of Osaka with ads, which is the city where "The Fable" is based in. The fishy ads were everywhere, from the fishy ads were everywhere, from train stations to digital billboards, and bus stops. Next, we began running poster ads in bookstores nationwide. The witty ads instantly hooked the booksellers and they actively helped to promote the ads. That's right, we had bookstore clerks all over Japan, who were the closest touchpoint to our product (manga) sales, on our side, and they became our media. Of course, without Paid. Eventually, the ads even became a meme that replaced the weapons in other manga series with mackerel, and the user-generated content became the new ad medium, to keep The Fable trending online. This is also non-paid.

The manga's first ad campaign that bypassed the regulations was a huge success. The campaign drew unprecedented public attention, with fans of the series appreciating the uncanny stunt while capturing the attention of people unfamiliar with the series.

- 273 million impressions, 443% social conversation, and 86 million people reached.

- #1 trending topic on social media.

- The ads that took advantage of the restrictions were highly acclaimed by the media.

- The manga sold over 20 million, with additional reprints throughout Japan.

- Many users generated content were created using other popular manga series such as One Piece and Attack on Titan.

- The ads became so famous that official merchandise inspired by the ads were made by popular demand.

We not only succeeded in breaking through the rules by redesigning a handgun into a mackerel pike, which were traditionally restricted by advertising regulations, but we were able to create buzz using creativity, contributing greatly to product sales. The reason we replaced the guns with mackerel may not be obvious at first glance, but it made perfect sense in the cultural context. Visually, the mackerel looked similar to the gun, and it was the favorite food of the main character of the manga series. Furthermore, the campaign was launched in Autumn which is commonly understood in Japan as when Mackerel is in season. In other words, this campaign not only took advantage of Japan's media conventions but also took advantage of the strong cultural moment of the mackerel season in Japan.