What is the future of search? To answer this question is our challenge. Yes, big data predicting what we want might be convenient, but our vision involves a more rudimentary sensation – a search system with the human touch. What if a spoken word turns into a physical object? The search could be more exiting. We invented Hands On Search that makes imagination real and gives us inspirational and tangible realities, not just informational results. It was developed by combining the idea of human touch with common 3D printing technology.

This innovation might be something good, but it won’t just spread on its own. A website to promote the project was made, but it was necessary to allow for more personalization of this promotion to make it truly successful.

So, the innovation was first provided to those who need it most – children with sight impairments. Without vision, these kids “view” the world through their hands, recognizing objects via touch.

Also through videos on YouTube, press releases and other PR activity, the project gained lots of publicity and recognition in both Japan and the rest of the world. In addition, with financial support from the Japanese government, teaching material based on the search database 3D data will be made for Japanese educational institutions. With the power of PR, we succeeded in getting people to accept this innovation, putting it well on the way to being an educational standard.

We are targeting people who use the search engines of Yahoo! and Google. This essentially means every Japanese person.

We want to improve each target’s impression of Yahoo JAPAN! as follows:

*Loyalty

*Perception of being a leader in the field

*Tendency to make use of the service

Our PR activities got the government involved. Yahoo! hasn’t kept this idea to itself, but rather made the software open source. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology was impressed enough to commit to making common teaching materials out of the project’s 3D data. With the power of PR, we succeeded in getting people to accept this innovation, putting it well on the way to being an educational standard.

Other support data is as follows:

*Accumulated exposure worth ?1 billion

*Accumulated more than 100,000 3D data entries

*92% users have increased loyalty to Yahoo!

*81% users view Yahoo! as being more of a leader than before

*83% users make more use of Yahoo! than before.

The innovation was announced to the press at the same time the projects at the schools for the blind were put into action. This didn’t all happen in just one day; three schools for the blind took part in a six month real-world operation with machines installed at each school. We invited the mass media to each school; NHK (Japan’s public broadcaster) as well as other TV stations, newspapers and internet news sites came along and helped us spread the world, giving us a lot of publicity. We released the internet film of the project on YouTube and we executed digital PR.

Yahoo! JAPAN is the most utilized search engine in Japan, but in terms of perception as a leader and innovator, it had been overtaken by Google. As the category leader, Yahoo! felt it needed to improve its brand by clearly demonstrating the future of search technology. However, the technological innovation of the future of search, by itself, is just a mere technological development. It was important for people to understand just what this innovation’s purpose was. Thus we created a campaign with PR at its core.

There was a need to show the innovation to everyone in a way that was relevant to them. As such, it was first provided to those who need it most – children with sight impairments. Without vision, these kids “view” the world through their hands, recognizing objects via touch. The PR strategy was centered on creating and disseminating a story showing the innovation as having been practical and convenient to real people.