Website hits topped 3.3 million UU and 18 million PV. Sign-up for the service vastly exceeded expectations: Over 700,000 New Year's greeting cards were sent not only within Japan but from 167 countries. 70% of the people who used this service were in their 20s and 30s, providing that we effectively connected to our target. Through television, magazine, and newspaper coverage nationwide, we reached 60 million people, which converts to a media value of 1.2 billion yen.

As young people today use e-mail rather than snail-mail, the 1000-year-old Japanese custom of exchanging New Year's greeting cards is in decline. Our marketing objective was to boost the sales of greeting cards by reviving the custom among the current generation. Knowing we can't roll back time and simply advertise our way to success, we aimed to develop a new system for the exchange of greeting cards that would be relevant to digital natives. Collaborating with Japan's largest SNS, Mixi, we designed a system that linked the online and offline worlds physically and, for users, emotionally.

Using SNS's API, we developed an original service that enabled Mixi members to send a real-world New Year's greeting card using the postal system to their online friends even if they didn't know their friends' addresses or real names. For SNS users, this was a new type of communication; a hybrid of online and offline life. The service appealed strongly to young digital natives who felt that their online friendships were incomplete. In a real say, it expanded young people's sense of connection not only to other people, but also to an important Japanese custom.

Mixi's membership, like that of most SNS's in Japan, is anonymous. Thus our insight: Members have close online friendships, but don't know each other's real-world identity. Our original system allowed people to initiate communication within the online world they feel most comfortable with, while actually expanding the scope of their friendships. To make the system more relevant, we developed over 500 types of New Year's greeting cards using characters that are popular in the SNS community, as well as DIY customizable cards.