MIKE SUNDA

Nippon o Tsunagu was a landmark brand campaign for Amazon in Japan, running between 2020 and 2021, registering high effectiveness across a mix of channels. The strategy was developed for around half a year prior to starting creative pre-production at the beginning of 2020, beginning life as a thought-starter in a creative hot house: as Japan contends with macro-demographic challenges around rural depopulation and a hyper-aging society, how could a brand like Amazon play a positive role in society? 

The Context
Although registering high usage and penetration throughout Japan’s main urban centres, Amazon were struggling to attract users (both sellers and end-consumers) amongst the country’s rural population, despite it representing a huge growth opportunity for the brand.

The Challenge
Unlike in other key markets, where Amazon has already achieved category dominance, Japan’s E-Commerce landscape still presents a competitive challenge, with domestic giants Rakuten and Yahoo! Japan occupying similar shares of the market, and both offering products that naturally have a closer affinity with local consumers, unlike Amazon’s necessarily globalised offering. On top of this, PR challenges relating to company tax payments and working conditions threatened to further alienate Amazon from its potential consumer base.

The Insight
Rural depopulation and a rapidly ageing society have been the two biggest macro-trends shaping Japan, as a country, in the past decade. Urban centres such as Tokyo have been able to monopolise culture and labour opportunities amidst these migratory shifts and attract the country’s youth and working-age population, actually growing in population under these conditions. In contrast, rural areas have been left desolated, with cities formerly numbering hundreds-of-thousands being reduced to a fraction of their historic population. We knew that any positive impact in rejuvenating rural prospects would be beneficial not just for Amazon, but for everyone living in these areas.

The Creative
Under these circumstances, family businesses have struggled to thrive, and generations-old craft and artisanship has been threatened with extinction. We look to turn these remaining beacons of Japan’s shokunin (artisan) culture - as well as compelling success stories of rural family businesses - into stories that would position their protagonists as aspirational influencers in their own right, encouraging young people to follow their lead and look towards the rural hinterlands as a viable alternative to city climes. Within each story, we authentically documented the role that Amazon had played in solving specific logistical challenges (e.g. fulfilment; overseas business) and thus how the brand had played a positive role in the growth of each business.

We created seven episodes telling narratives that ranged from a sake distillery that had battled back from natural disaster whilst also innovating beyond the industry’s patriarchal traditions, to a Hokkaido-based seafood company that had been transformed by the original founder’s “prodigal son”.

Originally intended as a B2B campaign oriented primarily towards prospective sellers, the stories were so compelling, and performed so well amongst audiences across all demographics, that the campaign creative rolled out as a TV campaign to mass audiences throughout the country, ending up as one of Amazon’s most recognisable brand campaigns in the country to-date.

The Results
Exceeding initial expectations by far, the campaign ran on television for over 18 months across over 30 different stations and prefectures.

The campaign generated 181,000 organic visits to the Amazon ‘Day One’ website within just two weeks of launch. The omni-channel roll-out also exceeded norm scores with a 10% uplift on overall brand perception, contributing to a 13% uplift in ‘likability’ and ‘relevance’ combined.