au is the second-largest mobile phone operator in Japan, but its share of the female market has been relatively small. Our task was to develop a favourable view of au among women in their 20s and 30s and to win them as au customers.

Japanese women love to send text messages over their mobiles. Capitalizing on the fact that they also love ‘how-to’ books, and that they like to keep in step with others, we created a mechanism that allowed mobile users to make and send in their own “OKITE” or rules for mobiles. The most interesting were introduced daily on a mobile site as well as the internet. We also created a special link whereby users could invite their friends to participate, and therefore act as a direct marketing vehicle, thus leading the target insight driven connection building. We were able to maintain 35,000 accesses daily.

The number of users who switched to au from the No. 1 carrier increased dramatically after the campaign reaching a total of 1 million. Over 30% were women in their 20s and 30s, an unprecedented result in Japan’s mature mobile phone market.The number of accesses to the site increased dramatically. Also huge numbers of comments on the blog.“OKITE” has provided emotional support to users. Even now, they keep collections of “OKITE” rules on their screen savers, blogs or mobile phones and read them regularly.