In Japan, schools are considered to be more than just a place for honing academic ability, but also a place for learning about how to live in society through communication with friends. Since 2020, school environments have changed drastically for more than six million children all across Japan, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One measure after another has been implemented, starting with temporary closure of schools, prohibition of coming to school, cancellation of all events, and implementation of remote classes. As such, children spend less time with their friends at school, and have fewer chances to make memories together. Therefore NTT DOCOMO, which has created so many means of communication, had the idea to give students, faculty, and other members of the community an experience in which they feel connected on the last day of elementary school before it closed permanently.

We had to provide an experience on the final day of school so that even after the school was gone, the students, faculty, and other members of the community can feel connected.

One main point was to let the students lead the project, and consider what legacy they want to leave. Another point was to intensely give shape to their feelings with new means that have never been seen before. The idea we came up with for this was to make a show using drones, a technology mostly unfamiliar to young children.

Students took the lead in planning the show. They entrusted drones with their memories, hopes, and appreciation for elementary school, and the drones portrayed these feelings in the night sky by forming text or illustrations with light.

Our target audience includes all age groups who could become stakeholders of NTT DOCOMO, from young people to senior citizens.

By republishing information from various specialized media to one of the largest portal sites in Japan, and by promoting this information to key station informational programs, we have implemented a media strategy that allows us to convey our efforts to a broad range of people, without restricting our target audience.

Being published in primary media was expected to lead to derivative articles on secondary media major portal sites or curated media. As a result of this, we aimed to deliver information to many people all across Japan.

We held the show on March 25th, 2022, on the last day of school at Ogawa Town Municipal Higashi-Ogawa Elementary School in Saitama Prefecture.

In addition to 65 students of this elementary school, more than 200 visitors attended, including student’s guardians, alumni of the school, other members of the community, and representatives from the media who came to record the day’s events.

At 7:00 PM, following half a year of preparation with the children, on the dark school grounds only dimly lit by nearby houses, the glowing drones rose into the sky.

The drones depicted the feelings that the children wanted to convey, and portrayed an image of the school that they wanted to leave in many people’s memories. The school grounds were filled with cheers and heartfelt tears of the school officials and student guardians who watched the display.

Articles published

Featured in more than 520 articles.

Advertising Conversion Costs

Delivered an advertising impact of over 100 million yen.

The Glowing Memories Drone Show attracted a lot of attention because it used drones, which are still mostly used for commerce or industry,

as a means of conveying the feelings of young elementary school students.Many media outlets covered the event, bringing the total number of articles to over 520. The advertising effect reached over 100 million yen.