The creative idea was based on the insight that the moment when an instant photo comes out of a camera and reveals an image is always magical and powerful enough to catch anyone attention.

With this in mind, the creative idea was to turn this magical moment into something amazing and spectacular by making it in giant format, in an unexpected place and moment. In other words, the idea was to turn the sun shades, on top of all Photo Kanon stores, into a gigantic instant photo and make pedestrians feel like they were the ones “taking the photo” by simply walking past.

The act of “printing the sunshades into the street” was achieved with an automatic mechanism triggered by anyone walking in front of the shop.

We reinvented the traditional and ignored sun shades on top of all the stores of Photo Kanon around Tokyo. (Photo Kanon is a a premium range of camera shops specializing in instant cameras like Polaroid and Fuji Instax)

First we took several portraits of trendy youngsters. The best were then printed, with the iconic white frame, on a giant scale and made into sunshades. Finally, we hung the sunshades on the exterior of the Photo Kanon shops. As people walked past they triggered the instant photo automatic mechanism accompanied with the distinctive sound of an instant photo being taken, and the shade came out as if printing an instant photo into the street.

The interactive outdoor is now permanent on all Photo Kanon stores.

We increased the Photo Kanon shop’s traffic in all the key positions around town by 24%, which resulted in a 8.5% sales increase from the same quarter in the previous year.