Floral scent detergent "New Beads" was released in 1963, and it's been popular among housewives ever since. This time, our challenge was how to gain popularity among the younger generation. A survey among 423 people aged between 15-30 old, polled that over 60% of them use the ‘sniff test’ to determine whether their clothes need washing. But then again, we thought nobody really wants to sniff for bad smells. This is how we developed the prototype for "New Nose" - The Laundry Smell Checker. Shaped as a nose, it announces the smell assessment through sound and light notifications, and it's also linked to a weather app to give you laundry advice. "New Nose" acts like your second nose and sniffs clothes on your behalf. It gained recognition among young people through press tours, short presentation movies, articles and social media related posts.

The main objective was gaining recognition among young people, who are mainly indifferent to which laundry detergent brand they choose. This targeted group rarely watches TV commercials, and therefore has little access to such related information. We aimed to raise brand awareness by using key words such as "odor", "smell", "laundry" within news articles on tech media platforms, and social media channels.

"New Nose" is perfect for those who use the sniff test to check if their clothes need washing. The android-like design, together with the light notifications and the funny voice characters turned out to be a good match for our targeted public. What used to be a brand loved by housewives, went further into gaining popularity among the younger generation, and managed to rebrand itself as advanced technology targeted towards them.

The project was released in summer, the season when the smell of one's clothes becomes a real concern. In Japan, Aug. 7th marks the nose/flower day, a humorous play on words. The development, including the smell sensors took three months, while the project and presentation movies was produced over two months. One week before the release date we held a press release, to present the features of the prototype to the related media, and get featured on as many relevant media platforms as possible starting with Aug. 7th.

The targeted younger audience was reached through featured articles on digital tech media platforms. Diffusion on social networks, focused on Twitter, accelerated with the aid of famous anime voice actors. It exceeded the initial KPI of 5-6 articles in the primary media and 2.0-2.4 million reach for official SNS. The actual exposure reached 13 articles, and 3 million total number of followers. Because we targeted an younger audience, we also published articles in a wide range of media magazines popular among them, such as tech IT, video, lifestyle, entertainment, resulting in over 800 organic tweets. SNS strategy focused on Twitter, with an ad Conversion of $ 300,000 and total reach of 4,312,000 Views.