Hiroshima prefecture has been thriving as a No.1 prefecture of producing Oysters for 700 years in Japan. But, the annual oyster consumption in Hiroshima has fallen year after year since 2014. As our surveys, half of the Hiroshima citizens eat oysters less frequently than once every six months in a year, despite they answered “we’re proud of oysters as a local specialty”. In addition, even though the actual production volume is lower than Hiroshima, there are some prefectures such as Miyagi and Fukuoka that are known for oysters as strong tourism resources.

To make oysters into a strong local asset, Hiroshima Prefecture was looking for radical solutions to make the citizens more familiar with oysters, and to revive oyster consumption within the prefecture. In our view, to let citizens become more attached to oysters, we need to let them know how their love and understanding for oysters are superficial.

Hiroshima Prefecture is the largest oyster production site in Japan. However, the consumption of oysters is dropping year after year. To increase the consumption of oysters and make them into a local asset, we need to encourage the citizens to change their indifference into love toward oysters.

First, the prefecture announced the shocking fact: 99% of the citizens cannot write oyster in kanji (characters traditionally used in Japan), despite oyster is the local specialty for a long time. The shameful fact made them realized the lack of affection toward oysters. Also, we launched an original kanji workbook as an official assignment for Hiroshima’s students. This workbook prompted citizens to learn about oysters from scratch by letting them to practice writing kanji 100 times!

This campaign was appeared over 300 media despite the limited budget of USD 55,000. Then, the consumption of oysters increased 1.98 times from the previous year.

We did not use any budget for paid ads. We utilized only PR approach. We rolled out the plan in three steps, using the core idea that “99% of prefectural citizens cannot write oyster in kanji.”

1: Shocking announcement offcially: Informed that “99% of Hiroshima citizens cannot write Oyster in Kanji accurately” as an official prefecture's announcement. Many media in charge of prefectural matters featured the topic as a serious issue for the prefecture.

2. Released “Oyster Kanji Workbook”: After it has certified as official textbook by prefectural board of education, we delivered it to about 50 Hiroshima elementary schools as “winter break homework”.

3. Executed Kanji exam in schools after winter break: Almost all students become able to write oyster in Kanji. Hiroshima medias featured an information that “In Hiroshima, only students can write oysters in Kanji” and let adults in Hiroshima to give further shocks.