Director Makoto Shinkai’s animated film “Your Name.” was released in 2016. The movie proved to be a record-breaker in Japan and brought in 300 million US dollars in revenues world-wide. It earned a 97% approval rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes and prompted Hollywood to proceed with a live-action adaptation. Three years later, in 2019, “Your Name.” was scheduled for televised broadcast. In an era when many enjoy films on DVDs and Netflix, our challenge was to entice the audience back to the TV screen.

Commercials represent the major interruption while watching a movie on TV. We attempted to eliminate this annoyance by infusing the commercials with content from the movie, thus making them part of the entertainment. We started by requesting director Makoto Shinkai to create animated commercials for each corporate sponsor. The key focus was on sponsorship credits-when the announcer reads, “This program was brought to you by…” and corporate logos appear. This is the precise moment when viewers change channels. We took the dominant element of the story-switching places-and applied it to the credits, swapping sponsor logos multiple times.

We considered “simultaneity” the prime motivator for enjoying movies on television. It allows viewers to instantly share their feelings and experience digitally while watching the same movie at the same time. Historically, sponsorship credits rarely garner viewer interest, yet little effort has been made to alleviate this apparent drawback. We attempted to initiate excitement during sponsorship credits to generate a digital word-of-mouth promotion. We convinced the TV station that a unique “happening” during the credits would reach social media users who rarely watch TV, increasing their overall audience.

We switched corporate names into the brand logo of other sponsors, retaining unique design characteristics, thus yielding a mismatched corporate name-logo effect. As we were handling valuable corporate assets, we of course carefully gained permission from each company CEO and brand manager. After experimenting with various fonts and designs, we ultimately achieved eight varieties of switched logos for one-night only use. Seamless integration into the story was elevated by using the actual voice actors from the movie for narration. These specially-tailored sponsorship credits appeared only twice during the broadcast, but the tone of narration was tweaked to dovetail effortlessly into the preceding and following scenes. Screen shots tweeted from corporate accounts showing the switched credits also created additional Twitter entertainment. This sponsor switch-up not only went viral on social media, but also prompted people to turn on their televisions and enjoy the movie in real time.

During the broadcast, our ads generated over 300,000 tweets worldwide, becoming the top global trend at the time, with over 20 Twitter hashtags trending. Tweets of the sponsorship credits earned some 100,000 shares and “likes,” as well as over 1 billion impressions. SNS created significant awareness of the impending broadcast; as a result, over 5 million Japanese watched the televised movie in real time. The result extended beyond the televising of a movie to embrace an impromptu festival of nationwide viewers simultaneously enjoying the same content. The credits also enjoyed a 30% boost in consumer attention. The special sponsorship credit format boosted media value, allowing an increase in TV advertising fees. Clients not only appreciated the social media topics that continued to trend after the broadcast, but also praised us for layered tie-up with film content.