We built a Facebook page to solicit applications to deliver ‘30 sec LOVE’ messages, and linked it to the VAA website and online sales. A Facebook banner ad and PR articles on over 100 websites drove Facebook users to our page, which included an online game to increase ‘stickiness.’ We selected the two most promising ‘30 sec LOVE’ applicants, and flew them to London. Their messages, like Facebook, needed to be natural and from the heart, so we assisted them to cope with a commercial production without interfering with their individual expression. The production crew met the candidates in Japan and flew with them to London to help them to feel at ease in a foreign setting.

Reactions to the messages were recorded at a public viewing of the Olympic Games Asian Football Qualifiers Final, executed without formal set up to preserve the element of surprise.

14,588 Facebook users ‘Liked’ the campaign, which was limited to 3 weeks to keep excitement up. 373 people applied to express a ‘30 second LOVE’ message. Online ticket sales increased by 130% period to period, reversing the sharp decline in sales after the tragic earthquake.

And the two messages givers? The first, a remarried woman, sent her new husband a message of appreciation, and subsequently spent her first wedding anniversary with her husband and her daughter in London. And the second, a young man, proposed to his girlfriend through his message and will be wed in June 2012.