It is a campaign which helps a declined analogue culture, because of the digital appearance by using power of "technology" and "PR". Sending New Year's postal cards is a important Japanese culture, using a regular size of postcard to send to their family and friends to promote their relation, that started since the 7th century. However, this culture has recently declined because of digital technology such as e-mail and SNS.

To improve this situation, we wanted to make it easy for users to send New Year's postal cards to each other by combining "digital technology"? Here, we started this project with structure of "digital and analogue culture" not "digital vs analogue culture".

At first, we developed a smartphone app and released not only the app but also its API. It allowed other existing camera apps to send New Year Cards easily. Then, we expanded PR as "The first year of the era of sending a New Year's postal cards via smartphone”. As a "breakthrough to protect the culture vanishing", we have done a media approach and won publicity 77 times the invested cost. New Year's postal cards ordered from the smartphone achieved the growth of 544.6 percent compared to the previous year. Moreover, the perception of "Smartphone New Year's Card" has been spread and 80 percent of users said they wanted to send New Year's postal cards via smartphone next year too.

To stop the gradual decline of culture caused by digital technology.

To protect our New Year card culture that Japanese people value from the past.

To achieve the missions above, we aim to…

-Double the growth of the number of New Year cards sent from smartphone compared to the previous year,

-Improve the percentage of sending New Year cards in the market.

Output/Awareness:

Achieved media exposure of 77 times of the invested cost.

Reached impression from 1.8 billion people by the media exposure.

TV and radio : 22

Newspaper and Magazine : 72

WEB: 427

It went viral on social media with more than 100 tweets per day on every day in December.

Knowledge/Consideration

The phrase “Smartphone New Year Card” is including in message for 100%!

Action/Consideration

A 544.6% increase in the purchase of Yahoo! JAPAN Nengajo via smartphones from the last year.

“It is troublesome to write a New Year card”, the main reason not to send a New Year card in 2014, decreased to 26.3%.

1. Application Development

Released an application that is easy to decorate a picture and allows users to send physical New Year cards using social media without knowing the recipients’ mailing addresses on smartphones.

2. Service Expansion for Existing Application

Published an API for app and integrated the New Year card service to 5 apps that our targets had been using.

3. Communicative Activities

We distributed news release about the launch of the application that could send New Year cards via smartphones, branded the app with a key phrase “The First Year of Smartphone New Year Card” to appeal to various media as one of solutions to stop decreasing trend of sending New Year cards.

In addition to the application, we also released new services and distributed the news.

Also, we used advertising and distributed news about “Smartphone New Year Card” at the time when most New Year cards were delivered.

Japanese people have been practising a culture of sending New Year cards, which are regular-sized postcard, to their relatives, friends and acquaintances to deepen the relationship since the 7th century. However, as smart devices and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Line have gained popularity in recent years, many people tend to use these digital services to greet in new year. Therefore, the number of New Year cards sent has been gradually decreasing.

A total of 3.443 billion new year cards were sent in 2013 which indicates 22.8% decrease from 4.459 billion pieces sent at the peak time in 2003.

Adapt a traditional culture to suit modern society!

No one could stop the decline of sending New Year cards.

However, there is a contradiction in Japanese people’s thinking on sending New Year cards.

Japanese people wanted to send and receive New Year cards, but they were too lazy to prepare the cards.

So, let’s integrate the convenience of digital into New Year cards, and update physical copies of New Year cards with technology.

We changed the opposing relation of technology and traditional culture into a cooperative one.

We wanted to reinforce communication that focused on insights of Japanese people such as “using pictures as fragments of memories in 1 year from smartphone New Year card”, and “no need to go through the trouble to buy new year cards as it can be done with a smartphone” by utilizing the merits of analogue as a amplification device alongside with digital technology.