Readers responding to the campaign covered a wide range, from 4 years of age to 85. Not only did the client receive more than 8,500 letters and postcards, at its peak they received more than 50 phone calls a day. The response was completely positive. The mount board and card-size ad, especially, were popular and received a favorable response, with over 100,000 copies reprinted after the newspaper run. This campaign resulted in the best ever response for the client. There were also constant requests from school teachers for the ad, showing that it had substantial reach in the educational community.

Japan is a newspaper reading society. Every day, 8 million copies of the Asahi Shimbun, the newspaper used for this campaign, are delivered to homes. As a family media', we decided that the newspaper was the best way to reach children. Although, the newspaper is printed daily, we deliberately avoided putting a card-size ad in the paper every day with trivia about the elements. Instead, we designed it so that children had to search for a card-size ad in the paper delivered to their home every day. The card was then pasted on a two page spread ad that was substituted for a board for mounting the cards. The result was that children who had overlooked it the first time kept asking for reprints, and the card-size ad was then reprinted in response. The newspaper had truly become a part of these children’s lives.

In Japan, the neglect of the sciences and the declining academic skills of children is striking. While being the world’s third largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer, Tokyo Electron - a company little known among the average person - was concerned over whether it would be able to secure the employees it needed for its future.

We began with thinking about how to get children interested in science with a campaign using the element symbols that form the foundation of science. We came up with the idea of putting element symbols on a kind of Trading card that requires a conscious effort to collect as a way to make it fun for children all over Japan to study science. The element symbol cards served to form a bond between Tokyo Electron and children for the first time.