D&AD is one of the most prestigious international awards, but in Japan it is known only to a small number of people in the advertising industry. Therefore, we were asked to enhance awareness and generate traffic to the exhibition.

Motivate Japanese creative people involved in graphic design to take action and visit the exhibition.

Our unique approach of having the direct mail recipients and visitors to the exhibition “experience a creative process” turned out to be a success. The number of visitors was more than three times higher than the previous year, reaching 9826.

In addition, those who made their own origami Pencils talked about it to others or wrote about it in their blogs and thus word of the D&AD 2008 Exhibition spread virally.

In order to surprise the recipients and spur them into action, we selected direct mail as our medium to entice the target to come to the exhibition. At the venue, we created an area where people could make their own origami Pencils.