Made Of Japan

Over the past three weeks I've focused on the individual OT campaigns the great thing about each individual campaign is they are all apart of a larger campaign called Made Of Japan.

This campaign was disseminated across a number of communication channels which included digital, print and social media. As seen in the previous blogs OT have used print advertising for flyers and posters which were strategically placed in their distribution outlets, Ryu Itadani painted the Mexico '66 which was then showcased at major art galleries across Europe. They have advertisement which was shown on YouTube and Japanese TV and they utilized social media to gain momentum for their campaigns.

The overall campaign was successfully integrated across a number of communication channels demonstrating they have sound knowledge of an Integrated Marketing Communications campaign.

Onitsuka Tiger & The Sydney Bicycle Film Festival

During the 2010 Sydney Bicycle Film Festival, which was sponsored by Onitsuka Tiger, the company devised a Facebook Places strategy to create brand awareness. Mashable.com featured this in their article "5 Creative Facebook Places Marketing Campaigns" on January 10 2011.

"The strategy was to make the Onitsuka Tiger brand a key engagement point at each of the 10 events of the four-day festival. To do this, the team visited each venue to create unique Facebook Places, naming them as “Onitsuka Tiger Check In Points,” so that when festival-goers were prompted to check in, they’d be checking in at the “Onitsuka Tiger Check In Point @ The BFF” instead of at the venue." (Mashable.com 2011)

By adopting a new approach to consumer interaction through non-traditional media, Onitsuka Tiger was able to successfully create brand awareness by setting up their own check-in points at each of the event locations. This would show up on the News Feed on Facebook and drive new potential customers onto the Onitsuka Tiger Australia Facebook.

"The company has shared publicly that more than 50% of attendees at the first event checked in." (Mashable 2011)

Boxed Stories-Made Of Japan

In May 2011 Onitsuka Tiger joined forces with Shoes Up, a well established pop culture magazine which operates in France, to shed some light on an important aspect of their products; the box.

The article tells the story of the box and it's adventure from their production warehouse to being shipped all over the world and the final resting place, the hands of the consumer.

 (www.onitsukatiger.com, accessed 11/11/2012)

Shoes up imagined the journey of the California '78, from Japan to the US, and initiates a thought process of an object that is seem trivial to most consumers. The box acts as the protector of the shoes and it's brand history. The story was featured in Shoes Up magazine, in their online catalogs and on the Onitsuka Tiger website.

Ryu Itadani & Onitsuka Tiger

Throughout 2011 and as a tie-in with their Made Of Japan campaign, Onitsuka Tiger expressed their heritage and history by working with an internationally recognized artist named Ryu Itadani, who is well-known for his hand drawn lines and bold colors.

Ryu's work is based around themes of 'city', 'nature' and 'things' which is where Onitsuka Tiger has tied in. Ryu began sketching images of the Mexico 66 on canvas, which is shown below, and then went on to painting the sketched image.

(Photos sourced from ryuitadani.com)

As Ryu states in an interview, he believes he has a better relationship with objects than most people as he sees characteristics of himself within the object and feels the paintings of the things he likes are almost self-portraits.

(Interview with Ryu Itadani, 2011, Vimeo, http://vimeo.com/onitsukatiger/itadani) 

Onitsuka Tiger IMC Critique - Cycle Of Life

This week I'll be focusing on the 'Cycle Of Life' Onitsuka Tiger campaign which was created to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Onitsuka Tiger. In Japan the 60th birthday marks an important milestone as it signifies the return to the beginning of the cycle and heralds completing the path through the full five cycles of the Sino - Japanese zodiac, and coming back to the original signs with which you were born. This advertisement tells the animated story of thirteen animals that competed to win a place in the Japanese zodiac and was implemented across traditional and non-traditional media.

This advertisement was placed on Vimeo and YouTube as well as played at the Onitsuka Tiger 60th birthday event, the beginning of the video starts off with an overview of an island in the shape of the Mexico 66 shoe, the camera pans around the island and zooms in for the beginning of the race.


To complement the zodiac race Onitsuka Tiger's advertising company Amsterdam Worldwide created a print advertisement as shown below.