Kepco: SAVE ELECTRICITY TO SAVE JAPAN!

Credits & Description:

Category: Promotional Item Design

Advertiser: KANSAI ELECTRIC POWER

Product/Service: KANSAI ELECTRIC POWER

Agency: DENTSU KANSAI

Agency: DENTSU CREATIVE X KANSAI

Art Director: Kana Nakao (Dentsu Kansai)

Copywriter: Ryo Makishima (Dentsu Kansai)

Copywriter: Aiko Ishimoto (Dentsu Kansai)

Designer: Ryoichi Karasuno (Dentsu Creative X)

Designer: Saori Kawakami (Dentsu Creative X)

Account Manager: Yasuo Goto (Dentsu Kansai)

Senior Creative Director: Tatsuya Tsujinaka (Dentsu Kansai)

Media placement: Sticker - Distribution To Elementary School - 20th December 2011

Media placement: Sticker - Giveaway Promotion From The Website - 20th December 2011



Describe the brief from the client

The catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, forced down all of the country’s nuclear power stations. “Saving electricity” suddenly became a major issue in the country. However, despite the Japanese people’s intentions to save electricity, in truth, most actually didn’t. Therefore, it was essential to get Japanese people more involved in saving electricity.



Describe the challenges and key objectives

The goal of this campaign was to get people to proactively save electricity by making electricity saving more fun, and by doing so, avoid any unwanted blackouts and power shortages.



Describe how you arrived at the final design

Our insight for the solution was that people tend to become more involved through real-life communication rather through mass media.

We created stickers that perfectly fit the light switches of every home, and glowed in the dark when the lights were switched off. They brought more fun to the once mundane and bothersome task of saving electricity.



Give some indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The characters have exploded in popularity especially among children thus, many children are now proactively saving electricity. They have also been adopted as the official characters for the city of Osaka, Japan’s second largest city, and are used for its 1.2m households.

As a result, Osaka was able to cut power consumption by 8.4% down from the previous year. This reduction rate is 3.5 times more than those of areas that didn’t use the stickers.