Ezaki Glico: Glicode, 1

Credits & Description:

Campaign: Glicode
Title: Glicode
Country: Japan
Advertiser: Ezaki Glico Co., Ltd.
Entrant: Dentsu Inc.
Planner: Moe Goto
Art Director: Art Director
Art Director: Yoshihiro So
Technical Director: Shintaro Murakami
Creative: Gene Brutty
Creative: Tim Seddon
Creative Strategy: Joe Fry
Creative Coordinator: Bryan Tanaka
Producer: Naru Kudo
Producer: Yosuke Suzuki
Producer: Kojiro Fukami
Designer: Yoshihiro So
Designer: Yoshimi Kano
App Developer: Yohei Kajiwara
App Developer: Takanori Kawai
App Developer: Hayato Kuno
App Developer: Naoki Aso
System Engineer: Takashi Okada
Cg Designer: Yuta Yamada
Project Manager: Haruka Yokokawa
Music Se: Yuki Ono
Markup Engineer: Masahiko Okuzaki
Markup Engineer: Reiko Igo
Director: Mitsugu Matsumoto
Executive Producer: Yasuhiro Kawasaki
Camera: Akihiro Yoshida
Gaffer: Ryu Matsumura
Art: Momoyo Ura
Online Editor: Yusuke Kaneko
Project Manager: Shinji Nomura
Casting: Kenichi Tsutsumi
Sound Designer: Ono Yuki
Pr Planner: Keiji Hayashi
Account Executive: Shigenari Kato
Account Executive: Mitsuki Yoshida
URL: http://cp.glico.jp/glicode/en/
Outcome:
GLICODE generated attention in and outside of Japan, earning praise from CS organizations like Hour of Code for fostering programming education in such an innovative way.More than 200 local and international media sites published the story, and together with its social media reach, produced an estimated media value of over 3 million dollars. Japan’s Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications even appeared on national news stations demoing GLICODE. She saw it’s potential, awarding GLICODE an MIC grant and adopting it as an official government pilot program to teach programming at elementary schools nationwide - well ahead of 2020.GLICODE reached over 10,000 downloads in the first 3 months and continues to grow as more schools and teachers adopt it into their curriculums.Together with elementary schools across Japan we’ve conducted workshops and extracurricular programs to increase awareness amongst children and teachers. Across the hundreds of workshops 95% of children who experienced the application answered ""It was fun"" and continued the educational game at home. 75% of parents replied that ""I think GLICODE is useful for children's programming education.""A global English version has now also been released for the rest of the world to enjoy which was launched at the SXSW Edu conference this year.
Relevancy:
Children all over the world are learning to express themselves through code, but programming won’t be mandatory in Japanese schools until 2020.We used one of Japan’s oldest brands and famous confectionary company to bring the world’s newest language into schools.GLICODE is the first educational app to uses advanced image recognition to turn real candy into code to teach kids the fundamentals of programming.Using social media and PR we got the attention of the world, and then Japan’s government who are now supporting it as an official pilot program to integrate coding into Japan’s national curriculum.
Execution:
The GLICODE app was developed for both Android and iOS in Unity.The OpenCV image recognition library was initially used to power the image recognition, although the latest versions use Google’s Tensor Flow technology for better object recognition and is the first Unity application in the world to do so.The app has been through extensive testing and many iterations over its life cycle - and is still being improved based on user feedback. The latest updates include a Pocky only English version. Together with elementary schools across Japan we’ve conducted workshops and extracurricular programs in cram schools to increase awareness amongst children and teachers. Starter packs, including manuals and lesson plans were distributed nationwide.
Strategy:
As a company, Glico strives to support the growth and development of children, so we wanted to develop a unique utility to help them learn a new skill - coding.We examined existing computer science educational tools and found that most were prohibitively expensive and aimed at older students. GLICODE’s target audience is children aged 5 - 1
an age group that learns best through hands-on play. We worked with software engineers and programmers to assess our entire range of products for ‘codability’, and created a new visual programming language and range of lessons that together teach the three fundamental principles of algorithmic thinking. Strategically, we also wanted to create something newsworthy, and spark a national discussion about the lack of computer science education in Japan. The main objective however was to introduce children to the idea of coding and get them excited to learn more about it in the future.
Synopsis:
All around the world, children are learning to express themselves through code - but in Japan computer science is not going to be included as part of the national curriculum until 2020.This means that unless you attend expensive extracurricular lessons, most children across the country don’t have the opportunity to learn how to program and consequently have a low awareness of it.Glico products however are already making their way into the hands of millions of Japanese children every day. We wanted to use this medium to create a cheap and accessible way for children as young as five to start learning how to code.
Campaign Description:
GLICODE is the first ever educational app that uses advanced image recognition to turn real candy into code to teach kids the fundamentals of programming.Every packet of Pocky, Bisco and Almond Peak turns into bite-sized programming lessons where kids can lay out and arrange their snacks, capture the sequence and watch it turn into code that moves a character through increasingly complex challenges.The app covers three basic programming principles: ""Basic Syntax"", ""While Loops"" and ""If Statements"". We designed this easy to understand visual language so that kids can automate repetitive instructions and assign actions to specific triggers, making GLICODE a real programming language with endless possibilities.