Digital Art Festival Tokyo 2008: Coto-Tama

Credits:

Type of Entry: Corporate or Brand Identity
Category: Digital Design
Title: COTO-TAMA
Advertiser/Client: NHK ENTERPRISES
Product/Service: DIGITAL ART FESTIVAL TOKYO 2008
Entrant Company: HAKUHODO Tokyo, JAPAN
Design/Advertising Agency: HAKUHODO Tokyo, JAPAN
Creative Credits
Name Company Position
Tsubasa Oyagi Hakuhodo Creative Director
Seichi Ookura Hakuhodo Creative Director
Tsubasa Oyagi Hakuhodo Copywriter
Seichi Ookura Hakuhodo Copywriter
Koichi Kosugi Hakuhodo Art Director
Shoko Akutagawa Hakuhodo Creative Producer
Toru Suzuki Pyramid Film Quadra Producer
You Kamihiro Pyramid Film Quadra Interactive Designer
Hideyuki Aida Pyramid Film Quadra System Engineer
Hajime Watanabe Pyramid Film Quadra Production Manager
Details
Brief Explanation:
Our biggest challenge was how to communicate with young people that tend to block out traditional advertisements, and gather information from social networking services and blogs. And at the same time, draw them into the world of digital art.
Describe the brief from the client:
Draw tech-savy young people’s attention to digital art and have them come to Digital Art Festival Tokyo 2008.
Description of how you arrived at the final design:
We designed COTO-TAMA upon an old Japanese saying “words have souls.” COTO-TAMA is a code comprised of 50 syllables with individual looks and souls. We developed an interactive art widget around COTO-TAMA which allowed users to send and receive messages in COTO-TAMA form. This acted as a promotional tool for the event organizers and COTO-TAMA also became the key visual for the festival.
Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market:
The COTO-TAMA widget was the no.1 downloaded widget in Adobe Air Gallery in just 20 days. By creating fans of COTO-TAMA, we succeeded in hijacking our target’s desktops which created a new community of digital art fans. As a result, the number of people who went to Digital Art Festival Tokyo 2008 increased by 25% compared to the previous year.