(Image at top: Movie shoot before Jan. 26, Shin Nen Kai “New Year’s Party” event.)

This post is about keeping a constant theme throughout a marketing campaign regardless of the media. It involves print media, FM radio, and Digital Signage.

We held our annual “Shin Nen kai” (Rock and Roll New Year’s Party) on Jan. 26, 2014 at Milky Way in Shibuya, in Tokyo. It was a wonderful event and was “sold out” months in advance. When all was said and done and the concert/party over, I was told by the manager of Milky Way that this night had set the record for attendance (and alcohol and drink sales) at his establishment.

Sold out months in advance and setting a record for attendance? A promoters dream come true.

From November of 2014, the concept for the entire concert/party was established. This was the event poster:

Jan. 26, 2015 at Shibuya Milky Way

I designed the poster concept based on an old Motown poster that I had always liked. I thought the red and yellow tones fit the image of a New Year’s party in Japan. So we went with this.

In order to keep the concept consistent and marketing all on the same theme, I made a FM radio commercial that ran on the radio station from Mid-December 2014 until the morning of the actual event on Jan. 26, 2015.

Using the radio commercial as the sound base we also made a Youtube commercial for the event. It was a commercial in Japanese and English. For the images for the Youtube commercial, we simply imported the data from the poster created in Photoshop (and a few images from a former Digital Signage work) and made a “moving poster” as seen here:

The poster was created on Photoshop. A radio commercial for the radio station was created. Then the elements from the poster were layered over the radio commercial to create the “TV Ad” (Digital Signage).

In this way, we can make an effective advertising campaign with an easily recognizable and consistent theme… And we can do it for very low costs.

Was this a successful campaign and event bringing the station several months worth of promotion for dirt cheap? The venue was “sold out” a month in advance and we set the record for attendance at that establishment; people are still talking about it now…

If the proof is in the eating, then I guess that’s proof of a smash success.

Oh, by the way, why are people still talking about this event (and I suspect they will be talking about it for a very long time)? Because all of February, we are giving away 7 posters signed by all the band members along with an official backstage pass.

Signed Poster

Want a poster? Send an email to: wtf@interfm.jp by Feb. 22, 2015.

*Of course, in fact, this blog post is a continuation of that promotion!