Go Find Your Wonders

After mentioning Sony's Rec You campaign as a great example of user-input advertising, I sort of felt a pang of guilt for not mentioning Olympus' equally wonderful camera commercials.

For their new "E-type" camera, Olympus introduced the Olympus Wonder campaign, featuring the tagline "go find your wonders." The main campaign is an Internet-based photo competition, where users of the E-type camera submit photos on to the site. The winner's photos are later chosen and featured on the site in the fashion of a commercial.

Olympus is already on to their third version of such contest, signaling the popularity of the campaign as submissions keep rolling in. Below is a screenshot of the site, made up by a mosaic of user-submitted photos.


Aside from the Internet-competition, here is the TV spot that accompanied the campaign.



While I love the idea behind the campaign, I attribute half of the emotional appeal to the background music, sung by popular veteran band, Mr. Children, who are the 2nd highest selling artists in Japanese pop history.

The song in the ad, Irodori (which literally translates as "colors") is one of those emo ballads that just push all the right buttons. Even without paying attention to the lyrics, a sense of nostalgia washes over you, aptly matching the mood of the photos. This leaves viewers (or maybe just me?) blown away by the photos, which if seen under a critical eye, really aren't that great.


Actress Miyazaki Aoi, who is famous for forever looking fifteen, fronts the campaign. Her photo collection is the introduction to the photo competition site, and Olympus keeps fans coming back through their exclusive blog, where Aoi uploads photos she takes on a weekly basis.

This trend of user-input ad campaigns is like reality TV (which thankfully, has never really took off in Japan), except less obscene and more meaningful. Well for now, that is.