Miku-Chrome Campaign Awarded a Bronze at Cannes Lions

According to the official 2012 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity website, the Hatsune Miku-Google Chrome ad campaign received one of the 44 Bronze Lion awards in the Direct Lions category. The festival, not to be confused with the Cannes International Films Festival which inspired it, celebrates creativity in advertising. The campaign was submitted by advertising agency Hakuhodo in the “Corporate Image and Information” subcategory, which was judged by how well the campaign directly marketed the concept. An all-new video and poster for the campaign can be viewed on the entry website.

The poster presentation outlined the goal of the advertisement campaign as well as the solution and outcomes, noting that a “large number of people were inspired to create on the Web.”

The video included portions of the promotional video and also demonstrated how the nodes in the video represented creations inspiring other creations, resulting in a creativity chain. The narration touted Hatsune Miku as a “virtual singer with millions of souls” being used as a “messenger” to “encourage people to directly take part in creativity on the Web.” Unlike the original version of the Chrome commercial, the version included in this video replaced Japanese text with English for many parts of the video. Footage of the concert followed and online reception of the “message” was summarized. A slide show demonstrated the various derivative works that resulted, including people singing, dancing and performing the song. The video then finally closed with “creativity sings; a new future begins.”


13 thoughts on “Miku-Chrome Campaign Awarded a Bronze at Cannes Lions”

  1. Great, an other trophy for Miku and Vocaloid. And interesting to see the figures: $25M worth of free advertising in the US !!! How does one convert that in matter of exposure to people ?

    1. Keep in mind that it wasn’t a commercial for Yamaha advertising Vocaloid but for Google advertising Chrome. Trying to use Vocaloid as a whole would have been a bit more complicated and less effective. Remember that Google was using stars (e.g. Gaga & Bieber) to promote Chrome, Miku already had all the attributes of a star (concerts, charts topping, millions of fans etc.) on top of being the heart of the Vocaloid community concept which made a lot of sense in a communication perspective for Google “the Internet is what you make of it”). 

      1. I guess.There are over 45 Vocaloids so it would be impractical to feature them all. I suppose, Miku is the only one that fits the category of a ‘popstar’ in how she is portrayed. But…it would be so nice to hear a wider variety of voices being featured. 

    2. Miku is the star, she has enoguh songs to be considered a real movement on the internet.
      It will be a smaller impact if the video showed 45 virtual singers.

      Anyway, most of vocaloids has not very much variety of voices, unless for the males and mature voices.

  2. Great summary video of the concept behind the ad.  It helps further drive the point home of what Vocaloid / Miku really represent.

  3. Great video! it really shows how Miku’s popularity is impacting around the world! And it’s so emotional!, is one of my favorites Miku songs!

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