Lotte Fit’s Gum Dance Contest with YouTube

By
Michael Keferl
Published: March 31, 2009Posted in: DIGITAL LIFE, MARKETING IDEASTags: , ,

UPDATE: Reader John Fu has taken our advice and made his own version. It wins on creativity alone, which is probably against the contest rules anyway.

Gum maker Lotte is collaborating with YouTube to promote Lotte’s new Fit’s Gum, a new soft gum with a packaging innovation where the gum slides out in individual paper sleeves. To drive home the point, Lotte created a campaign to engage their online and mobile base with an interactive dance campaign.

The Fit’s Dance Contest began with a catchy (perhaps a little TOO catchy) jingle accompanied by young celebrities doing a special dance that can only be described as “very Japanese”. It’s cute, catchy, and full of smiles.

Until April 27th, dancers at home can enter their own takes on the Fit’s dance, upload it to Lotte, and compete for up to $10,000. The campaign is using Lotte’s own site to distribute information and receive videos, and using YouTube to spread the best ones. It also comes complete with blog parts that teach the dance steps with an animated figure.

The Lotte YouTube Channel is the homebase of the campaign videos, and the distribution point for entries as well. So far they’ve done rather well in a mere week, with over 200k views for the most popular entrant so far.

Interestingly, after exploring both the product and contest homepages, we found lots of videos and information about the celebrity endorsers…but not a single picture of the actual product (besides a package graphic). However, the campaign itself (while brain penetrating in ways) is fun, and nicely merges its mobile campaign with online interaction that fits perfectly with young bloggers who like the videos and widget.

For those of you who want to play at home, you need to be in Japan to win, but feel free to download the music here and see how famous you can get.

UPDATE: The pool of video contestants just gets better. The most effective part of the campaign is that, after watching fifty videos of people dancing to the song, it’s stuck and your head…and all that can get it out is some gum.

About the Author

Michael is CEO and Co-Founder of the CScout Japan trends and innovation consultancy. For information on market research in Japan and Asia, or how Japanese innovation can help your business, please visit CScout Japan to find our range of services.