Awarded Crystal at MAD STARS 2023 (Busan International | KAYAC

TOKYO'CLOCK (Citizen Watches), an advertising product planned and produced by KAYAC Inc. won the Crystal award at MAD STARS 2023 (Busan International Marketing Advertising Festival).

We interviewed Fujiwara (who attended the award ceremony in Busan) and Pierre (who was unable to attend the ceremony due to a slight mishap) to hear their behind-the-scenes stories.

What is MAD STARS?

Held in Busan, South Korea, MAD is an international advertising festival in Asia (the only one in fact) that accepts entries from all over the world. In 2022, the name was changed from AD STARS to MAD STARS, which stands for "Marketing," "Advertising," and "Digital Content”. This year saw 20,282 entries from 63 countries, and the winners were selected from 2,057 finalists.

~What do you think was the most important aspect of TOKYO'CLOCK (Citizen Watch) that earned it the award at the International Award Festival?

Fujiwara
“TOKYO'CLOCK" is a branding video for Citizen Watch Co., Ltd. commemorating the 150th anniversary of the introduction of the fixed time system in Japan. Based on the idea of “If we didn't have clocks today, what kind of scene would we see to read the time?", we comically depicted a 24-hour scene from an era of Tokyo using the methods of the irregular time system.
We had originally discussed with the client that we wanted to aim for an overseas advertising award, so we worked with the video production team TYO MONSTER to finalize the plan while keeping in mind the expression and direction that would be easy to understand and funny even when viewed by people from overseas.
We proposed the project at the end of last year, finalized it in January, and launched it in March. We were on a tight schedule, but the team worked together to produce the video, and I am very happy that it won the award.

Pierre
This video is designed to be understood even if you do not understand the language. While the narration just tells the time, we sprinkled Japanese culture into each time scene. The scene at 7 p.m. in an izakaya where the boss tells an anecdote before the toast is a typical Japanese scene with a bit of satire.
It may have been refreshing for people from overseas to be able to see such scenes all at once, set hour by hour.

~Mr. Pierre, we heard you were unable to attend the award ceremony due to a mishap….

Pierre
That's right. I found out quite last minute that I might be one of the finalists and rushed to get my passport made, but I could not travel to Korea because my passport only arrived only a day later.
Now that I have a passport, if there is an award abroad, I will fly!

~ What are your future aspirations because of this award?

Fujiwara
Looking at other award-winning works, I felt that there were two types: those that were oriented toward approaching social issues, and those that simply broke through with interesting ideas and expressions.
I, too, would like to continue to create interesting things while approaching them from various directions!

The results of the awards are as follows.

Crystal

■TOKYO’CLOCK

MAD STARS OFFICIAL SITE：https://www.adstars.org/adstar/main/AdstarMainView.do
MAD STARS WINNERS LIST：https://www.adstars.org/winner/Winners.do