ANA brings Japan's festivals to life for a global audience

Building on its award-winning ‘Museum in the Cloud’ work, ANA has produced a website all about one of Japan’s most colourful attributes—festivals (matsuri).

The ‘Is Japan Cool? Matsuri’ site was developed by Enjin, the same agency behind the virtual museum, and produced by Birdman. It features a performance by taiko musicians Kodo in 3D sound, and a 360-degree video guide to various festivals. According to a statement from ANA, the aim is to convey the feeling of being part of the festivities.

Of course, the main aim is to encourage people to fly to Japan and experience matsuri in person, so the site functions as a useful guide for sightseers as well, detailing events throughout the seasons. ANA says Japan may have as many as 300,000 festivals, but it has selected 32 that stand out.

Campaign’s view: Like the 'Museum in the Cloud', this is an imaginative and ambitious content-marketing effort that is very well executed. Having recently said that good use of 360-degree video was limited, we are pleased to see it used in this context. Our one complaint is with the ‘Is Japan Cool?’ banner—it feels dated and unnecessary. By now it seems clear that Japan has many ‘cool’ things to offer, so the country could be more confident when talking about itself.