東芝 | LED 10年カレンダー（あなたとLEDの10年） | 2016
A Decade, Seen Through a Window / Toshiba "LED 10-Year Calendar"
An LED bulb that lasts 10 years. How do you communicate that kind of lifespan? Toshiba chose "everyday life" over numbers. Across 3,653 days of windows, you see a family's irreplaceable daily moments play out.
The insight
There are countless ways to show that something "lasts 10 years." But Toshiba decided to talk about the warmth of light rather than specs. And they did it using motifs that sit right at the heart of Japanese sentiment—family, marriage, having children—motifs that might even feel a little old-fashioned. They said it felt "like an appliance ad," and that's exactly right.
The idea
The ad shows, in silhouette, the 10 years—3,653 days—since a man switched the light in his dining room to an LED bulb. Each of those days becomes one square on a calendar, and through the silhouette of the window you can see his household changing: from living alone, to marriage, to the birth of a child. It was shot with great attention to detail, down to leaving blank the days the light wasn't used.
What happened
The ad won Gold in the Outdoor category at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2011. It also won 4 awards at the 41st Fujisankei Group Advertising Awards, including the Grand Prix in the Media Mix category.
Afterthought
The silhouette version, called "Wonderful," depicts human warmth in a more direct way, and it has the kind of warmth you'd expect from a home appliance brand. I feel the same way. Rather than explaining 10 years with numbers, conveying the sense that "life just keeps going" through nothing but shadows behind a window feels like a remarkably honest approach. What an LED bulb is really selling isn't a product—it's the time you spend together.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2011
Featured in
- From 1 Second to 500 Million YearsTen ads lined up by nothing but the length of time they cover
