YUBARI RESORT | NO MONEY BUT LOVE | 2009
A bankrupt city brought people back with wordplay and honesty / YUBARI RESORT "NO MONEY BUT LOVE"
How do you advertise a city that collapsed under 35 billion yen in debt? Normally, you can't. So this city didn't hide the impossible—it just said it out loud. NO MONEY BUT LOVE. No money, but love.
The problem
Yubari once thrived on coal mining, then failed at tourism development too, and in 2007 went bankrupt with 35 billion yen in debt. Its population had shrunk from 120,000 to 12,000. With almost no budget and the need not to hurt residents' feelings, the campaign began carrying this heavy task.
The insight
The creative team noticed something: Yubari had the lowest divorce rate in Japan. No money, but love—they turned that straight into the copy. The couple's names were "Tousan" (bankruptcy) and "Akaji" (deficit), and their shared surname "Fusai" sounds, in Japanese, the same as the word for debt. Without making light of the harsh reality of bankruptcy, they turned it into characters people could actually laugh with.
The idea
They remade Yubari into "a city for happy couples." At city hall, they set up a window that issued "Certificates of a Happy Couple"—any couple who visited together could get one. They also made Fusai merchandise and a theme song, and the mayor himself stood in the city wearing a melon mascot costume.
What happened
In the first month alone, 250 couples got the certificate. The story spread through newspapers, TV, and the internet, and it won the Grand Prix in the Promo category at the 2009 Cannes Lions.
Afterthought
Love had always been there in Yubari. No one had just put it into words before. If you have no money, you can simply say so—and that alone was enough to make the city smile a little.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2009
Featured in
- Putting 'We're Broke' Right at the Center of the IdeaSix ads that turned a shortfall into the raw material itself
