ABOUT

The Brief:
Mikasa were looking for campaign strategy and accompanying digital activations to support the launch of their new beach volleyball - the BV550C - ahead of the 2023 season. It was important to put the ball’s technical specifications, environmental credentials and consumer education at the forefront of the campaign, alongside a desire for a modern “social first” execution aligned with the brand's broader evolution. The core objective was to raise awareness of the new ball, while a secondary objective was to evolve Mikasa’s brand on social media and grow their audience across all platforms

Concept:
We wanted to delve into the mind of a product designer at Mikasa as the driving force behind this campaign, understanding their processes as they set about developing a new product such as the BV550C. The concept centred around the idea of ‘imagination to creation’, taking the audience on a journey from the first concept sketches, through to the ball being handcrafted in Mikasa factories and ultimately ending up in the hands of beach volleyball players around the world.

Execution
Our video and design teams worked collaboratively to bring the concept to life through a series of deliberate creative decisions. There was a conscious effort to focus on the craftsmanship of the ball throughout the creative, incorporating different textures and utilising animated hand-drawn elements, alongside archive material, on-location shoots and studio videography.

The main video creative stayed true to the initial brief by highlighting the key technical specifications of the new ball, alongside celebrating its environmental credentials through a modern approach to video production. We were able to capture the ball’s new design in a controlled studio environment, while we worked with the England Beach Volleyball team and a local production team in Brazil to film the ball in action to complete its journey from sketch to match.

It was also important that any campaign was able to exist beyond the initial video creative. Our design team utilised the hand-drawn elements seen in the video to create a suite of graphics to further emphasise the key elements of the new ball through quotes and infographics.

Results
Success was measured through increased brand awareness, recall and specific audience targeting. The launch video achieved 5.7M views (FB, YT, IG) during the first 8 weeks of the campaign. 3.2M views were on Instagram equating to an 80,000% increase on the platform’s combined video views for Mikasa in 2022. It also became the 7th most viewed volleyball video globally on Facebook during Q1 of 2023.