First Ever Cannes Lions Gold for a Condom Brand

Cannes Lions 2009, an international advertising festival, has just closed its doors with a condom brand coming out on top in two categories.

Sagami Rubber has been awarded gold in both the film category and the PR category for their website and film entitled “LOVE DISTANCE – Our distance, a billion millimeters,” created back in October 2008.

The storyline goes like this: A couple, separated by a long distance, run to meet each other at a point halfway between them. The whole journey was being documented on the website for everyone to watch during one month (Images of the two were broadcast live on the internet for one month until the moment they met and embraced at the midpoint).

The couple featured in the movie were actually dating for 2 and a half years already and chosen for the adventure: They had to run a 1,000,000,000 mm (1,000 km) marathon, one starting from Tokyo and the other from Fukuoka.

Live Route Map

Here’s the movie:

To show you how successful this ad was in Japan let me quote some of the results…

TV programs featured this event and created a buzz, which not only spread in Japan but spread abroad as well. There were over 100,000 users accessing the site on the day of the reveal, as all were eager to know the name of the client and the product.

and some more details about the execution…

The couple’s locations were marked on an internet map through GPS and users could go and cheer them on the streets and send them fax messages via the internet to show their support. (…) The men’s site and the women’s site were created separately. Users, unaware that once their gender is chosen, would not be able to share the other gender’s site, due to answering the gender question asked of them when they first visited the site. On Christmas eve, the day of the finale, the men’s site and the women’s site came together as one, as the couple embraced each other.

To date, the website has received 8 awards in 5 advertising contests. Some of the other awards include:

• A Yellow Pencil in Digital Advertising Campaigns from the Online Advertising
  Category for D&AD Awards 2009
• The Best in ADFEST’s CBC 16 Best Integrated Cyber Category
• Bronze Medal in One Show Interactive’s Microsites

Sincere thanks to Evan.