In case you haven’t heard, there are a lot of people living in China. A lot of people using a lot of water.
Cue Taiwanese hot water-heater manufacturer Sakura with a green campaign encouraging people to share a shower to cut down on water usage while at the same time promoting their eco-friendly water heaters.
The fun ad concept, which features two videos of two men vigorously soaping it up under a single shower head, was conceived and put together by J. Walter Thompson Shanghai, and has taken the Chinese mainland by a storm (forgive the H2O metaphor).
Besides the implied message that sharing a shower can be fun (if not a tad overenthusiastic), the ad’s primary push is that the Sakura produces half the amount of gas emissions of a regular water heater, which is better for the environment, and, in sum, the same as sharing a shower.
“Sharing showers can cut emissions by 50%,” viewers are told at the end of the video. “So can Sakura’s Eco Water Heater.”
According to JWT, the “Let’s Share a Shower” campaign had 5.54 million views on Youku, the Chinese equivalent of YouTube. To keep the campaign family-friendly, private parts were pixelated. But as you will see, they barely covered them.
The integrated campaign also included a game on the WeChat instant messaging platform, where users picked a cartoon characters to represent themselves and a friend, to create their own animated version sharing a shower.
Critics and judges loved the ads too: the “Share a Shower” campaign just picked up a Silver award in Film at Spikes Asia and a Bronze award at the Clio Awards.
Have a look for yourself and see why:
Campaign details
It is interesting to note that a Taiwanese company is using a Japanese word, Sakura (which means “cherry blossom”) to brand itself in China.