Although we faced some difficulties in coordinating the donation ad, as this was the first time the idea had been implemented in Asia, the people at Hakuhodo DY Media Partners and the Daiko team worked together and attracted total donations of ¥5.57 million. In addition to driving communication, this new initiative led to corporate social contributions.
The Sawai Gender Action website, which launched simultaneously, allows visitors to read a company history that describes Noyo and is designed to foster empathy with Sawai Pharmaceutical’s corporate story. Rather than being a time-limited campaign site, the website serves as a venue for sharing information about the company’s activities.
After the launch, our client at Sawai Pharmaceutical commented that they had been receiving positive feedback, both internally and from outside the company. When we heard that Sawai had launched an internal project to create a company where women could feel more comfortable in the workplace, we sensed that action was rippling outward into wider society. We hope to keep the lines of communication open, including reporting on the progress of our efforts.
Companies can create value for their customers not just by disseminating messages, but also by taking action. This project underscored the importance of the cycle of declaring and implementing actions, expanding the circle of influence of those actions internally and externally through communication, and then moving onto the next action, and also of working with companies as partners in this cycle. Going forward, our team will continue to create better work with the aim of realizing the happiness of corporations, clients, and society as a whole.
Doing What We Can to Achieve a Gender-Equal Society —
Sawai Gender Action
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Daiko Advertising Sawai Gender Action members
(Back, from left)Shibuya, Okumura, Nakamuta, Tanaka
(Front, from left)Fushie, Ueno, Matsuda
We live in an age in which companies’ raison d’etre is being questioned. In addition to contributing to society through their corporate activities, companies are increasingly communicating about social issues and working to address them.
Sawai Gender Action is a project that allowed us to work alongside Sawai Pharmaceutical to explore a new type of communication. Sawai Pharmaceutical, which has a powerful sense of being a company with a public mission, is strongly committed to sustainability initiatives in line with its philosophy of “always putting patients first.” We thought that by making people aware of this commitment, we could enhance the company’s intrinsic value and gain the approval of diverse stakeholders.
We focused on the company’s origins. Sawai Pharmaceutical actually began as a small pharmacy run by a woman named Noyo Sawai. A century ago, it was more common for farmers’ daughters to get married and become part of their husband’s family than to go on to higher education. But Noyo moved to Tokyo and devoted herself to her studies. She became a female pharmacist, which was rare at that time, and opened Sawai Pharmacy. Noyo’s creed to “provide the sick with the medicines they need, when they need them,” was the starting point for Sawai Pharmaceutical’s philosophy of “always putting patients first.”
As our team read about the company’s history, rather than seeming like an episode from a story about the past, it felt like one that still held relevance today. Sawai Pharmaceutical was created because Noyo followed her own path and refused to be limited by gender. We figured that if each person could shine in his or her own way, more new things would be built. With that message in mind, we decided to take action.
Sawai Gender Action launched on March 8, 2022, on International Women’s Day. We ran a full-page ad in the Nikkei newspaper describing the Noyo episode and its message of gender equality. Furthermore, we were specific about going beyond existing advertising in order to communicate actions that could contribute to society. After considering the problem deeply, the team tried the new idea of implementing a donation ad program. Donation ads are video advertising solutions that connect sei-katsu-sha, advertisers, and recipient organizations. Advertisers donate to specific organizations in response to video ad views by sei-katsu-sha. To make a donation, sei-katsu-sha simply watch an advertisement about Sawai Gender Action and select a non-profit organization that is working toward gender equality. This system allows people to share the message of gender equality and participate in actions related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) without bearing any costs themselves.
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Okumura In our everyday work, we tend to view the role of digital in advertising from the perspective of numbers and efficiency, but I think our donation ad effort went beyond this framework. I think it expanded our view on the possibilities of combining advertising and digital perspectives. I am glad we were able to cultivate a new form of communication between companies and society, and I would like to thank Sawai Pharmaceutical for being willing to take up this new challenge with us.
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Nakamuta In addition to contributing to society through our business, with this project I learned that we could use a company’s unique founding story as a lens for looking at the company, its customers, and society. I was able to experience the joy of creating something together with the whole team from a place where outputs were indeterminate. I had the feeling that we could apply an advertising company’s creativity more broadly in a variety of areas.
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Ueno One woman’s belief, passed down across nearly 100 years, now plays a major role in an area essential for society: pharmaceuticals. On March 8, looking back at the past highlights how many more choices modern-day women have. From this baseline, I worked on this project in the hope that it would inspire courage.
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Tanaka We introduced the idea of a donation ad at a digital study session with Sawai Pharmaceutical, and that is how this action got started. We are truly grateful to our account service team who keenly pitched the donation ad as an idea that could gain the understanding of our client. I joined the advertising industry thinking it would be a good and enjoyable opportunity for learning new information. In fact, I have had the chance to take part in work that drives action on social issues. This has been a deeply moving experience and one that brought me back full circle to my starting premise.
