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Keio University students take on the challenge of producing a PR video for Suwa.
Students from Keio University and Keio Girls' High School are tackling the challenge of creating videos to promote the appeal of the Suwa region in Nagano Prefecture.
This is part of an activity researching PR methods for events and regions using IT, under the guidance of Professor Yasunori Fujita of the university's Faculty of Economics. Professor Fujita's seminar has previously created PR videos for local areas as one initiative aiming to revitalize regions using video. This time, they focused on the Suwa region as the "Video Project to Communicate the Appeal of the Suwa Region."
The students divided into five teams (each team consisting of 4 to 6 members) and produced approximately three-minute videos.
In January 2017, the completed videos were posted on YouTube, with teams competing for the highest number of views by the end of March. The challenge for the teams was to "create a tourism promotion video that offers unique discoveries and sparks interest among the target audience, encouraging them to visit, given the current lack of awareness about the Suwa region in the Tokyo metropolitan area."
On December 14th, at the university in Minato Ward, Tokyo, presentations by five teams were held, inviting Mayor Yukari Kaneko of Suwa City and other related parties.
Each team explained their basic strategy, including target audience and theme setting, along with their visual expression, and showed videos nearing completion.
The charms of Suwa uncovered by each team—such as "local miso," "diverse tourist spots," "film locations," and "scattered mystery spots"—were varied and captured the judges' interest. The presentation by the Keio Girls' High School team, who voluntarily participated in the Fujita Seminar, was structured with solid logic based on an analysis of the feelings of their own generation, unique to current students. Along with the high quality of their video, it earned praise from the audience. The video is a short film about a high school girl who had lost hope, meets her mother who passed away in Suwa, and gains the strength to live.
After the presentations, evaluations from Mayor Kaneko and other officials were tallied, and the winning and runner-up teams were announced that day. The winning Team D created a video titled "Pilgrimage Spots Aren't in Hida, They're in Suwa," inspired by the hit movie "Your Name," introducing tourist spots for couples. Their creation of an original local superstition involving swearing eternal love on-site was also highly praised.
Runner-up went to Team B, which focused on the locally produced miso with its long history. They positioned miso as the ultimate "healing" seasoning for Japanese people and proposed promoting it to international tourists as "SUWA IYASHI MISO".
Their idea for a "Miso Tea Ceremony" event, utilizing an old folk house for miso soup tastings, was also highly regarded. A special prize was awarded to a team of high school girls, each receiving local specialty products as gifts.
Winning Team D
Mayor Kaneko commented, "Every team's proposal had an excellent focus point and presented ideas I genuinely want to try. They were persuasive, incorporating data analysis and YouTube viewing trends into their planning. I was also impressed by everyone's acting skills in the videos. Above all, I'm grateful that you took an interest in Suwa and developed these plans. It was a day that gave me tremendous energy."
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