How did the "Sudden Start Evacuation Drill," which drew 10,000 participants, come to be?

Dentsu Inc.'s cross-functional creative organization, the "Future Creative Center" (FCC), is a group of over 70 members supporting future-building domains with creativity beyond the boundaries of advertising. In this series, centered on the theme "Future × Creativity," center members discuss their upcoming initiatives.

This installment covers the " Sudden Evacuation Drill" conducted in 2020 by LINE Fukuoka Inc. and Fukuoka City. Within a set period, a "disaster has occurred" notification suddenly arrived via Fukuoka City's official LINE account (Add as friend here ). Participants then learned disaster response actions—including evacuation methods, precautions, and nearby evacuation sites—directly through LINE. This entirely online evacuation drill attracted 14,857 registered participants. It is now being introduced to municipalities nationwide as an innovative disaster prevention idea utilizing LINE official accounts.

The Dentsu Inc. FCC members involved in this project were Iori Anegawa, Yuki Kumagai, and Ryuta Nagashima. We looked back on the project's development process to understand how this initiative, which used LINE's notification feature to revolutionize the often predictable evacuation drills, came to be.

How to create the necessary catalyst for society while preserving excellent functionality

Nagashima: Disasters strike without warning, suddenly. Evacuation drills, however, are typically scheduled events where people gather at a predetermined time and place, making them prone to predictability. Focusing on this challenge in disaster preparedness, we wondered if we could use LINE's notification feature to create a new experience where "evacuation drills suddenly happen." The key point of "Suddenly Starting Evacuation Drills" is this unprecedented approach to disaster preparedness that addresses the suddenness of disasters.

Kumagai: For pre-registered participants, the Fukuoka City official LINE account sent a "disaster has occurred" notification sometime between September 1st and 6th. The notification timing was designed to mimic an actual disaster, where you never know when it will strike. We prepared over 20 different notification timing patterns and randomly assigned participants, ensuring even family members and friends were separated. After receiving the notification, participants followed the instructions in the LINE messages to learn the proper evacuation actions to take during a disaster.

Anekawa: When you think about it, the LINE platform is truly remarkable. The vast majority of people use it daily, ensuring notifications reach everyone. We wanted to leverage that potential for evacuation drills, which is how this format came about.

Anegawa: The project started on June 16th this year. An acquaintance from my university days, who is the PR Manager at LINE Fukuoka, was personally recruiting people on Twitter to help with Fukuoka's city development—not officially, but purely on a personal basis. My reply to that post was the beginning. As we talked, I learned that Fukuoka City was advancing the digitization of information dissemination to citizens using the LINE official account as infrastructure. They consulted me, saying they wanted to "raise awareness of the disaster prevention features," which is one aspect of this. So, I reached out to Kumagai, an AD I often work with, and Nagashima, a planner.

Kumagai: The core disaster prevention features we focused on were already part of Fukuoka City's official LINE account from the start. They mainly consist of three segments: targeted disaster information delivery, evacuation support functions, and reporting features for roads, parks, etc. Users can easily find evacuation shelters near their home or workplace on LINE, or experience disaster simulations. We leveraged these existing capabilities. This year, due to the pandemic, we couldn't hold in-person evacuation drills, making it a perfect time to promote the digitalization of disaster preparedness.

Nagashima: When I learned about the features of Fukuoka City's official LINE account, including the disaster prevention functions, I thought it was a truly amazing invention. The challenge, however, is that no matter how convenient the features are, simply saying "You can view disaster prevention information on LINE" isn't enough to get people to use it. We thought deeply about how to spread this wonderful functionality without changing it.

Kumagai: That's when Nagashima came up with the idea for "Sudden Start Evacuation Drills," focusing on LINE's notification feature.

Nagashima: What we focused on anew within the LINE app was the "ping" notification feature. The ability to send notifications simultaneously to so many people's smartphones, anytime, anywhere – it's obvious, but it actually holds tremendous power. Just like how sudden emergency earthquake alerts startle us every time our phones ring, we thought using "sudden notifications" as the entry point could create a disaster prevention experience only LINE could deliver.

A "New Production Style" Developed Inside the Client

Kumagai: We liked the idea that simply changing the entry point of the experience to "starting with a notification," while keeping the disaster prevention functionality intact, could become a project solving societal issues. We immediately dove deep into the title and design as a team.

Anekawa: When we presented this idea to the LINE Fukuoka team, they really liked it. What stood out was their attitude of "Let's create this together while thinking it through." Even our daily communication wasn't via email; we created a LINE group for frequent discussions.

Kumagai: Despite the tight schedule, the pace was incredible. For this project's experience design and visual aspects, they even created test accounts to verify how things would look. They also handled PR and media promotion for us. We truly became one team. We focused on the "presentation," while LINE Fukuoka handled most of the actual implementation.

Nagashima: It felt like we were seconded to LINE Fukuoka. Also, having all meetings remote was a big factor—something unique to these times. Furthermore, Fukuoka City officials welcomed our ideas despite not being able to conduct regular evacuation drills during the pandemic. Since our goal was to involve all citizens, we proposed placing Mayor Soichiro Takashima at the project's center and had him appear in the promotional video.

There were other projects that highlighted the service's potential value.

Nagashima: I see this project not as creating something entirely new, but as an example of shining a light from a different angle on a service LINE Fukuoka already possessed. We focused on the disaster prevention capabilities of Fukuoka City's official LINE account and the potential of LINE's notification features themselves to solve societal challenges. Looking back, our team of three tends to come up with a lot of projects like that.

Anegawa: Our first project together, "Okurufukushimaminpo," is another example. We enabled the regional newspaper "Fukushima Minpo" to be delivered nationwide as a "letter," hoping it would give residents who evacuated outside the prefecture due to the Great East Japan Earthquake a chance to reconnect with local information and remember their hometown. By changing the perspective, the regional paper—previously just a "daily information source"—became a "letter evoking memories of home." Even with the same newspaper, shifting the focus allows us to solve new problems.

Kumagai: Later, Fukushima Minpo also ran a radio project called " Nighttime Evacuation Drills." Literally, evacuation drills start on the radio in the middle of the night. This was possible precisely because radio is an "infrastructure element within the home." Utilizing it for evacuation drills conducted solely through sound at night enables disaster preparedness within the home. It's a reinterpretation of the value radio holds.

Creative thinking that starts from within the product or service itself—uncovering latent value.

Anegawa:Rather than bringing something from outside, it's about finding the inherent value within and shining a new light on it. That's actually the fundamental strength at the core of a service or product. When you try to leverage that strength, the client's product or service naturally becomes the centerpiece of the project, which is another benefit.

Nagashima: That's definitely true. So initially, we try to avoid being cynical and instead purely seek out the good aspects of the product or service. Often, I feel projects are born from realizing, "Wait, this is obvious, but it's actually amazing."

Kumagai: Plus, product- or service-centric planning tends to be sustainable. We're not creating something entirely new; we're leveraging the product as-is, so it's less likely to be a one-off. Thinking about it that way, our projects rely heavily on the client's own capabilities (laughs). We're good at borrowing the client's existing "strengths" and amplifying them, rather than building everything from scratch ourselves.

Anegawa: Also, for this team, in both good and bad ways, none of us three are fixated on the form of the output (laughs). Maximizing the expansion of the client's strengths and value is the top priority; the form it takes doesn't matter. I think we work well together because we share this value.

Kumagai: We've never really discussed it explicitly, but now that you mention it... Moving forward, we want to keep this mindset close while creating projects that delight both the products/services and the world.

Nagashima: As digitalization accelerates rapidly, I want us to do even more of this kind of work—helping create the necessity and touchpoints for services in society. There seems to be so much more potential. When that time comes, let's do it together again, the three of us (laughs).