'TRAIN’ing
East Japan Railway Company., Ltd.
Issue 54 | March 2020
Agency
McCann Health Japan
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director, Concept Shunsuke Kakinami Creative Director, Art Director Jun Oizumi Experience Designer, Copywriter, Account Planner, Concept Mai Kaneda Art Directors Yukiko Yamada, Noriaki Tanimura, Takafumi Miki Mickey
Production Team
Technical Producer Jin Somemiya Software Production Fenrir Inc.
Other Credits
Business Director Hiroyuki Baba Media Communication Planners Sentaro Yoshino, Yurika Hotta, Hiroaki Murakoshi Client Client Directors Sei Sakairi, Takami Tateishi Client Supervisors Tomoki Kobayashi, Yuhei Soda
Date
January 2020
Background
13 million people travel on Japan railways across Tokyo every day. Office workers each spend an average of two hours travelling.
While it is the natural desire of people to manage their well-being, both physically and mentally, the demands of daily life often proved too challenging for people to be able to look after themselves properly.
Idea
‘TRAIN’ing was a smartphone app that enabled passengers to spend their time on trains becoming healthier and stronger.
Utilising iBeacon geo-fencing technology, the app automatically detected users. It then calculated the users position in the carriage and the amount of congestion to suggest mental or physical activities.
The pole, straps and seats were all incorporated into 87 voice-guided workouts and mindfulness exercises.
Results
600 million media impressions were accumulated across 11 countries, at a value of $2.5 million in free media in one month.
Our Thoughts
People hate commuting. Well, I do. So we tend to hate the companies that take us to work and back home every day. Well, I do.
Sitting on the train (if you’re lucky) is ‘dead’ time. You can read a paper or watch a video on your mobile but you certainly aren’t developing in any way.
This app is East Japan Railways saying, ‘We understand your pain’. In empathising with their passengers, the company is buying forgiveness for when things go wrong, which, inevitably, they do. For me, then, this is more than an app, it is the epitome of modern brand communication.