GPS tracking captured the marathoners' progress in Sagami Love Distance

The cliché “love can move mountains” is still potent enough to elicit serious cringing. But there may be one exception where the sentiment can elicit awe – GT Tokyo’s Love Distance campaign for Japanese condom brand Sagami.

In this case, love wasn’t exactly doing the hauling, but producers Atsuki Yukawa from production company Rock N’ Roll Japan and Masaki Endo from digital prodco Non-Grid, Tokyo were heavy lifting, pulling together the integrated campaign’s large-scale elements.

The idea behind Love Distance was to chronicle a real-life couple on a 1,000km marathon, running toward each other from their respective homes in Fukuoka and Tokyo. The distance was converted into millimeters, one billion to be exact, and a countdown initiated, all to emphasize the condom brand’s line of 0.2mm condoms. The client was only revealed after the month-long journey was completed and the couple reunited on Christmas Eve of last year. A broadcast spot, directed by Kan Eguchi, captured the journey.

On the digital side, two sites were created and separated by gender to replicate the conditions of a long-distance relationship – female users couldn’t see the male site and vice versa. The site was updated with the couple’s text messages, blog entries and 10-minute long video chats broadcast in real time every night at 11pm from their respective locations. There was also a live video stream of their run and GPS technology tracked their progress.

“There is a device called E Mobile in Japan that allows us to use Internet at high speed in any location with reception,” explains Yukawa. “We ran the [marathon] course beforehand with this device as a test; we judged that it was difficult to use a car to shoot the runner so we developed a bicycle equipped with a camera. We loaded it with equipment such as GPS, PCs and E Mobile.”

Support staff and crew followed the couple 24 hours a day but were ordered to keep communication to a minimum in order to heighten the couple’s feeling of long-distance isolation.
Endo says the biggest challenge was maintaining the live stream the length of the marathon.

“There were a lot of elements I’d never experienced before.” he says. “I talked to some advisors to explore the possibilities. When we do something new, we have to use a trial-and-error approach. Not only does it enable me to provide a wide range of solutions, but it’s also a labor of love.”

Non-Grid> www.non-grid.jp
GT Tokyo> www.gtinc.jp/
Love Distance> www.lovedistance.jp