Youth words, Gal words, new words, internet slang... Thanks to the influence of communication tools such as LINE and Twitter, new words are being created daily. In the last few years, the disarray of Japanese language and grammar has become a social problem.
Daijisen is Japan’s most authoritative Japanese dictionary, but it is also number one in terms of number of words featured, thanks to an enthusiastic drive to add new words. It also boasts the top share among digital/internet dictionaries for data provision. Our editorial department’s attitude to building dictionaries ? “Words change over time, so chase and keep up with them!” ? led to our challenge. We were determined to develop a never-before-seen ‘future Japanese dictionary.’
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Create a dictionary together with our users ? the ‘future Japanese dictionary’ development project.
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Words such as “KAWAII” and “AI” can have different meanings depending on the person interpreting them. We asked ordinary people to submit their understanding of old and new words differing in interpretation, in a project putting the best submissions in apps, electronic dictionaries and our portal site’s official dictionary site. Particularly revolutionary was the fact that these ‘interpretations’ were ending up on the portal site’s official dictionary site used without anyone knowing.
We developed Japan’s first platform for Japanese dictionaries ? an innovation in external media.
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Japan first communication design allowing for permanent posting of ordinary people’s word interpretations to an official dictionary site
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This challenge, where ordinary people’s interpretation of words are permanently posted to official dictionary sites on external media, was also the joint product development of a dictionary platform with our users. It was the first of its kind in Japan.
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Also featured in Yahoo! and Google's search results !
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Ordinary people's submissions published permanently in official dictionary sites !
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Cross-media Rollout
We rolled out a cross-media campaign announcement on public call platforms including mass media for the website. -
\3.9 billion in free publicity
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● Gained approx. \ 3.9 billion in publicity; TV especially saw significant publicity with a total of more than 2.5 hours exposure.
● Exposure in more than 300 publications and news programs, including newspaper front pages.
● Adopted into a segment on Japan’s premier comedy show, leading to tremendous growth in exposure.
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● More than 15,000 entries received, with 214 entries actually published permanently in the official dictionary.
● Entries voluntarily submitted by Japan’s top idols and famous comedians gained rapid attention by young people.
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●Increased market expansion and sales in the B2B division thanks to overwhelming exposure making our project the talk of the town. It helped our clients’ business immensely.
This project itself was turned into a TV program and featured in many news media. As a result, we succeeded in gaining extensive exposure as “the one and only Japanese dictionary keeping up with today’s language.” We created, and presented, the future platform for the Japanese dictionary. -
