The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2021
BBC's Let's Go There: an animated Tokyo where the Olympics take over everyday Japan
BBC Creative's Tokyo 2020 coverage trailer is a 60-second animated journey through a Japan where the Olympics have taken over pop culture.
BBC
What it had to solve
The BBC needed a trailer for its coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held a year late in summer 2021. Tokyo is rich in pop culture, and the film set out to show a vision of the city not often seen — with a version of Japan authentic enough that even its street signs would ring true.
How it works
For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held a year late in summer 2021, the BBC needed a trailer for its coverage of the Games. Tokyo is rich with pop culture, and the finished film chose to show a version of the city rarely seen in Western coverage rather than the familiar postcard images.
Let's Go There, made by BBC's in-house agency BBC Creative with Nexus Studios and directed by Kibwe Tavares, Jonathan Gales and Paul Nicholls of Factory Fifteen, is a 60-second animated journey through an everyday Tokyo that the Olympics have taken over: street signs, shops, an arcade, a gashapon parlour and even a J-pop music video all carry the Games.
Multiple animation techniques build the world, and authenticity was treated as part of the idea: a Japanese designer checked the details so its Japan would ring true right down to the signs on the sides of buildings and the Japanese manhole cover that opens the film. Anime composer Kenji Kawai wrote the soundtrack.
The trailer launched on 29 June 2021 during the BBC's Euro 2020 coverage of England against Germany and promoted its Tokyo Olympics coverage through the summer, drawing design-press attention for its Japanese-immersed vision before entering the D&AD Annual 2022.
Why it lands
- A one-shot journey gives the trailer momentum: every frame is another reason to keep watching, with no need for a plot.
- Setting Olympic sports inside everyday Japanese spaces makes the unfamiliar city feel playful rather than exotic.
- Putting a Japanese designer and an anime composer on the team turns authenticity into a creative advantage instead of a cultural risk.
- Launching inside the BBC's own Euro 2020 football broadcast handed the trailer an enormous sports audience in the weeks before the Games.
What it did
The trailer launched on 29 June 2021 during the BBC's Euro 2020 broadcast of England against Germany and promoted its Tokyo coverage through the Games. It drew design-press attention for its Japanese-immersed vision and was entered in the D&AD Annual 2022 alongside art-direction and production-design winners.
What you can take
To sell something an audience cannot picture, let them into a world they have never seen: spend on authentic, unfamiliar detail instead of recognizable spectacle.
Since then
After its summer run promoting the Tokyo Games, Let's Go There kept circulating in design and advertising press as an example of culturally immersed animation, and the film was entered in the D&AD Annual 2022, where it sat alongside art-direction and production-design winners from the year's advertising.
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