NTT Docomo's Baku More exhibition hides an SNS leak warning in a gorgeous photo show

NTT Docomo set out in early 2025 to reduce SNS posting troubles among young people, especially students, as casual photos were increasingly being used to identify personal information. Its own brand team judged that a straight warning from a telecom company would read as a lecture and be ignored, so the brief became how to make the risk feel like jibun-goto, something that happens to you.

The answer was a two-day exhibition, Baku More, at Light Box Studio Aoyama in Tokyo on February 22–23, 2025. The ground floor looked like an aspirational influencer show, displaying 70 photos taken on phone cameras by 10 influencers — among them Kato Yuri (かとゆり), with more than 1.5 million social followers. Promotions on TikTok were styled to look like a high-schooler's own excited posts, and Docomo deliberately kept its corporate identity out of the public story so young people would come for fun.

The twist sat upstairs in a secret zone whose existence was never announced: every innocent-looking photo quietly gave away information. Reflections and address signs in windows revealed locations, close-ups of hands let prints be read, and a photographed key could be reproduced. Visitors moved through explanations of each leak and finished with a quiz. Attendance reached about 1,000, twice the forecast, and television coverage brought people in their 30s and 40s as well as the teens the event was built for.

The idea kept collecting recognition after the event: an ACC Gold in Branded Communication at the 65th ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS, Gold plus the Audience Award at the 5th JAA Challenge Award, Silver at the 78th Ad Dentsu Award, and in June 2026 the Grand Prix, the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award, of the 12th JACE Event Award among 174 entries.