The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
CaloriMate's art-school exam film wins a 4th straight ACC Film Grand Prix
For its 10th exam-support film, CaloriMate follows an art-school applicant for the first time — and lets 20 real art students draw the station posters.
CaloriMate (Otsuka Pharmaceutical)
What it had to solve
Otsuka's balanced-food brand CaloriMate has aired an exam-support film every year since 2012. For the 10th film, with more students entering university through recommendation and AO admissions, the brand wanted to show that exam paths are no longer a single road — and chose, for the first time, to tell the story of an art-school applicant.
How it works
CaloriMate, Otsuka Pharmaceutical's balanced-nutrition food, has aired an exam-support TV film every year since 2012, and the series has become a landmark of Japan's December-to-March exam season. For its 10th film the brand decided to broaden whom it represents: for the first time, a character preparing for art-school entrance exams appears, reflecting how university admissions in Japan now run through many different routes rather than one uniform exam.
The 120-second film, titled 'Hikari mo Kage mo' ('Light and Shadow'), follows two friends — an art-school applicant and a science applicant — who compare themselves with others, lose heart, and still push each other toward the light. The music is the opening theme of Smile PreCure, the anime that aired in 2012–2013 and that this generation of examinees grew up watching, rearranged and played by pianist Hayato Sumino. A long version aired only once, inside the FNS music special on 13 December 2023; it trended on X and stayed available on the official YouTube channel until May 2024.
The campaign also extended the drawing theme outside the film: for one week from 27 November, sketch graphics drawn by 20 current students of Tokyo University of the Arts and Tama Art University appeared inside Tokyu Shibuya Station and Hankyu Umeda Station. At the 2024 ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS the film took the Grand Prix in the TV CM category — the fourth consecutive year Otsuka and CaloriMate won it — confirming that a ten-year ritual can stay fresh by changing whose story it tells.
Why it lands
- The choice of an art-school applicant was a structural refresh: it redefined who an exam candidate is in a decade when recommendation and AO admission had multiplied the possible paths.
- The light-and-shadow story placed the product emotionally rather than nutritionally — CaloriMate is the thing that sits beside you while you are absorbed in your work.
- Letting 20 real art students draw the station art closed the loop between message and maker: a campaign about art-school exams was practiced by real art students.
- Using the PreCure theme these examinees heard in childhood turned nostalgia into an exact generational address, and the one-night-only 120-second airing made the commercial an event.
What it did
The film won the Film (TV CM) Grand Prix at the 2024 ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS — the fourth consecutive year Otsuka and CaloriMate took that prize — after the one-night terrestrial broadcast made 'CaloriMate commercial' trend on X. The student-drawn station art also gave the campaign's theme a visible maker, and the series remains a fixture of Japan's exam season.
What you can take
A long-running ritual renews itself by widening who it stands for — and by letting the people the story is about help make the campaign itself.
Since then
The film extended CaloriMate's decade-long exam-support tradition and gave Otsuka its fourth consecutive ACC Film Grand Prix; the one-night broadcast plus the YouTube run kept the long version alive through the spring of 2024. In industry coverage the work became an example of how a yearly brand ritual can renew itself — not by a bigger budget, but by widening the definition of the person it supports and handing part of the making to the people depicted.
Sources
- ACC賞発表、フィルム部門は4年連続で大塚製薬・カロリーメイトがグランプリに
- 数々の広告賞受賞「カロリーメイト」受験生応援CM最新作！初の美大受験生にフォーカス
- 10作目にして初の美大受験生に焦点／大塚製薬
- 「泣ける…」カロリーメイトの新CM『120秒ロングバージョン』に込めた思い…
- ACC賞2024発表、カロリーメイト「光も影も」や「オードリーのオールナイトマック」など話題の広告がグランプリに！
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