The archive · Product Ideas · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
Suntory scans the Northern Alps into ENDLESS DAWN — Spikes Asia Design Grand Prix
Suntory photogrammetry-scans the entire Northern Alps into an interactive 'Endless Dawn' website — and wins Spikes Asia's Design Grand Prix.
Suntory Holdings Limited · Dentsu Creative X (Dentsu Craft Tokyo)
What it had to solve
Suntory Tennensui added the Northern Alps — home to Japan's only remaining glacier — as its fourth natural-water source. The mountains are unreachable in spring because of deep snow, so the brand needed a way to make the place and its water story tangible.
How it works
When Suntory Tennensui added the Northern Alps as its fourth water source, it faced a communication problem: the selling point was a place — Japan's only remaining mountain glacier — that ordinary people can barely visit. Instead of a conventional commercial, Suntory and Dentsu Craft Tokyo chose to reconstruct the whole mountain range as a 3D model and turn it into a website.
In April 2022 a helicopter photographed the range, producing more than 10,000 aerial images. Photogrammetry turned those into a model of roughly 100 square kilometres at up to 10 centimetres of ground resolution, centred on the Kakune-ri glacier. The team rebuilt the Alps in virtual space with Houdini, 3ds Max and Unreal Engine, then shot impossible camera moves through glaciers, snow and sea mist — mixed with a 23-minute film narrated by six personified witnesses (bird, cloud, sea, valley, earth, human), voiced by six celebrities.
Launched on 29 July 2022, the interactive experience let visitors steer their viewpoint through the mountains and read columns on the water cycle. It went on to win the Design Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2023 as well as further Golds, an ADFEST Gold, an ACC Grand Prix and One Show and Clio honours, establishing photogrammetry-driven brand experiences in Japan.
Why it lands
- The insight started from the constraint: the source is real but unreachable, so Suntory brought the mountains to the audience instead of the audience to the mountains.
- Photogrammetry made the claim credible: 10,000+ real photos scanned into 100 km² of terrain at 10 cm resolution means every pixel of the experience is evidence of the source's purity.
- Interactivity turned an ad into a repeatable experience — users can fly, pause and explore, so the brand story is discovered rather than told.
- Winning across design, craft and film juries showed the idea held up as design, technology and storytelling, not just an ad.
What it did
The interactive site won the Design Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2023, plus Golds in Design and Digital Craft, an ADFEST Gold, an ACC Grand Prix, an One Show Gold Pencil and a Clio Bronze, and became the brand's flagship digital experience for its newest water source.
What you can take
When the product is a place, bring the place to the audience: photogrammetry and real-time rendering turn an unreachable source into a repeatable experience — craft becomes the proof of quality.
Since then
The site remains online as Suntory's flagship content for the Northern Alps source, and the project became a reference for photogrammetry-driven brand experiences in Japan. The ENDLESS DAWN team went on to apply similar scan-and-render techniques to other natural-landscape work, and the campaign is frequently cited in design-craft award coverage.
Sources
- 「サントリー天然水」1万枚の写真で3Dスキャンしたインタラクティブコンテンツ「ENDLESS DAWN そしてまた、朝が来る。」を7月29日（金）から公開
- Spikes Asia 2023 Grands Prix and Special Award winners announced
- サントリー天然水 / ENDLESS DAWN そしてまた、朝が来る。
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