Canva Unveils Second Edition of Brand Campaign "Make it Unbelievable" Featuring Takeshi Kitano and Hitori Gekidan

Jul. 31, 2024

Canva, the online visual communications and collaboration platform, launches the second edition of its TV and digital campaign for the Japanese market, titled from their "Make it Unbelievable" series.

Following the success of the first campaign video ‘Shiba Inu Swimming School’, which received a total of over 80 million views and was shortlisted for a Cannes Lions award at this year’s festival, the new campaign was again created by UltraSuperNew Tokyo and features Takeshi Kitano and Gekidan Hitori. The campaign riffs on another film Takeshi Kitano is famous for: the samurai movie. Both actors embody warring feudal lords from medieval Japan, demonstrating the unforeseen consequences of crafting amazing visual materials with Canva, making creativity accessible to all.

Plot of Takeshi's Peace Treaty

After a long battle, the Kitano Shogun family and the Hitori Shogun family put an end to the hostilities. To celebrate the occasion, a proud Kitano shows Hitori a social media post he created on Canva—it is of such high visual standard that Hitori doesn’t believe Kitano made it himself and tells him so. This act of disbelief triggers a reaction from the Kitano Shogun family. Things seem to take a turn for the worse and escalate to a dramatic degree, putting a whole nation’s stability on the line. But then the situation is brought under control again when Kitano shows how easily he created the image using Canva on his smartphone.

Kagan Sen, Country Manager, Canva Japan commented:

"We are delighted to bring Canva even closer to Japanese audiences through this campaign, once again starring the much-loved Takeshi Kitano and Hitori Gekidan, showcasing how Canva makes creativity and design accessible to all. Our hope is to show that with access to visual communication tools like Canva, anyone can design anything — even without prior experience — whether you’re an individual or member of a team. This campaign is also testament to our commitment of making Canva a locally-relevant brand for the Japanese audiences."

"Takeshi’s Peace Treaty" is running on digital and social media channels and on national Japanese TV from August 12th. Media buying is carried out by IREP Co., Ltd.