NSK

Global campaign for mechanical component manufacturer

Takram planned and produced NSK’s global campaign “__ with MOTION & CONTROL.” The campaign is a sequel to the “Running with MOTION & CONTROL” from 2020, and for 2021 we set the theme of “Connecting,” making everything from mechanisms and control systems to final film and graphic design.

The film features a unique mechanism that displays the preciseness of NSK’s components, demonstrating how it connects worlds, people, and things.

Campaign Official Website

Ideation

During the ideation process, NSK members from across the company huddled together with Takram, brainstorming and evaluating ideas from multiple perspectives.

Some of the questions we had to ask ourselves were: what exactly does NSK VISION 2026 “Setting the Future in Motion” mean, and how might our products achieve that?

Even while responding to these abstract questions, we simultaneously and repeatedly prototyped these ideas not just on paper but also with software simulations and actual hardware mechanisms until we landed on the final concept.

Design and implementation

Design and implementation of hardware usually take time; thus, we conducted hardware development and software development simultaneously with this project.

Once the ideas started taking shape, we started simulating the movement of those ideas in software, studying them from an aesthetics and feasibility perspective.

Once we decided on the concept, we enhanced this simulation further, seeking the optimal timing / movement / view needed for the final film, allowing us to adjust the final hardware to match the exact scene we wanted. Furthermore, this pre-simulation step allowed us to identify plausible problems, such as rails colliding with each other or rails not moving to the right place in time prior to final construction.

Campaign activation

In addition to newspaper and billboard ads, the campaign was shown in train channels (in-train displays) mixed with web ads, including social media ads.