TBWA HAKUHODO (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Akihiko Imai) and The Asahi Shimbun Company (President: Shiro Nakamura) jointly conceived a new form of news reporting dubbed ‘Journa-Rhythm’, which won a Silver Award in the Use of Music in Audio category at the 2024 Clio Awards, regarded as one of the world’s top three advertising accolades.

“Journa-Rhythm” is a new music-based project born from a collaboration between the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and hip-hop artists. The artists create songs lyrically expressing their thoughts and feelings on social issues based on news articles, in an attempt to spark interest in social problems among an audience that has scant regard for the news.

The Clio Awards are one of the world’s major advertising awards, alongside THE ONE SHOW and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The Clio Music Awards were created to celebrate the power of music to connect brands and consumers, with the aim of recognizing outstanding work in the areas of artist self-promotion, music marketing, brand collaboration and the use of music in advertising.

The award results are as follows.

Award-winning Creation：Journa-Rhythm

Use of Music in Audio Category (Sub-category: Use of Music in Audio): Silver Award.

Advertiser: The Asahi Shimbun Company

Summary of Work:

The project was conceived based on the idea of sparking interest in news among young people. Five young hip-hop artists selected from Generation Z by Zeebra, a long-time hip-hop stalwart, express their thoughts and feelings on social issues such as ‘immigration’, ‘social inequality’, ‘low income’, ‘childbirth’ and ‘suicide’ in tracks lyrically based on news articles. These are then streamed via the ‘Asahi Shimbun News from the Frontline’ podcast, hosted by the Asahi Shimbun.

CLIO MUSIC awards website (English version)

https://clios.com/music/winner/use-of-music-in-audio/journa-rhythm/journa-rhythm-503944

Asahi Shimbun Newspaper Podcast ‘Asahi Shimbun News from the Frontline’ https://omny.fm/shows/asahi/playlists/podcast

（Apple Podcasts / Google Podcasts / Spotify / RSS feed）

Asahi Shimbun Digital ‘Journa-Rhythm’ feature page  https://www.asahi.com/ads/journarhythm