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How Canva Made Japan Doubt Itself With Make It Unbelievable
Canva's Make It Unbelievable is a multi-channel campaign launched in Japan in April 2024 by UltraSuperNew Tokyo, designed to demonstrate that anyone can produce professional-quality visual materials on Canva without prior design experience, using Japanese celebrity disbelief as its central comic and dramatic engine.
The campaign's central tension is both its concept and its proof point. When Canva's drag-and-drop platform produces a presentation so polished that it strains credibility, the natural human response is suspicion. UltraSuperNew Tokyo built an entire campaign around that suspicion, casting two of Japan's most recognisable figures to embody it. Takeshi Kitano — internationally celebrated as an auteur filmmaker, comedian, and actor — plays a proud first-time Canva user who presents a design he created for a new business venture. Gekidan Hitori, the Japanese filmmaker and actor who recently directed a biopic based on Kitano's own life, plays the sceptic who simply refuses to believe Kitano made it himself. The situation escalates with mounting absurdity, each man holding his position as the disagreement spirals into full dramatic confrontation.
The campaign ran across national television, YouTube, and social media in Japan, with a two-minute film serving as the centrepiece of the distribution strategy, according to ultrasupernew.com. Canva, founded in 2013, is a free online visual communications and collaboration platform with a mission to empower everyone to design, regardless of technical background. In Japan, where professional design tools have historically demanded significant technical literacy, that positioning carries particular strategic weight. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting competent celebrity-driven execution with room for deeper creative originality.
Canva operates in a competitive global creative-software landscape that demands sharp localisation strategy. In Japan, where professional presentation standards are high and the cultural expectation that skilled output requires skilled training runs deep, the accessibility argument Canva makes carries genuine disruptive force. The campaign's creative premise — that a layperson's Canva design could be mistaken for a professional's work — functions as both entertainment and market education simultaneously.
Adobe remains Canva's largest broad creative-software competitor. In the graphic-design software category, Adobe Photoshop holds a commanding share of the market, with Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator also maintaining substantial positions, according to clapboard.com. In the presentation-software category, Microsoft PowerPoint remains a dominant force in Japan's corporate environment, according to clapboard.com. Canva's strategic response to these entrenched competitors is to reframe the competitive question entirely: rather than competing on feature depth, it competes on access, speed, and the elimination of the design skill barrier.
Canva reported 2024 revenue of approximately 2.7 billion US dollars, representing growth of around 35 percent year-over-year from approximately 2.0 billion US dollars in 2023, according to clapboard.com. That growth trajectory validates the brand's decision to invest in high-profile market-specific campaigns rather than relying solely on product-led growth. In Japan specifically, the choice of Takeshi Kitano and Gekidan Hitori as campaign talent signals a deliberate commitment to cultural credibility rather than generic celebrity reach, as reported by campaignbriefasia.com. The pairing works not despite its specificity to the Japanese market but precisely because of it — both figures carry distinct, well-established screen personas that make the conflict instantly legible to a Japanese audience.
Francois Claverie, Group Creative Director at UltraSuperNew Tokyo, shaped the campaign's creative logic around a single cultural truth. As quoted by ultrasupernew.com, Claverie observed: it probably would not occur to anyone to doubt anything Takeshi Kitano says, ever — and so the campaign required someone willing to do exactly that, a role Gekidan Hitori accepted.
The talent selection is itself a creative act. Takeshi Kitano's global reputation as an auteur — built across decades of internationally acclaimed comedy and action films — makes his character's pride in a Canva design both surprising and entirely believable. Gekidan Hitori's recent real-world role directing a biopic about Kitano's life adds a layer of genuine biographical irony that audiences in Japan would immediately recognise, deepening the joke without requiring explanation, as reported by campaignbriefasia.com. The campaign does not cast celebrities as endorsers in any conventional sense; it casts them as archetypes whose specific histories amplify the narrative.
Creative direction was led by Andres Aguilar as Creative Director, with Oguzcan Kaganoguzbeyoglu serving as Associate Creative Director, according to ultrasupernew.com. Copywriting was handled by Noga, with graphic design by Belle Sim. The broader production team included Junior Creative Tran Hoai Anh and Creative Intern William Matsuda. Strategy was led by Head of Strategy Haruna McWilliams, with account management directed by Group Account Director Yumi Esposito-Pueblo and Senior Account Manager Yuko Nakamura, according to ultrasupernew.com. The two-minute film format — longer than standard broadcast units — gave the escalating conflict room to breathe and allowed the absurdist logic to compound, a structural decision that proved consequential for the campaign's performance across YouTube and social platforms in Japan.
The campaign generated more than 55 million unique views across YouTube and social media, according to Canva. A separate figure of 80 million views has been reported in trade press, though as noted by Campaign Asia, the comparison between these two numbers is uncertain due to differing definitions of view types. Regardless of which figure is applied, the scale of organic reach achieved by a market-specific campaign in Japan is a meaningful indicator of the creative's ability to travel beyond its primary audience.
Make It Unbelievable was shortlisted at Cannes Lions 2024 in both the B2B category and the Film category, with the two-minute film earning its own separate shortlist recognition, according to campaignasia.com. At Spikes Asia 2025, the campaign received a Silver award in the Use of Humour category, according to light.ultrasupernew.com — marking UltraSuperNew Tokyo's first Silver Spike for this campaign, as reported by ultrasupernew.com. These results confirm that the campaign's creative approach resonated with international juries assessing work from the Asia-Pacific region, not only with the Japanese consumers it was built for.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on three interlocking decisions: celebrity casting chosen for biographical relevance rather than reach alone, a film format long enough to sustain comedic escalation, and a product truth — that Canva genuinely enables non-designers to produce impressive output — that the creative does not need to exaggerate. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its premise confidently while leaving some latitude for deeper creative risk.
Make It Unbelievable is a multi-channel Canva campaign launched in Japan in April 2024 by UltraSuperNew Tokyo. It features Takeshi Kitano and Gekidan Hitori in an escalating comic dispute about whether Kitano genuinely created his own Canva presentation, demonstrating that anyone can produce professional-quality design without prior experience.
Takeshi Kitano is a globally recognised Japanese auteur, comedian, and actor who plays a proud Canva user. Gekidan Hitori is a Japanese filmmaker and actor who directed a real-life biopic about Kitano and plays the sceptic. Their biographical connection gives the campaign's comic conflict immediate cultural resonance for Japanese audiences.
UltraSuperNew Tokyo created Make It Unbelievable for Canva in 2024. Group Creative Director Francois Claverie and Creative Director Andres Aguilar led the creative team, according to ultrasupernew.com. The campaign ran across national television, YouTube, and social media in Japan, with a two-minute film as its centrepiece.
The campaign earned two Cannes Lions 2024 shortlists — one in the B2B category and one in the Film category — according to campaignasia.com. At Spikes Asia 2025, it received a Silver award in the Use of Humour category, marking UltraSuperNew Tokyo's first Silver Spike for this campaign, per Light Ultrasupernew.
Canva reported the campaign generated more than 55 million unique views across YouTube and social media. A separate figure of 80 million views has appeared in trade coverage, though campaignasia.com noted uncertainty in comparing the two numbers due to differing definitions of view types. Both figures reflect substantial reach for a Japan-market campaign.
Canva competes in Japan against Adobe, which dominates graphic-design software, and Microsoft PowerPoint, which holds a strong position in presentation software, according to clapboard.com. Canva's strategy bypasses feature competition by eliminating the design skill barrier entirely, positioning the platform as accessible to anyone regardless of professional training or prior experience.
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