Japan Marketing News

Drink your breakfast dear

When it comes to marketing in Japan, I strongly encourage you to do a comprehensive review of your brand in light of local market conditions. You're not in Kansas any longer, Dorothy.

The most fundamental questions must be re-asked: What market need are you trying to address? Who is the target? How and when will the brand be used?

This process forces you to discover important blind spots—you may soon learn (and be shocked) that you had been relying on certain unfortunate assumptions that diminished your ability to maximize profits in Japan.

The product category of soups offers an easy-to-understand example.

If you are from the United States, chances are that you mainly eat soups for lunch, dinner and the occasional snack.

However, Japanese consumers enjoy soups on all of these eating occasions, plus one—breakfast.

It turns out that what is considered "normal" in terms of foods for specific occasions is largely based in cultural traditions.

Many a foreign visitor has been stunned to discover that traditional Japanese breakfast foods include baked fish, dried seaweed, malodorous fermented beans, pickles, miso soup and green tea.

Equally, some Japanese travelers are absolutely confounded when their American hosts serve up a breakfast menu of cold cereal and milk, or worse, doughnuts.

To the average American, baked fish and soup are lunch or dinner foods.

To the average Japanese, doughnuts are an after-dinner dessert or a snackfood.

The lesson is, don't assume anything. Ask your Japanese colleagues, or better yet, conduct detailed marketing research. Just because you'd rather have a bagel than soup for breakfast doesn't mean that the same goes for the Japanese consumer.

Since almost everyone in Japan has had miso soup in the morning, of course it makes sense for soup manufacturers to target breakfast time as a crucial usage occasion. International soup manufacturers Campbell's and Knorr know this full well and their Japanese marketing efforts reflect it.

In the Knorr tomato soup ad above, a girl wearing pajamas walks down the hall of her apartment, goes into the kitchen, boils some water, makes some instant Knorr soup, (cut to ingredient sizzle shot), and then she eats it and smiles.

There's nothing particularly ground-breaking going on here. It's a good workmanlike ad that leaves viewers with a warm, positive impression. The point, as far as international marketers should be concerned, is that the brand invested in a ad for a specific usage occasion, and that that usage occasion is not one that would be traditionally considered in, say, a North American market.

You can watch the ad by going here and clicking on one of the blue buttons beside the closeup image of the girl holding the large white mug (left button is broadband, right button is narrowband).

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How to survive and thrive in Japan

The fact that you're here is proof of your interest in the Japanese market.

I'm glad that you read Japan Marketing News. We do our best to deliver a range of information, news and analyses related to products, marketing and advertising in Japan.

However, no website can cover every category and every brand in detail.

If you want to survive and thrive in Japan, you need in-depth market intelligence.

The optimal approach is to conduct tailor-made research on the market, your competitors and the consumer. But this can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What to do?

A good first step is to tap into publicly available sources. The problem is that most of this information is available only in Japanese, and only from sources that highly-experienced marketers know exist.

We can help.

We've handled information gathering and analyses for trusted international brands like Microsoft, COACH, Bruno Magli, and many others. We can do the same for you.

We can also help with marketing strategy, product localization issues, advertising production and partnerships.

For details, e-mail us.

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H&M in Japan: Hit or Miss?

The big news in apparel retailing this month was H&M's announcement that it intends to open its first store in Japan in autumn, 2008. Reports are that it will be a 1,500 sq. meter shop, located in Harajuku, and that additional locations will be opened in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities thereafter (my guess is that the first shop will reside in the building that's currently under construction behind ZARA on Omotesando).

Unlike most international fashion brands which have found it advantageous to enter the market through joint ventures with established Japanese apparel manufacturers, H&M appears to want to go it alone in Japan and has established a 100%-owned local subsidiary (as a rule, H&M does not do JVs in international markets).

I, for one, will be watching keenly as this story develops. When it comes to fashion, most international brands face several hurdles when entering the Japanese market. Primary amongst these are product quality and channel issues, both of which are more effectively addressed when a local partner is involved.

On the channel front, the big problem is the dearth of available real estate in Japan's best retail areas. Competition is fierce for the very limited space that does become available and this means land prices and rents are sky high. For brands like H&M—whose business models rely on the ability to deliver goods at very low prices—this can be fatal. Careful consideration needs to be paid to profitability over the long run since the cost of initially establishing a presence can be very, very high. Most brands hedge their bets by involving local partners who are both willing to front the huge investment costs and, perhaps just as important, are able to provide key real estate deal connections or better yet, existing facilities that can be converted to launch the new brand's first shops. To go it alone from the start in Japan, international brands are usually either extremely knowledgeable and well funded, or naively overconfident.

The other big issue is product quality.

H&M employs a "Fast Fashion" approach in which it quickly identifies emerging fashion trends, cranks out knock-off designs and variations using 100 in-house designers, and then puts in manufacturing orders with 700 collaborating firms in low-cost markets like Bangladesh. The whole process takes only a few weeks, and H&M's traditional European and North American customers, who are trendy teens and twenty-somethings, are very happy with the results: affordable, up-to-the-minute products of less-than-stellar quality.

But Japanese consumers are a different species.

Manufacturing standards are so uniformly high in Japan that sub-par merchandise stands out like a sore thumb. Japanese consumers are notoriously good at spotting poor stitching, loose buttons and inferior fabrics and they reject products for reasons that would be considered "nit-picking" in most other cultures. Since Japan already has its share of brands that offer high quality, high fashionablity and reasonable prices, the game cannot be won on design and bargain pricing alone. As a result, many international brands have had to develop special approaches for dealing with quality issues. In large measure, H&M's survival in Japan will depend on its ability to follow suit.

Naturally, a number of other hurdles also await. In addition to channel and quality issues, close attention has to be paid to product sizing and merchandise selection. Store environment, visual merchandising, seasonality and customer service are common challenges as well, to say nothing of Japan's special needs when it comes to advertising and PR. If it takes these issues lightly during preparatory stages, H&M may very well find itself putting out fires in Japan instead setting the market ablaze.

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Japanese chocolate uses sweet tooth to soothe frayed nerves

Feeling anxious and stressed-out at work?

Maybe you've got a problem with your GABA receptors.

Have I got you scratching your head?

This from Wikipedia:

"Gamma-aminobutyric acid (usually abbreviated to GABA) is an inhibitory neurotransmitter found in the nervous systems of widely divergent species. It is the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the vertebrate central nervous system. . .(Substances) that act as agonists of GABA receptors (known as GABA analogues or GABAergic drugs) or increase the available amount of GABA typically have relaxing, anti-anxiety and anti-convulsive effects."

Now that you've identified the nasty culprit, what can you do about it?

Why, just run right down to your local convenience store or supermarket and pick up some GABA—"The Mental Balance Chocolate"— from Glico.

No, this is not some pharmaceutical product. It's a typical consumer-oriented chocolate brand in Japan, the nation where confectionery and beverage marketing often treads where no western brand dares to go — the land of functionality.

Over the years, I've seen quite an array: vitamin products, energy products, digestion products, ion-balancing products, anti-constipation products, you name it. It seems that almost anything is fair game in the world of Japanese snacks and drinks.

When it comes to confectionery, Lotte is usually the brand that delivers on function. This time, however, it's Glico. According to their website, GABA Chocolate contains 280 mg of GABA per 100 grams. It's the "gentle flavor you'll want to taste when you need some healing." Whether 280 mg of GABA is actually significant, and how it's actually supposed to work, the website does not go on to say. But that's pretty much typical with these kinds of products, which are mostly launched on the crest of some wave of science news. One mass media outlet picks up a story about the latest findings on some substance, another news organization copy-cats it, and soon you get stories about the subject for weeks or months from every magazine, newspaper and tv station in the country. Usually the snack and beverage industry isn't far behind, and soon the market is flooded with products containing the essential ingredient.

After a while, some other substance becomes the darling of the press, and the cycle repeats itself.

I find the whole thing fun and fascinating to watch. It certainly keeps the store shelves interesting.

Anyway, I've had Glico's GABA, and it doesn't taste half bad (you guessed it, it tastes like chocolate!). Plus, it's a great excuse to be snacking at work. "This isn't chocolate. It's my anti-anxiety medication."

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COACH: the Japan miracle

It was gratifying to see that the September 23 issue of Toyo Keizai (one of Japan's major business magazines) focused on the "Miracle of COACH" in its cover story.

When I first got involved with COACH as their official marketing advisor in Japan way back in 1998, they faced an array of marketing issues related to product, pricing, distribution, and advertising/PR.

But they had a few things on their side: a desire to get it right, good leadership and a vision that allowed for significant investment in Japan, good partners to support knowledge gaps and local implementation needs, and plenty of energy to address the broad array of issues that needed to be resolved to optimize performance in a very difficult (but high-potential) market.

To make a long story short, what COACH did exemplifies what it takes to succeed in Japan.

- Understand Japanese consumers.
You can't maximize sales to people you don't understand. Use every available tool to know your customer. Work with people who can guide you through the complexities of doing this in Japan. Then follow up on the insights!

- Get the product right.
Japanese consumers are amongst the most demanding in the world. Your current product lineup may not be optimized for Japan. Over a five year period, I both spearheaded and was involved with projects that resulted in a number of improved or new COACH products—which brought in tens of millions of dollars in incremental revenue. Moreover, two years before Coach launched its wildly successful Signature C line of products, COACH Japan CEO Ian Bickley and I proposed the introduction of a "signature collection" to meet the unmet needs of Japanese consumers. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been earned in Japan from such Japan-centric approaches. Get the product right!

Effective Japanese TV commercials: Kanebo Naive

In order to create additional consumer interest and to prevent viewer fatigue, Japanese manufacturers often simultaneously run multiple TV ads that are linked through a common story and characters. Kanebo, which is one of Japan's largest cosmetics and bodycare companies, is presently running such a campaign for its body soap brand Naive. It centers on the various members of a single family.

In the ads, Kanebo indirectly links its proposition of "pure and wholesome soap" to this clean-cut family, whose members energetically pursue dreams we can all identify with: the little boy wants to be a superhero, the sister wants to be dancer, the father wants to strike it rich, and the mother dreams of success as an inventor.

Naive is an everyday brand and the target is the typical housewife. Every mom is familiar with kinds of dreams kids and husbands have (to say nothing of her own) so the pursuit of dreams is a great way to emotionally connect with these gatekeepers. Kanebo's basic message is that it's good to pursue your dreams with vigor. Work hard, play hard, and work up a sweat in the process. Then clean yourself up with Kanebo's pure and wholesome soap, Naive.

Each execution is a slice of life highlighting one family member. All feature a clip where that member is sweating up a storm in pursuit of his or her dream. And each cuts directly from the sweat scene to one in the tub where the grime is being soaped off in a vigorous and satisfying way. The main copy reads "play well, wash well," and all of the commercials end with a shot of the entire range of Naive products overlaying one of the family shouting out the product name.

You can watch all of them here. (Wait for the clouds to come up and click the one containing the letters "CM.")

These commercials are clever in that every viewer realizes that not every dream is realistic and that the vigor in which people involve themselves in their dreams can sometimes be comical. But people chase dreams nonetheless, and this pursuit itself can be endearing. (For instance, the mother is working on a prototypically Goldbergian invention—a bicycle-powered device to beat the dust out of futons. It's totally quixotic, but who among us hasn't dreamed of developing a ground-breaking, yet totally unrealistic product?).

So we watch this family and smile. They're wholesome and endearing (might I say naive?) and in a way, they're just like every family we know. Consequently, on the emotional level, Kanebo succeeds in connecting directly with every Japanese housewife. In the commoditized world of soap products, this is a good first step.

* In Japanese, the word "naive" carries the nuance of "pure" or "wholesome," more so than "credulous."

* Copyrights to the above TV commercial, and all others shown on this site, are the property of the organizations and creators which produced them.

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Exceptional Japanese print ads: Suntory Sore Kara

Here are a couple of potent print ads from Suntory. They're for Sore Kara, one of their shochu brands. (Sore Kara means "and then" — implying something like, "and then you're having fun.")

Shochu is a distilled, nearly flavorless alcoholic beverage made from ingredients like sweet potatoes, rice, barley, or sugar cane. It has a fairly high alcohol content (25%-40%) and has traditionally been a bit of a "poor man's" drink (in the past, college students drank it mixed with sweet juices and older, slightly threadbare gentlemen could often be seen nipping it on park benches and under train overpasses.)

Then, a few years ago, the entire shochu industry pulled its act together and began aggressively repositioning the drink to appeal to young adults and gourmet consumers. Today, all kinds of brands are available at different price points. College students and older men are still drinking it, but so are trendy, affluent adults

It's well known that there exists a large segment of Japanese consumers that is obsessed with international fashion and the latest in shiny new products and trendy restaurants and nightclubs. With Sore Kara, Suntory is targeting a different segment; adults 35+ who are attuned to the latest, but aren't infatuated with glitter. People who are aware of the world, but haven't jettisoned their Japanese heritage. The kind of consumers who are attracted to substance rather than polish. Those who value great friends over great venues. People with authenticity.

Suntory does a good job connecting with this group. These ads aren't simply good-looking. They're carefully constructed to maximize impact with the target group. Below is a point by point analysis.

Talent
- The talent in these ads communicate authenticity through and through. They're somewhat well-known musicians who perform in grassroots genres like blues, rock and folk. Neither of them is particularly "pretty" — in fact, they're exceptionally common looking — but their expressions are friendly and genuine; they're enjoying themselves. On the one hand, they're "regular people," but because they are musicians, they also carry street cred.

Art Direction
- The combination of photography and painterly graphics communicates a message that's both modern and traditional. The choice of black and white photography not only creates visual tension, it backs the authenticity angle. It also communicates artistry and craftsmanship. The layout is strong and straightforward—as direct as a good friend. This brand is "honest."

Graphics
- They've done a great job of working graphic elements from the bottle design into the ad. Moreover, these elements are well-chosen. The background sky communicates night, and the use of deep blue rather than black creates a sense of modernity and sophistication. The moon also conveys a sense of night (the time you want to be out drinking with friends), but its perfect circular shape also says "Japan" and thus, "tradition." The fact that the graphics are hand-painted brings an aura of craftsmanship to the brand, along with additional authenticity.

Copy
You'll notice that the Japanese text inside the moon has one character enclosed in parentheses ( ). This allows the headline to be read two ways:

"Sore Kara, it's new."

And,

"Sore Kara, it's you."

(In other words, it's just like you, or just right for you.)

It's difficult to convey in English, but the form of the word "you" used here creates a sense of intimacy—the kind of intimacy you'd experience with family members and close friends. "Man, this drink is so you."

The copy that overlays the black and white photos reads "Authentic shochu. Sore Kara." This further reinforces the whole idea of authenticity and quality.

So when a consumer looks at this ad, he or she is taking in a whole range of communication:
- Shochu
- Suntory
- Nighttime
- Friendship
- Enjoyment
- Authenticity / honesty
- Simplicity
- Craftsmanship / artistry (quality)

All in all, great work.

p.s. In case you're wondering about other aspects of the campaign, I've seen the TV spot and I can't report that I'm as impressed as I am with the print. Specifically, I'm not too keen on the music, which is a duet performed by the two musicians featured in the print ads. It's just a bit too reminiscent of 1950's US pop and early 1970's Japanese folk—which may be just right for consumers 55 and over, but may strike the wrong chord with those 35-55.

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