Japan Marketing News

Mitsubishi introduces sharp innovation in mechanical pencils

Leave it to Japanese designers to bring superb engineering and creativity to even the most everyday products. This time it's mechanical pencils.

One of the most annoying problems encountered by pencil users is stroke bloat. One minute you're writing or sketching with the most delightfully precise lines, the next minute every stroke looks fat and dull. It's because the tip of your pencil flattens as you write.

One of the most attractive features of mechanical pencils is that they're less prone to stroke bloat than their wooden counterparts. But they're not immune.

Until now.

Coca Cola Japan brings "functional" Coke to market

The Japanese market is so inundated with functional drinks that it had to happen eventually. Finally, Coca-Cola Japan has introduced a vitamin-fortified Coke drink. Coca-Cola plus vitamin was launched earlier this month and is now making its way into shops around Japan. Known as Diet Coke Plus or Coca Cola Light Plus in European markets, Coca-Cola plus vitamin is a Diet Coke* variant that apparently provides you with 81% of your daily requirement of vitamin C—with no calories. Check out the Japanese website here.

* Known as "No Calorie Coca-Cola" in Japan

Heineken Japan taps a cool new angle

Historically, international beer companies have faced some difficult challenges in Japan, especially when it comes to getting distribution in restaurants, pubs and clubs. Oftentimes local proprietors receive very strong incentives (cash!) to stock the brews of just one Japanese company or distributor, and that means that the door can be slammed shut on international brands—and other Japanese brands—right from the start.

Things can be rough even if a bar or restaurant is open to the idea of serving competing beers. International brands have to go head to head with Japanese companies offering a multitude of excellent brews, to say nothing of fighting it out with other world players.

What's a foreign company to do?

Ingredient of the season: Citrulline

If you keep your eyes peeled in Japan this summer you're going to see several new products that contain the ingredient known as citrulline.

An amino acid first extracted from watermelon by a Japanese researcher in 1930, citrulline is said to reduce the buildup of ammonia in the bloodstream, dilate blood vessels, and promote production of nitric oxide, which amongst other things is supposed to help prevent muscle fatigue. So it's no surprise that Asahi is promoting its new Citrulline Water using sports-related advertising, and Lotte has launched Citrulline Gum to coincide with its support of the Beijing Summer Olympics.

In the U.S., citrulline supplements have apparently been marketed previously to promote circulation and prevent hardening of the arteries, but Japan's health ministry did not approve the ingredient for use in food until August of last year.

Other Japanese companies like Shiseido have also jumped on the citrulline bandwagon so it's probably only a matter of time before a dozen more citrulline products hit Japanese store shelves.

Beer trend: "zero" brews

Look closely.

See any pattern?

Say hello to the latest trend in Japanese brews: zero sugar low malt beers.

Fanta Japan shakes up the beverage market

I discovered this new and unique Coca-Cola Japan product the other day in the vending machine near my home. It's called Fanta Furufuru Shaker.

In some ways it's reminiscent of those jelly drinks marketed by Weider Japan. If you're not familiar with them, imagine a semi-soft version of Jello that's drinkable.

Where Coca-Cola Japan has added a twist is in adding carbonation that's activated by shaking the can.

The first mouthful feels a bit like Jello, but then the carbonation hits you, producing the sensation that you're actually eating your soda.

Less adventurous souls and the conventionally minded (in other words, adults), may find this off-putting.

But Japanese kids are going to, ahem, eat it up.

And you are simply not going to believe the TV ads.

Fanta Japan regularly produces fairly "out-there" commercials, but you won't want to miss the ones currently posted on their website. After you reach the top page, click on TVCM, then play the video that comes up in the main screen.

In particular, keep a close eye out for this character, whose can shaking technique is going to stimulate a lot of chatter in some quarters.

Starbucks Japan brews up new approaches

A couple of months ago, the international papers were buzzing about Starbucks' woes in the U.S. Analysts have been worried that the American market has been saturated, and this has been reflected in the stock price, which is down almost 50% versus last year.

The situation is somewhat different here in Japan. The market is not quite saturated and the brand continues to grow. Nonetheless, a number of threats loom on the horizon and the brand isn't going to be enjoying a cakewalk going forward.

Besides the ongoing encroachment of competing chains like Doutor, Excelsior, Tully's and Seattle's Best, McDonald's has also joined the fray in earnest by launching its McCafe shops which feature a broad lineup of specialty coffee drinks. Additionally, the burger chain recently introduced a better quality brew called Premium Roast at its regular restaurants for just 100 yen per cup (about $1).

But that's not all.

Great Japanese train advertising: IKEA Japan

Congrats to IKEA Japan for generating some powerful buzz through one of the best "train jacking" ad campaigns I've seen in a quite a long time.

In Japanese advertising parlance, a "jacking" occurs when an advertiser purchases a substantial portion of all of the ad space available in a particular medium or within a geographic area (the term "jacking" is derived from the English word "hijack"). Most commonly it's seen on trains, when advertisers buy out the entirety of ad slots inside the cars, and often have tailor-made graphics or billboard-like posters placed on the exteriors too.

In this case, however, IKEA has really outdone itself by thinking outside the box. Why not leverage its expertise in interior design to deliver a genuine brand experience, rather than a mere barrage of posters and such? The company recently train-jacked Kobe' Port Liner Loop Line to celebrate the opening of its latest mega store in the city.

Take a close look (here, here, and here) and you'll see that IKEA has not only filled some of the standard ad frames with its own messages, it has replaced the train's standard window shades with those from its own stores, converted the seats to sofas with IKEA brand upholstery, and has added wall coverings in some cases, as well.

Naturally this approach is generating plenty of interest amongst those who've ridden this train. But better yet is the fact that this approach is new, and thus newsworthy, making it fodder for a number of traditional Japanese news outlets and plenty of blogs, as well.

Many thanks to Sue Sato and John Cathcart for tipping us off to this campaign (via the IKEA blog and Pink Tentacle).

Shochiku takes the Next step in movie promotion

It's not at all unusual for movie studios to build buzz for forthcoming films by holding movie screenings. What is unusual—but may in the future become commonplace—is to conduct some of those screenings virtually.

One company that's already dabbling in this area is Japan's Shochiku Studio. Wanting to generate excitement for the Hollywood action thriller Next (starring Nicholas Cage) which it is distributing, Shochiku has announced that it will premiere the film to a select audience to be chosen by lottery—and that the film will be shown to them by transmission to their cell phones!

It turns out that the gimmick serves a couple of purposes. First, the studio hopes that the cutting-edge promotion will generate plenty of anticipatory chat on social networking sites and blogs, and second, that it will draw attention to additional cell phone video content that's available through Dogado, a Shochiku subsidiary that specializes in producing full-length, made-for-cellphone movies and other content (ex. see Clearness).

Given the recent proliferation of 1-seg equipped cell phones with high resolution displays, and the introduction of fixed price, unlimited bandwidth usage packages by cell carriers, a number of companies have been working on new video-for-cell phone offerings. We're only going to see more experimentation of this type going forward, and it's fine by me since I'm about to pick up one of the latest portable handsets myself.

By the way, the keitai premiere of Next will be held on April 21. The movie opens in Japanese theaters at the end of the month.

Consumer insight: Japanese face fetish

When it comes to the physique, some Japanese women, much like some women elsewhere, invest considerable time, money and effort in the pursuit of shapely curves—whether the locale be the chest, legs or bottom. But one way in which they differ—at least by my reckoning—is that many spend an inordinate amount of time worried about the shape of their faces. I'm not talking about the curve of their noses, the fullness of their lips or the angle of their brows, though sure enough, plenty of gals fret about these as well. What I'm talking about is more general—and has more to do with size than detail. Many Japanese women are fixated on the size of their faces.

It's just one of those cultural things. In Japan, you often hear women gushing over the pulchritude of some model or movie celeb, "kao ga chisai!" (Her face is [so] small!). Everybody in Japan seems to want a small face.

As a result, you frequently come across items like the one pictured above. Manufactured by a firm called Sun Family, the "small face belt" is meant to help women to diminish their visages (and fight sagging cheeks and double chins too). It works just as you'd imagine. Fit the donut around your head, pump in air, and squeeze your chin and cheeks inward and upward.

Does it work? I couldn't tell you.

What I can tell you, however, is that understanding the consumer need that leads to these kinds of products has implications for anybody involved in the health and beauty field, especially when it comes to the area of functional cosmetics.