Suntory has been giving away a series of eight mini-goods by product designer Amadana with its Boss Silky Black coffee. Targeting design-smart businessmen in their 30s, the all-black and metal products include a USB memory drive cover, a tape measure, a “multi case” the size of an iPhone, a pen holder, a money clip, a bookmark, a “cord reel” for keeping headphone cords neatly in a suit pocket and a memo stand.

Amadana is a brand of luxury household appliances that have a modernist design aesthetic that has grown from niche to mainstream in a short time. Its product lineup includes everything from coffee makers and music systems to paper shredders and mobile phone handsets.

A quick look online shows the collaboration has spawned more than 70,000 blog posts so far this month, with comments suggesting that consumers actively bought BOSS Silky Black in order to collect the Amadana products.

To find out how Five by Fifty helps its clients innovate in the beverage sector, contact us.

The beverage concept is an import from Spain, where Limon & Nada was made a permanent Minute Maid offering by popular demand after its original limited-time debut in summer 2007. The word “limonada” (lemonade in Spanish) is also a play on words, broken down into “limon” (lemon) and “nada” (nothing) — suggesting, at least, that the beverage contains nothing but lemons. (It does claim to be preservatives-free.)

The marketing campaign in Japan is similar to the Spanish original, using a lemon animated with a black pen, although the Japanese version plays up the beverage’s “Spanish” origins. Online marketing includes a “radio station from Spain” promoting its “pressure-free way of life”, and the label features a cartoon of a bikini-clad girl sun-bathing against a lemon.
It’s all very reminiscent of Kirin’s World Kitchen lineup of drinks “inspired by” countries including Spain, Italy and France, and is clearly part of the “Armchair Explorers” trend of importing exotic influences to spice-up consumers’ daily routines.

The original Limon & Nada, from Spain

Other fruity flavors in new summer beverages include a sparkling lemon version of Healthya, the wellness beverage brand from Kao; a passion fruit flavor Lipton ice tea from Unilever Japan; and Muscat & Apple Juice from Ohayo Milk.

To find out how Five by Fifty helps its clients innovate in the beverage sector, contact us.

UCC has introduced a limited edition Milk&Coffee collaboration with the latest Evangelion anime film, including six cans featuring six characters from the film.

Evangelion is one of the most popular manga series in Japan, with fans in a wide range of ages. UCC released tie-ups based on Evangelion manga back in 1997 and again in 2007, which were instant hits with fans in their 20s. This is the first collaboration with an Evangelion film.

This time, a new dimension has been added, with a sticker on each can containing a code which fans can enter into a campaign website for the chance to win a rare figurine of a figure from the series.

To find out how Five by Fifty helps its clients innovate in the beverage sector, contact us.

The new bottle holds 520ml of water, but weights just 12 grams when empty, or 40% less than other Coca-Cola PET bottles. The bottle, cap and even label weigh less. Over a year, that would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced in the manufacturing process by 3,000 tons, equivalent to the offset of a 950 hectare forest, according to the company.

For Japanese consumers, used to measuring their environmental impact in terms of the volume of waste they produce (always carefully separated into burnables, non-burnables and recyclables), the bottle creates a new disposal ritual to reinforce the “green” brand proposition (see video below). It can easily be twisted by hand to make it thin and easy to throw away, a “1-2-3″  action Coca-Cola Japan encourages consumer to follow in its marketing campaign:  1. buy (!), 2. drink, 3. remove-label-twist-and-discard.

Of course, the ritual still ends with discarding (a non-biodegradable object). However, the manufacturer has undeniable tapped into consumers willingness to take small steps toward “greening” their daily lives, but without making major sacrifices (Part Time Greens).

Not only that, Coca-Cola Japan is betting consumers are willing to pay a premium to be (or be seen as) green: ILOHAS retails in vending machines for 130 yen for a 520ml bottle, an 18% premium to other brands like Crystal Geyser. (As a launch campaign, the water retailed in convenience stores for 105 yen.)

To find out how Five by Fifty helps its clients innovate in the beverage sector, contact us.

The campaign gives specific examples of when to drink Oranomin C

In a highly segmented and overcrowded marketplace, time-bereft consumers need to be spoon-fed if they are to understand what differentiates one product from another. This collaboration does just that for both Oronamin C energy drink and Navitime.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical organized direct marketing for businesspeople outside train stations in central Tokyo this month, handing out samples along with a detailed 8-page booklet designed like a personal notebook. The company helps consumers plan the product into their daily routine, such as before a business meeting, while waiting for a train, or to recharge during a work break.

The campaign, co-branded with Navitime, a GPS-based mobile maps and listings service. There are similar suggestions for incorporating Navitime into your routine too, such as to get to a meeting on time, planning a journey or looking for a restaurant.

Consumers can use a QR code to access a co-branded mobile website and sign up to receive regular mails on business lifestyle themes like “Work-Life Balance”, as well as a free two-week trial of the Navitime service.

The campaign also saw the drink sponsor this week’s R25 (a popular freepaper for men in their 20s), with a spot on the cover and a multi-page survey on how men handle various business situations.

Although Navitime and Otsuka offer two seemingly different products, they have come together to aggressively try and show comsumers that they empathise with and can support them through the challenges of the day at work.

To find out how Five by Fifty helps its clients innovate in the beverage sector, contact us.

Time to reward yourself with that new 24-inch iMac?

Recession fatigue is starting to show in the United States, where consumers are rewarding themselves by “trading up” items that play an important role in their daily lives, according to Boston Consulting Group (reported by WWD). In fact, marketers interested in this trend need only look to Japan to see how an extended downturn can actually boost sales of high-quality daily necessities.

The top ten list of “trade-up” items for the U.S. is dominated by what most people would consider 21st Century home necessities. No. 1 is the personal computer, and household electronics like home entertainment (5), kitchen appliances (8) and washers and dryers (9) also feature. At No. 2 is fresh fruits and vegetables, reflecting wellness trends as well as the basic importance of food, with other entries being meat (4), sit-down restaurants (7) and fish and seafood (10). The other entries are bedding (3) and automobiles (6). With the exception of restaurants, the list clearly shows the items consumers will start spending on first will be things that improve their daily lives and personal space.

A prolongued period of low growth in Japan bred innovation in small-ticket items, as consumers recalibrated their spending patterns

The changes in spending by Japanese a decade ago reflected their different priorities, with more emphasis on fashion (which doesn’t make Boston’s U.S. Top 10) and personal computers (mobile phones were always more useful here). However, the shifts in demand were similarly focused on improving consumers’ daily lives and, in the process, contributed to world-leading innovation in everything from functional home electronics and B2C mobile commerce to beverage flavors and cigarette packaging.

Contact us for details of ethnographic research and innovation programs to help your business anticipate consumers’ changing priorities.

Recently, bubble tea has become available in supermarkets. The brand Xiangpiaopiao offers prepackaged versions of the drink in five different flavors – green tea, black tea, chocolate, coffee and purple yam.

Xiangpiaopiao recently also introduced to the market a new version of the drink that leaves out tapioca in favor of nata de coco, a translucent jelly made from coconut water. To make it easier for consummers on the go to sip through a straw, the nata de coco is cut into thin strips. As nata de coco is high and dietary fiber and lower in fat and cholesterol than tapioca , this innovation might make the beverage more popular among young Chinese who are increasingly concerned with their health.

A recent campaign by Suntory matches six malt whiskies with six specially made chocolates.

“The French use the word mariage to mean pairing,” explains chef and author Clotilde Dusoulier. “It is used in the case of food and wine (mariages mets et vins), and also between two ingredients (le chocolat se marie bien avec les fruits rouges – “chocolate goes well with red berries)”. In the past two years mariage has appeared in the Japanese lexicon, refering to alcohol match with a complementary sweet, most often chocolate.

Corona beer is now comes with a gift piece of chocolate.

For its current “Malt and Chocolate” campaign, whiskey maker Suntory collaborated with famed chocolatiers in Tokyo to pair six malt whiskeys with six chocolates. Glenfiddich, which Suntory imports to Japan, has been matched with a citrus chocolate, and Suntory’s own 12-year Hakushu is paired with green tea chocolate. The chocolates are not sold with the whiskeys, and are only available at the chocolatiers that produce them, so mariage fans would have to travel to six different locations to sample the full range.

Continuing the mariage trend, Nippon Beer, which imports Corona beer to Japan, is now attaching a piece of bitter, 79% cacao chocolate to Corona bottles available at convenience stores and liquor stores.

McDonald's Premium Roast Coffee sells for less than half the price of Starbucks.

McDonald’s Japan is experiencing brisk sales of its “Premium Roast Coffee.” The coffee is made from South American beans, and packaged in a sleekly designed cup with a black lid.

The launch was prompted by research showed that while coffee had mainly been ordered as a side item for meals at McDonald’s, in recent years more customers have been coming to McDonald’s only for coffee. To launch the product, new standardized coffee machines were installed in all locations, to insure that consumers had the same taste experience at all shops.

Premium Roast Coffee went on sale in February 2008, for 100 yen, and the price was raised to 120 yen in August of that year. A short size coffee at Starbucks, by comparison, costs 290 yen. 160 million cups of McDonald’s Premium Roast Coffee were sold by the end of 2008.

The 100ml bottle has a suggested retail price of 190 yen.

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Other House Foods products
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