Brief Explanation

It has been 50 years since “coconut sable”, a long selling cookie was launched in the market. Because the company was just a microenterprise, it was impossible to change the product itself and/or to place advertisements. Consequently, the sales got stuck and reached a plateau. Positive impressions on the product, especially given by the younger generation assumed as primary consumers drastically decreased. On top of that, in the Japanese confectionary market, every company was driving a cut-throat competition to buy mass media for a larger scale of advertisements. The situation was like; the more advertisements were placed, the more efficiently the company could dominate the market. In this circumstance, the mission for “coconut sable” was to focus on how the company could win in such a futile market in a different way.

The Brief

Products acknowledged by celebrated artist such as “One Direction” must be sold well. If that was the case, the challenge was to create a popular artist from scratch and produce the same phenomenon. At first, have the Japanese Rock Band create an impactful tune. Then divide the tune into 8 parts, 5 parts for guitar, 3 for drums, so that the junior high school students can play. After creating the popular band, the product is freely advertised without any charges.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

< Play counts of the Music Video (MV) > Within a week after the publicity of the MV, marked 1,800,000 playback times The music was also ranked 5th on iTunes. < News on the band > The band has been taken up by various media like CNN, Yahoo! & Fuji Television etc. of 39 countries world-wide. < Number of tweets by the youth / March only > 67,518 tweets Compared to the 8 thousand tweets competitive confectionary companies earned through investing in TVCM, “coconut sable” earned 7 times more feedback < Number of tweet reaches / March only > 63,190,000 impressions < Sales of the product > Despite of not making any changes in the product itself, “coconut sable” has achieved 133% in sales compared to the previous month. Even after, the sales of the product did not decline but is still increasing.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

“Highly Skillful Band formed by 8 junior high school girls” On March 2015, the mysterious 8 junior high school girls “5572320,” made its debut from one of the largest record companies, Sony Music. While various conjectures were talked about and its uniqueness of the music became a topic, the Music Video was played 1.8 million times within the first week. On iTunes, the music ranked 5th place. After the announcement that the band had been formed as an official band of “coconut sable”, over 50,000 tweets were made primarily by youths supporting the band and the product. After creating the popular band, the product is freely advertised without any charges. There was significant increase of 133% compared to the previous month.