Twisted View of Marketing in Japan

*”Buttery-smell” or “Bata-kusai” is a Japanese expression to describe a thing or a person that has Western/Caucasian touch/feel/look.  Butter, and its taste, feel, and smell, must have been quite an experience for Japanese people 100-150 years ago when they started encountering lots of new things from US/Europe.

A few people have sent me questions.  Here are a direct answer, and some marketing talks related to it, to one of them.

“When I watch CM’s from docomo’s Google Keita, Windows 7, or Apple iPhone, I see some consistent feel among them, “buttery-smell”.  Is it effective?  … The taste of film, which I do not see many Japanese companies use but lots of non-Japanese firms use, what is behind it?”

Was the question, from Sasaki-san.

Very good observation.  Others like FRISK, NIKE, and XEROX, also have similar “buttery-smell”.  (A lot of people do notice that they are different, vaguely though.  A message to marketers is “Hey, guys, people know what you are doing or not doing.”)

There are several questions in it, so let me sort them out:

1. Where does CM’s “buttery-smell” come from?

2. Is there any intent or aim behind CM’s “buttery-smell”?

(3. Why Japanese companies do not do it?)

As for #1, I may not be a right person to answer technical matters, so I have asked Mr. Abe, a veteran producer from Sound By S, commercial production company.  But, as I expected, his answer was very long (as long as his talk), contains a lot of technical terms and codes, and complaints with some real names, so that I had to sum it up anyway.

Upon that, let me answer to question #2.  Will touch on #3, too.

Making the long story short, maybe too short, though, CM’s “buttery-smell” comes from the fact that it is produced by Western/Caucasian director, cameraman, and their crews.   That’s why it has “buttery-smell”/Western feel.  Excuse me giving you such a stupid answer.  The difference is a product of difference of shooting method, choice of lenses, way of lighting, and policy or philosophy behind all of them.

Let’s dig in a bit more, of course Abe-san’s telling, though.

Caucasian’s eyes are very sensitive to intense lighting/luminosity, especially UV rays, compared to non-white guys like us, so they do not like direct lighting.  They tend to use in-direct lighting like using a wall to reflect it.

On the other hand, people like direct lighting to its object in Japan.

As a result, just like a movie film from Hollywood does, oversea CM features only an object that you want to see/show, versus that of Japan shows everything bright in the frame.

Accordingly, type of lens also becomes different.  In Western industry, they prefer longer lenses = narrower depth of focus = an object just on the focus point shows right but a bit off gives off-focused visual.  In Japan, they use short lenses to capture everything under the light.  To a layman like me, it may be easier to understand it as a difference between a tele-photo lens and a wide-angle lens.

In addition to these two biggest reasons, there are other smaller differences.  And they add up to this difference of taste of films.

And somehow, it cannot be done in Japan. Though Japanese is known to have skillful hands for anything, they can hardly copy this.  It is because it’s a product of totality of industry structure, techniques/skills, knowledge, experiences, people, apprenticeship behind, and their value/philosophy, I guess.

Net, if you want that “buttery-smell” CM, you have to go abroad and shoot with oversea stuff.  No wonder you do not see it from Japanese companies.

Let’s move to its Marketing intent/aim/effect.

The film above is a good old Haagen Dazs ice cream commercial from 1990’s.　I still remember this.  In 1990’s, these high quality “buttery-smell” visuals came on TV, not as a movie but as a CM spot, and made us say “Cool!”.  Vidal Sassoon, which I used to be responsible for, was introduced with very “buttery-smell” CM, too.  In fact, we produced it in Hollywood.

While Haagen Dazs is of course an oversea brand, truth was that this TV commercial was made first in Japan.  This “buttery-smell” CM was made by Haagen Dazs Japan, for Japanese consumers, to be aired only in Japan.

I believe there must have been clear intent for marketing for this “buttery-smell”.

And it was achieved, splendidly.

It is not a cheap ice cream for kids around, but is a high quality ice cream for adults (must-be made in Europe).  The image was brilliantly engraved in our heart and mind with this one film alone.  Later, they started using TV with similar film outside of Japan, I heard.

Same for Vidal Sassoon.  Back then, Japan was only country in the world where the brand was spending major marketing dollars.  In UK, its origin, it was one of those minor salon shampoo brands.  That film established clear image that it is landing on Japan from Western world, in the middle of the Bubble economy days, as an oversea premium quality hair care brand.

Esthetic sense, feel, and image, which people watching TV get from visual and sound, are often more important than literal/word-oriented information.  In this sense, Haagen Dazs is one of the best examples of effective use of “buttery-smell”.

Besides, there are other cases that they do not have any aim or intent.  Some are simply using the same films used in US or Europe.  And reason why Japanese firms do not produce those films could simply be that they do not have any particular reason to do so.

If there is any marketing challenge to this, it should be if you are making up two “different personalities with different sense/images” other than just a difference of touch of film, when you are producing films in Japan at one time and go abroad at some other times.  Shooting oversea, especially in US, is not easy task.  It costs more, eats longer time, puts harder schedule management for talents and stuff, etc.  OK, so let’s do it in Japan this time.  I think it is a reasonable choice.  However, the question remains.  If those two different types of communication show at the same time or back to back, are people watching them recognizing and remembering them as the same “personality”?

Or, simply, they may watch you saying “Somewhat cheap, this company is trying cutting corners these days.”  At least, I can say, many of them notice the difference.

“O.”

“Dad, this chicken is good.”
“See?  Tweetie should be happy to be on your dish.”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

That peaceful and heartless story should not be anything but a joke.  But there is a lesson hidden in this for marketing, particularly for Brand Marketing.

People give pet a name.

Like any dogs, my dog has a great name, “Mozuku”.  “Natto” was the previous one’s name.

Horse, when it is for riding or load-carrying, has its own name, and it’s been that way for long.

On the other hand, people do not usually give names to those animals, livestock for food.

Some special stud bulls have names, but they are marks rather than names.  When livestock animals are given names, it is often the case that those who raise them are different from those who process them for meat.

It’s been like that for long, and I heard it is also true outside of Japan.

It is because “Naming brings it to personality”.

Then, you cannot kill it easily, or can hardly eat it.  It is the same thing that it is hard to throw away a stuffed toy which you gave a name and spent time with.

“Naming it → Giving it a personality”.

This is, indeed, the fundamental concept of what Brand Marketing is.

(The other day, I ran a work session at livedoor about “Brand Marketing”.  Just one scroll down on this blog.  There, I did not get into this, so this is about “What is Brand?”, a kind of “Supplemental Lesson” to the workshop.

That reminded me of livedoor’s Sasaki-san’s question when we meet first time, “O.-san, so what is Brand, by the way?”  In a sense, this has been my homework left for 6 months.”)

People give a name to their company, product, or service.

A birth of Brand.

Putting a question aside if they are conscious or not, at the very moment, it conceives a personality.  At this point, it is still very young, premature, like a baby, though.

Parents have their own hope or wish to it, “I want my kid to be this kind of person”.  Sometime, it could be just taking over granddad’s name.  Or, it could be given by a fortune teller.  Yet, it is another way of putting parents hope/wish into it, and nothing less.

The baby, to begin with, has its own talent or characteristics, role or mission in the world it belongs to, and premise or request of the times.

And, it gets a sign board of parents’ wish, or package design.  Flyer or advertising is produced for it.  A start of its life as the personality.

Soon or later, the personality would get influenced by communications/interactions with customers as well, and, character, attitude, behavior, value, and philosophy become clearer and clearer.

There is no longer a room for parents to selfishly change its image.  They must respect it as one personality, or it can fall out of right path.  Only thing that parents or adults around can do is to help its growth.

In the world of marketing, this is called Brand Character, Brand Equity, or Brand Philosophy.

A shampoo called “Pantene”, because it was named after the active of medicine for burnt victims, cannot abandon its role of “cure/improvement”.  It does not “fit”, when it says “Don’t get bothered.  Be beautiful today, and forget tomorrow.”

On the other hand, a shampoo, with its family crest on her chest, named after the name of the flower of the crest, cannot be persuasive by saying “I can improve hair damage”.  It is a destiny to keep manifesting “It is all women’s joy to be beautiful, nothing else.”

Each one’s blood/fate, and character/attitude.

(Excuse me using shampoo story always.  I had been in the business way too long.)

NIKE has its given mission, birth, personal history, character, and attitude.  Ozeki has its own.  Google, too.  Toraya as well.  TOYOTA has his, Haagen-Dazs has hers, SHARP, KissMint, KOBE City, each has its own.  If you discard it, your brand goes to one-coin commodity shop.

It is my definition of Brand Marketing that, at the end of the day, it is about systemic thinking and tools to sell a product/service and get customer to choose it based upon personality of the brand, which marketers define right and help to grow.

Well, to the very big title of the topic, a very light answer, maybe.

This is not it, but this is very fundamental starting point.

“O.”

Unfortunately, it is not a story about a man and woman or sex.  I do not stop you trying to read between the lines but I did not put anything in between.

It is about Marketing.

For 18 years out of 21 years of services in the previous company, I had worked on various things in Hair Care category.  This is my own rule of thumb that I have developed over the years based on my personal observations/experiences, there is no research data backing it up.

That is, “Because I like the smell” is NOT “Because I like the smell”.

When you interview the users of the long selling leading Hair Care brand, and ask them “Why do you continue using the product?” you often encounter this answer of “Well, because I like the smell, I think.”

Heard a hardworking marketer (I once used to be one of them, you would not believe, though.), s/he thinks,

“OK, I now understand that they like the fragrance.”

An even harder-working marketer thinks, “OK, I now understand they are using it for the reason that is not its primary benefit, so they understand very vaguely about the brand.  It should be a chance for us.”

A stupidly hardworking marketer may even say “OK, so it means that we would win if we develop a fragrance that is superior to theirs.  Go for it!” and establish a big fragrance improvement project to develop a blind test winning fragrance.

An even more literally stupid hardworking marketer might write up a concept to test with consumers, “Aren’t you choosing a shampoo brand based on its fragrance?”

But, (fortunately its product acceptance would improve because fragrance is an important product characteristic) efforts end up…

After all, they continue using that brand.

“What’s wrong?  My product tested better than it in the consumer test.”  And s/he goes to consumer research again.

“What makes you keep using the brand?”

“Well, because I like the smell, I think.”

“Can you tell me reason why you do not use my product?” (By the way, this is the worst question you could ever ask.)

“Well.  I cannot tell till I sniff its smell.”

(OK, mom, here you go.) “How do you like it?”

“Good fragrance.  But I do not know, I need to hear what my friends who used it have to say.”

End of story.

A sad story.

In a nut shell, she is not selecting a product for good fragrance.

(She never uses it if she does not like the smell, though.)

Then, what makes her to answer “Because I like the smell.”?

Let’s here take a look at consumer research from panelist’s view point.  (While she gets paid for her time in research) I suppose it is an intense experience for her, it is like a test at school.  Marketers think they themselves are the ones on the test, but in fact panelist thinks it is a test for her, too.

When a question comes to her, just like a teacher points you in a classroom, her mind goes to “how not to make wrong answer”.  It is not that she wants to say the right thing or tell her real feeling/thinking, in reality.  It is very similar to a typical answer in a classroom, “I am in the same place as XX-chan”.  (It’s always like this in Japan.)

“Because I like the smell” is an almost perfect answer to serve for this purpose.  Talking about any specific function of the product, because you know there must be something else out there that is better than what you like, you would not want to be accused “Hey, then you should like the other one, right?”  Or, when a question of “Why?” follows, you can always say “It is simply my personal taste” to escape from any more pursuit of question.  It is the best excuse to escape from secondhand car salesman.

Then, natural question here would be what is she telling you behind it.

After number of failures, I come to a conclusion that “Because I like the smell” = “Because I sort of like it as a whole for some reason or other”.

When a Hair Care customer tells you “Because I like the smell”, it means “Somehow, I like it overall, I cannot tell you what in specific ‘cause I do not think very hard about it, but I like it, I tell you.” In her mind.

Off course, this does not always apply to any case, as there are products of fragrance sell in the category.  And as fragrance is a very important product characteristic, I am not telling you it is unimportant.

My point is that it is pointless to literally react to “I like the smell” comments.

Even in the category where fragrance is one of the selection standards, though this is very personal opinion, you should not “sell” fragrance benefit, probably never.  It’ll be a hard and bitter lesson for you later.  This topic could go very long, so I’ll keep it for someday later.  (A reference for some clue, click and go to the related topic.)

I guess there should be an equivalent of “I like the smell” in categories other than Hair Care.

Something that you should not literally pursue or you get trash or nothing.

Can you tell me if you have anything similar in your area of product or service?  I want to learn more.

“So, what do you like about me, darling?”

“Everything, sweetie.”

I tell you again, it is not about such a silly story of a boy and a girl.

“O.”