Pioneering the Future through Brand History

In the eyes of the world, Japan is said to be a country of long-lived companies. While the average life span of a company is estimated to be 30 years, according to a survey conducted by Nikkei BP Consulting’s Anniversary Business Lab*, there are 37,085 companies in Japan that have been in business for over 100 years.

This represents 50.1% of all companies in the world that have been in business for more than 100 years, ranking first in the world, far ahead of the United States (29.5%), which is in second place. This is likely due to the strength of each company’s brand. The brand power they have cultivated over their long history is an asset that cannot be imitated by others. In the BtoC domain, it can be said that long-selling brands that continue to sell even amidst drastic changes in the world’s values and market competition are a major driving force in corporate activities.

Even consumers who do not know the brand at the time of its launch say, “My parents used to buy this brand, so it has become my staple,” or “I feel secure and can trust it.

On the other hand, we are often asked for advice and concerns about long-selling brands. Sales are strong, but the user base is aging. We want to revitalize the brand by stimulating it, but we don’t know how to appeal to new values while maintaining existing customers, It is precisely because they are long-selling brands that have accumulated history and assets, and often have no major problems at present, that they are always cautious about renewal.

Cookie brand A, which can be found in supermarkets and drugstores nationwide, is a long-selling product characterized by its fruit satisfaction and moist texture, which have not changed since its launch. Although sales themselves have been strong, partly due to the increase in eating opportunities in the Corona disaster, the main users are getting older, and the younger generation is beginning to have an “old image” of the brand. Therefore, the project was initiated to consider renewal with an eye to the future at the timing of the 50th anniversary of the brand’s birth.

In this project, we developed the universal value “CORE VALUE,” which is the core of the brand activities, and the package design. A simple renewal may include a change in package design, new communication, or a brush-up of product design, but this was not just a one-sided renewal to make the brand look new. We started from the upstream concept.

While viewing brand activities from the perspective of our original 4P frame for product branding (see below), we aimed to define “CORE VALUE,” which would serve as a benchmark for these activities.

Position…Unique value that cannot be imitated by competing products.
Product…A value that integrates the entire product line and serves as a basis for decision-making when considering new products.
Promotion…Value that can be expressed through promotion. It should be easily communicated to consumers and business partners, and be memorable.
Package…Value that can be expressed through graphic elements and appealing on the sales floor.

In such projects, we at BRAVIS value not only the future vision of “what we want to become,” but also the story of the brand from its birth to the present, in other words, the “DNA of the brand.

As the phrase “learning from the past” suggests, we look back at why the brand was born and what value it has delivered to consumers amidst the changing historical background to find the unique value that only the brand can claim. Then, by formulating how this unique value will positively impact the world and consumers in the future, and how it will be supported, we can create a new value that is an extension of the brand story that has been loved by people up to this point.

In this project, we conducted a series of interviews with the people in charge of various sections, including sales, planning, PR, manufacturing, and R&D, about the DNA of Brand A and their vision of what kind of brand they would like to become in the future.

The strengths that emerged were “a commitment to natural flavors through the use of a large number of fruit ingredients and molding that does not destroy the shape of the ingredients,” and “high quality through manufacturing that makes full use of human senses and skills, rather than leaving it up to machines. Brand A was often thought to be an old-fashioned product, but in fact, we found that it has been a product for 50 years with a craftsmanship-oriented approach to manufacturing that seems to appeal to modern consumers as well. Our team members, who have strengths in copywriting and marketing, discussed the one-of-a-kind value that we had arrived at after digging deep into the brand’s DNA, and sublimated it into “CORE VALUE”.

We then developed a package design based on “CORE VALUE. As in other projects, about 40 of our designers with rich experience in designing various products participated in this project from our branches in Asia. By incorporating the new “CORE VALUE” developed by our strategy team directly into the design by the BRAVIS team, we were able to create a complete brand from the upstream concept of the brand to the packaging, which is the touch point with the consumer.

The new design also carries over elements from the previous design, such as the package color and fresh sizzle expression. The reason is that these elements are the brand equity that consumers remember and the value of the brand is stored in the brand. Only by carefully reviewing the DNA of the brand can we make such strategic decisions in design development.

Through this project, we were impressed by the client’s words, “In exploring the DNA, we were able to discover values that even the brand managers did not know or notice. Long-selling brands, which are the very history of a company, have often been around since before the brand manager joined the company. When trying to come up with new measures and appeals, we tend to focus only on the present and the future. While that is important, I realized once again that it is very important to look back on the trajectory of the brand and understand its DNA. In particular, we place great importance on the brand’s birth story, or in other words, what cause the brand was born with.

We were in charge of developing the package design for this project, but now that we have become fans of Brand A through this project, we are looking forward to the next 50 years of the brand.

*Nikkei BP Consulting, Anniversary Business Lab “Ranking of 100 Year Old Companies by Country”.