Daisuke Otobe - Hello Kitty SANRIO
The purpose of this presentation, led by Daisuke Otobe, is to explain how and why brands must appeal to the emotions of consumers.
Who is Daisuke Otobe?
Daisuke Otobe started his career in 1992 at P&G and worked at Arya, Lenor, Febreze and Pampers. He then moved to Cincinnati to take on disruptive innovation projects before returning to Japan to work at Danone and Nissan Motor Company. During the last three years, his mission was to set up a brand management structure in a 150-year-old company.
Once this mission was accomplished, he left P&G and founded Coup Marketing Company. He now offers CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) service sharing, helping his clients develop marketing strategies. His company guides them in innovation projects or through the implementation of marketing orchestration.
Over the course of his career, he has been able to work with very different profiles, all of whom have the common point of being great emotional and business marketing leaders, sharing a deep understanding of the consumer.
Today, the flow of information and data volumes are increasing exponentially. It is now impossible for humans to interpret this data. In this context, capturing consumers is complicated, but one of the best ways to do this is to appeal to their emotions. When we talk about the consumer, we see it in a binary relationship with brands. But looking at him as a human being, things are different.
Who is Hello Kitty?
Hello Kitty was born in 1976. It is both a fashion icon and a character for little girls. Kitty is the typical gift that grandmothers or parents' friends offer them. This is the iconic character of the brand, and gives it meaning in terms of emotional marketing.
It is important to give meaning to a brand. This meaning can be portrayed by its raison d'être and its strengths. When a brand establishes a strong meaning, it is possible to obtain better income on the basic business by doing it with less marketing budgets. But a stronger brand also makes more profits:
A commodity is the sum of the product and the brand: that's what the consumer buys, while the product is what comes out of the factory. In other words, adding the brand to the product makes it a commodity.
The retail price is the sum of the cost of the goods and the profit: that's what the consumer buys, while the cost of the goods is what comes from the factory. In other words, adding profit to the cost of goods gives the retail price.
By comparing these two formulas, it becomes relatively easy to understand why profit is correlated to the brand. But the brand does not exist only for profit and must serve its own purpose.
For the past 45 years, Kitty has been the character associated with gifts for babies and children. This attachment can also be extended to teenage girls and women, as it is the first memory of childhood clothing associated with the people they care about.
The Kitty character is loved, he does not have to worry about anything because he is surrounded by loving people. One of her strengths is that she is able to give unconditional love to a little girl. This love and attention of the offeror is materialized by the gift that the little girl receives. In other words, Kitty connects people to each other, the very essence of emotional marketing.
Sanrio, the owner of Kitty, is positioning itself as a sign of social communication. So it's part of his DNA to connect people.
How can brands build emotional marketing?
As human beings, we are transported when we are exposed to changes in relationships, specifically when it comes to improvements. That's why we talk about emotional marketing. If a brand has difficulty developing this emotional marketing, based on evolutions of emotions, try to put the brand in the middle of people and improve their relationships.
The latest French ads for Amazon's intelligent assistant, Alexa, are a good illustration of what emotional marketing is. Amazon could have focused on the features of Alexa, but the American giant has made the choice to stage the relationship of a family. In this family, an LGBT teenager is helped by Alexa who plays the song "I like girls" to announce it to her parents.
But which relationship to focus on? If the brand is able to find the profiles of the target consumers, it may allow them to think in an interesting way about the relationship that matters most. Brands are generally useful to people because they live in community and society. Even Robinson Crusoe was not alone on his island, he had the company of Friday and lived in his own community.
On the other hand, the Japanese characters designating "the human being" represent on the one hand "the person" and on the other hand "between". The human being is therefore "between people", he makes the relationship between people. In conclusion, the brand can appeal to emotions by connecting people through assets that enable it to nurture relationships between human beings.
Speaker: Daisuke OTOBE, COUP MARKETING COMPANY