“The Cosmetics Chosen by 1,200,000 People”

Written by: Rebecca Milner on April 23, 2009 at 4:47 am | In LIFESTYLE / FASHION, MARKETING IDEAS | 2 Comments

@Cosme is Japan’s most popular “kuchikomi” (word of mouth) cosmetics information and ranking website. On March 10th the website released a cosmetics guidebook called “1,200,000 Nin ga Eranda Cosme,” or “The Cosmetics Chosen by 1,200,000 People.” As the title suggests, the book showcases the top products as selected by the site’s 1,200,000 users.

From over 60,000 products discussed on the website in over 6,600,000 user rating entries, top items in categories such as skin care and make-up get mention in the book. The products themselves are surprisingly varied, from $200 face creams to drug stores staples like witch hazel and Vaseline—a reflection of the different users of the site.

Each product entry includes the category, ranking, brand, product description, age demographic breakdown, and select comments from the site. An additional “ranking points” is awarded to each entry based on the sum of all consumer rankings, meaning products move up in the ranks not only on the basis of high consumer rating (on a scale of 1-7) but by the number of consumer ratings as well.

There are other interesting bits of information gleaned from questionnaires on the website, such as how long users spend putting on make-up in the morning and tips for a flawless French manicure. The front of the book also looks at years past, showing the top items from 2006-2008.

“The Cosmetics Chosen by 1,200,000 People” is a “mook,” the curious Japanese word for a cross-between a book and magazine. More casual than a book, but not as disposable as a magazine, mooks usually enjoy an initial display on the magazine shelves at the bookstore before retiring to the appropriate book section.

Like other crowd-sourced products and self-publishing “keitai novel” sites that have proved hits lately, this does a nice job of making users of the site feel like they are really part of something greater—ensuring that a good number of them will feel vested enough in the creation process to purchase the book not only for the information but also as a “souvenir.” The layout of the book itself resembles the beauty section in fashion magazine, yet with the prominent “rating points” and “members comments” reminding readers that they themselves are part of the collective editorial voice.

“The Cosmetics Chosen by 1,200,000 People” retails for ¥1,000 and is published by Kodansha, the company also responsible for popular women’s magazines Vivi and With.

Tags: cosmetics, Crowdsourcing, Marketing
Category: LIFESTYLE / FASHION, MARKETING IDEAS
Other categories: DIGITAL LIFE, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Japan Inc. Spring Edition - Crowdsourcing FMCG

Written by: Michael Keferl on April 14, 2009 at 7:08 pm | In MARKETING IDEAS | No Comments

The Spring 2009 issue of Japan Inc. features CScout’s “Trends” column as always, this time on Crowdsourcing FMCG.

What better way to find out what people want than to let them design it? Within parameters of course…

Tags: Crowdsourcing, Japan Inc.
Category: MARKETING IDEAS
Other categories: DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Yahoo-crowdsourced cup ramen from Maruchan

Written by: Rebecca Milner on January 13, 2009 at 1:43 pm | In MARKETING IDEAS | No Comments

Yahoo! Japan and instant cup noodle manufacturer Maruchan teamed up for a second time to offer users of Japan’s most popular browser a chance to help create a new ramen flavor. Under the campaign slogan, “Let’s use everyone’s voice to make a new cup noodle!” Yahoo gave the public three weeks to cast their votes online via the promotional page ramen.yahoo.jp.

Last week Yahoo announced that “Thick & Rich Miso Tonkatsu” was the winner—the result of over 1,910,000 ballots cast (compared to last year’s 1,060,000). This new flavor will be produced by Maruchan and in stores nationwide on February 16th. The popular general interest weekly magazine, Tokyo One Week, is also teaming up to publish exclusive content about the creation of the product.

Last year’s “Scorching Garlic Rich Tonkatsu” obviously proved a hit because Maruchan will also be re-releasing this flavor along with the new one. Having both flavors side by side on the shelves until March 24th will allow the “cup ramen battle” to continue, pitting this year’s top flavor against last year’s. The final winner will be announced at the end of March.

When social networking community Mixi teamed up with both cup noodle maker Acebook and beverage manufacturer Calpis a few months ago we talked about how crowdsourcing FMGCs was pretty much as win-win as you could get. With internet users turned consumers—many of whom are passionate about particular goods (like ramen)—feeling involved in the creation process, loyalty for both camps is only likely to go up.

Tags: Collaborations, Crowdsourcing, FMCG, Marketing
Category: MARKETING IDEAS
Other categories: DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Calpis and Mixi collaborate on crowdsourced beverage

Written by: Rebecca Milner on November 25, 2008 at 3:42 am | In DIGITAL LIFE, MARKETING IDEAS | No Comments

Now you can have a tasty beverage to wash down your crowdsourced ramen!

When Calpis set about creating the fourth flavor in the Fruits Calpis line-up they asked users of Mixi, Japan’s largest social networking service, for their ideas. The resulting flavor is Mixed Fruit, a blend of apple, pear, mandarin orange, and banana.

The collaboration, which began back in May, included all steps of the decision process—from flavor to ad copy to package design.

This certainly isn’t the first beverage-media tie-in product we’ve seen; however, the Calpis-Mixi collaboration also makes good use of the potential power of social networking sites to build customer loyalty. Like the publishing sites that mine SNS mobile novel sites for content, confident that online fans will turn into paying offline customers, Calpis can expect those participating Mixi users to feel a personal attachment to the product through their involvement.

Tags: beverages, Collaborations, Crowdsourcing, FMCG, Mixi, SNS
Category: DIGITAL LIFE, MARKETING IDEAS
Other categories: LIFESTYLE / FASHION, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Crowdsourced cup ramen via Mixi SNS

Written by: Michael Keferl on November 20, 2008 at 10:45 am | In MARKETING IDEAS | 2 Comments

Cup ramen maker Acecook has been collaborating with Japanese SNS giant Mixi to create new flavors along with the community (login required) there. Since geeks are online alot, and are known for consuming vast quantities of instant noodles, this is a match made in heaven complete with blog parts (below).

Users in the community (over 4000 now) could vote on flavor variations and even marketing slogans to promote the products that they help to design. Now that the innovation process is over, on November 28th there will be a special party for group members in Osaka to celebrate the new flavors that are being released in a few weeks. December 8th brings “Collagen noodles” and “Milk Tantanmen“, while December 15th is the debut of “Bacon, egg, and vegetables” and “Ginseng Chicken”.

Above are some variations from the previous campaign with Mixi.

Like we said, within Mixi this is a great match because of all the niche groups that can be tapped for their expertise (read: fanaticism) about certain subjects. It’s also a pretty controlled environment, so users are helping the process along with the company, not creating their own open-source cup noodle. With the chaos that is 2-channel, one can only imagine what kind of cup noodle they would invent in there.

Thanks to our friend Marco at CyberMedia for the tip!

Tags: Crowdsourcing, FMCG, food, Mixi, SNS
Category: MARKETING IDEAS
Other categories: DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS