Trends in Japan - CScout Japan Blog

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

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives license

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”.

mixi cup ramen 2 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

Purikura print club for solo photo shoots

Written by: Rebecca Milner on September 5, 2008 at 3:41 am | In DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION | No Comments

Furyu, maker of popular purikura (print club) machines with names like “Miss Doll” and “Funky High,” has announced a new addition to its successful “Queen of Pink” line-up. While print club is generally considered a activity for friends, done mostly by groups of school age girls, the new Queen of Pink 2 has a function designed for solo photo shoots.

Why would you want to do this by yourself, you ask? In order to practice cute poses of course, especially, according to the press release, for perfecting a look for your Mixi (popular local SNS) profile.

There are four new frame options: pictured above, queen (for a glamorous self-portrait) and below from left to right, message (for penciling in and attaching to a letter or gift), self-introduction (in mock SNS profile form), and “nico-ichi” (pairs you with a cute character).

The cult of an individual personality that the SNS profile encourages, even within an inherently social setting, can be seen here to be influencing a traditionally group activity. With over 10 million users on Mixi, this is definitely a development worth keeping tabs on. We’ll have an eye out for other examples, but in the meantime, here are some more examples of “social” print club.

Print club machines are constantly undergoing renewal to reflect current trends, like those pictured above in pop and ethnic themes that matched popular summer fashion looks.