Testimonial

Hello everyone, this is the Customer Case Interview Team.

This time, we interviewed Mr. Yamamoto, Manager of the Public Relations and Advertising Department of the Marketing Headquarters at Mary Chocolate Company, a manufacturer of high-end chocolates sold mainly in department stores nationwide. Mary Chocolate Company launched a new project to mark their 70th anniversary. As part of this promotion, we supported them with an influencer campaign on Instagram. While the new combination of "incense and chocolate" poses various challenges, we spoke frankly with him about his thoughts on the campaign and why he chose our company!

Shift from In-Store Sales Promotion to Digital Marketing

Orinas: Mr. Yamamoto, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. We look forward to working with you. First off, could you please tell us more about your company's business?

Yamamoto: Yes. Our company mainly produces Western-style confectionery for gifts and sells them nationwide at department stores, mass retailers, station buildings, souvenir shops, online shops, and other locations.

We celebrated our 70th anniversary in October of this year, and in this milestone year, we launched a lifestyle media website called Mary's Labo to revolutionize the way people enjoy chocolate. In fact, Mary's Labo itself does not have a specific main target customer. Customers have a variety of needs beyond chocolate. We pick out one need from among them, find a connection between that need and chocolate, and then compile it into a single piece of content to share. This initiative aims to generate interest in the online community, which will then lead to attracting more customers.

“Incense x Chocolate” — A Completely New Initiative

Orinas: "Incense x Chocolate" is a completely new initiative that has never been done before. What made you choose incense to combine with chocolate in the first place?

Yamamoto: I used the experiences of a certain person as a reference for this. Apparently, when this person was staying at a hotel in a tropical resort, he went into his room and enjoyed some room service chocolate. At that moment, he felt something different about himself — a fresh and moving experience that was different from when he normally ate chocolate.

When you travel abroad and experience something "unusual," there's a special atmosphere that begins in the hotel lobby. I think that because he ate chocolate in that kind of atmosphere, even though it’s a familiar food, it felt a little different from usual.

Incense is an item that creates the atmosphere of a foreign land by appealing to the five senses through its fragrance. By using incense, people can feel like they're traveling while staying at home — especially now that the COVID-19 pandemic has made travel difficult. The starting point was to let people experience the refreshing comfort of a foreign country or to feel like a different person.

Orinas: I see, so that's the background. By the way, what is the role of the team that you belong to at your company?

Yamamoto: I work in the Public Relations and Advertising Department, where I'm responsible for formulating and implementing image strategies.

Our company's long history began in department stores. We have been operating for many years by directly dispatching our sales staff to department stores and having them act as advertising spokespeople. We have not engaged in flashy advertising such as frequently airing commercials on television.

So, until now, customers have probably imagined us as “Oh, the Mary’s in the department store.” However, recently we have been doing more business with companies other than department stores, and as we enter an era of diversified advertising, we have started to focus on image strategies for the web and social media to firmly reinforce our brand image.

Orinas: Since you haven't been able to launch visible advertising for many years, it must have been difficult to implement the influencer initiatives that we are supporting this time. Have you come up with any creative ideas in this regard?

Yamamoto: You're right that it was difficult to transition to this strategy. The advantage of social media is that it can be promoted at low cost, but to stand out even further, you need to do more than just send out information.

Of course, visible numbers are important, but I think it's also essential to provide evidence of how they will lead to sales.

Although the PR department is responsible for initiatives such as disseminating information online and through social media, the way in which it is handled largely depends on the individual person in charge. The biggest issue was that we were not able to share fresh information at the optimal time.

Orinas: Thank you.

Three Reasons Why I Chose Orinas

Orinas: What were the reasons that made you choose our company from among the many digital marketing companies available?

Yamamoto: Broadly speaking, there are three points:

• The ability to make proposals from a perspective close to that of the target demographic.
• The proposal provided was very easy to understand.
• Your perceptiveness.

I think the first point, “from a perspective close to the target demographic,” is very important. Even if digital marketing is done online, it’s meaningless if it doesn’t reach the right customers. It’s not enough to just reach an unspecified number of people on social media — it’s important to approach the demographic we’re trying to attract. In that sense, it was helpful to receive plans and proposals from a perspective close to our target audience.

Regarding the proposal’s clarity, I felt that it made my work much easier in the information-heavy digital world. If you try to convey too much, it can become difficult to understand. Being able to understand the content at a glance simplifies and streamlines work. It also helped us promote the importance of digital marketing throughout the company by clearly communicating it in internal proposals.

The other thing is intuition. This time, the job was based on a difficult theme, “Chocolate and Incense,” which is hard to imagine just by hearing about it. I would have liked to let others actually try the incense and explain in person, “This is what I want to do,” but in reality, the conversation ended up being online, so I was worried about whether my intentions were conveyed correctly. In fact, we compared other companies in advance, and among them, Orinas was one of the first to understand the purpose of the project. As for the posts by the Instagrammers you introduced, they not only discovered new ways to enjoy it but also expressed that enjoyment in their own words, which was wonderful.

Orinas: Thank you. Please tell us your honest thoughts and evaluations of the measures we have implemented.

Yamamoto: When we were introduced to an Instagrammer who was interested in our project, we felt glad that we had asked them to do the work. This was the first time we had attempted this theme, and while we were still feeling our way around, it would have been difficult for us to find someone who could promote our products in the way we wanted on our own. Mary's Labo does not narrow down its target audience in advance; rather, it determines its audience based on how it connects customer needs with chocolate. While it would have been difficult to approach them using traditional methods, social media allowed us to reach a wide range of users and gain new fans.

Orinas: Is there anything you would like to see us do in the future?

Yamamoto: We'd like to attract younger generations through digital marketing, such as social media, so we'd like you to propose effective ways to achieve this. More than just helping us realize what we want to do, we'd like to receive fresh suggestions that make us think, “Oh, we can do this too!” Also, while there are criteria for determining success on the web, such as pageviews, and on social media, such as reach and engagement rate, as members of the PR department, we want to focus on how our messages motivate customers to purchase through these numbers. We hope that we can work together with this in mind.

Orinas: Thank you for your kind words. I look forward to your continued support.

Finally

This time, we supported influencer initiatives as the first promotion for a new project. Mary's Labo is a product that no one has ever seen before, combining incense and chocolate, so it was difficult for influencers to visualize it. However, once they tried it, they shared how they enjoyed it in their own ways. It was great for us as a company to rediscover the goodness of Mary Chocolate Company's products, and it will be wonderful to continue working together in the future.

As an aside, I learned that it was actually Mary Chocolate Company that first proposed Valentine's Day — where women give chocolate to men — in Japan.

There are various theories about Valentine's Day, but in Europe and the United States, it was mainly men giving gifts to women. At the time (1958), women were still a little embarrassed to express their feelings to men. With an eye toward women becoming more active in society in the future, Mary Chocolate Company came up with a new proposal for Valentine's Day.

Mary Chocolate Company is always at the forefront of the times and takes on new initiatives.

Thank you for your continued support.