TOKYO—After teaching the rest of the world how to efficiently mass produce goods ranging from automobiles to computers, Japan Inc. is now looking to the West to learn how to better sell what it makes at home. Battered by eight years of economic gloom, marketers have no choice but to revise their game plans. Japanese consumer spending has fallen for eight consecutive months; during the first six months of 1998 it was down 3.1 percent over the same period last year, according to recent government figures. And so, years after their American counterparts discovered brand building, Japanese ad agencies and brand managers are desperately trying to play catch up in the game of connecting with consumer desires.

The gap between Western and many Japanese ads is illustrated by commercials for ‘Sofy,’ a women’s sanitary napkin marketed by Unicharm Co., which dominates the $625 million market. The Sofy account was long handled by Hakuhodo, the nation’s second-largest agency. But in 1997, feeling increased sales pressure from rival brands, Unicharm moved the business to J.Walter Thompson Japan with a brief to develop a stronger brand image, and one that could be extended throughout Asia. Visually, both the Japanese and American agencies embrace a similar look, using computer-animated product demos to show how a side-gather in Sofy’s design plus powerful absorbency ensure that the product works well. But that’s where the similarity ends. In the Hakuhodo spots, well-known actress Misako Tanaka rather stiffly describes the product’s form and features. But the new JWT spot that broke last month employs a girl-next-door, who not only describes Sofy, but also says how she feels while using the brand: "I don't know why, but I feel secure—it’s that kind of feeling isn't it?"

"That’s the key difference," said JWT account director Masaami Okamura. "The old campaign was good at demonstrating Sofy’s innovative design, but failed to relate the brand’s features to the consumer and persuade them that the product offered a real benefit. It had a manufacturer’s perspective rather than a consumer insight." The Sofy campaign began only last month, so it’s too early to measure it’s sales impact. Similar brand building is now the key issue facing marketing management at major Japanese corporations. Until recently, "most Japanese companies have relied on the company name to provide an umbrella brand for all their product lines," said Hotaka Katahira, professor of Marketing Science at Tokyo University, who recently finished an unpublished study on branding. Though this approach continues to work for a handful of top-ranked companies such as Sony, and Honda, "for most it has become an increasingly outmoded approach," Katahira said. He sampled such well-known Japanese companies such as Toyota, Suntory, NEC, Shiseido, Nissan, and Kirin Beer and found that nearly 60 percent responded that they had begun focussing on brand building. When it comes to targeting consumers effectively, Japanese ad agencies are often surprisingly unsophisticated and lag years behind their American and British counterparts. "Even though it has become increasingly important to narrow down the target definitions in building brands, advertisers find that [Japanese] agencies lack knowledge about targeting and have an immature approach to market segmentation," said Katahira. "By and large, [Japanese] agencies still rely mainly on traditional demographics and are less comfortable in handling lifestyle and consumer values," he added. One reason for the lag: most of the research technologies have been developed in Europe and the U.S.

Some foreign agencies located in Japan are now taking advantage of the opportunity to create new brand identities. Consider McCann-Erickson’s advertising for ‘Sokenbicha,’ a canned tea blended by Coca-Cola Japan from traditional ingredients believed to promote good health. While rival beverages compete by listing the herbs and other ingredients in their recipes, Sokenbicha has taken the crucial next step of relating these to consumer benefits. "Adlay, brown rice, evening primrose, Sokenbicha, Houtanya Cordata, Senna, Puarh … refreshingly, healthily, beautifully . . . Sokenbicha," sings a wood-sprite in one deceptively simple McCann spot. Launched in 1994, Sokenbicha had won more than half of Japan's $1.46 billion blended-tea market by the end of 1997, reported AC Nielsen. The recent shift in ad strategies reflects a deeper change in the nation’s economy. Japan was formerly a manufacturer-driven market place where there was little need to sell consumers on the merits of benefits of a product. "The key was to keep the corporate name in front of consumers. The products themselves were merely incidental, almost after thoughts in advertising which did little more than create a favorable mood," said Katahira. "Now the market has changed, and there’s greater emphasis on consumer benefits and a need to [understand] consumer insights." Weary consumers are more careful about how they spend, more inclined to bargain-hunt and more interested in how a product fits their perceived lifestyle. To be sure, there’s a large corner in the Japanese psyche that prefers indirect, almost understated messages, particularly if the spot conveys the sense of emotional accessibility which Japanese often respond to. For the January launch of TTNet , a new telecommunications provider selling low cost phone services, McCann creative director Masao Miyashita recreated The Kantaro Terauchi Family, a popular Japanese soap opera, using the original director to craft a series of vignettes about life in a highly dysfunctional, comic family. In squabbles all revolve around their attempts to switch their phone service from NTT, Japan’s domestic telephone giant. Both the commercial and the upstart company appear to be a success: Three months after the campaign launched, TTNet claimed 1.16 million new users, about 16 percent more than had been projected. "Each brand has clear positioning driven by a penetrating consumer truth: TTNet, as a new choice in the era of deregulation and Sokenbicha, as a notion of well-being. In both [cases], there are significant elements in common, guiding principles that play to effective brand management," said Chris Beaumont, McCann’s Chief Strategy Officer for Asia. "These are factors that need to be properly emphasized anywhere in the world, but most certainly in Japan where the increasingly ‘vacant’ corporate brand can no longer support initiatives that are more product or feature orientated," Beaumont explained.