After ten years of wearying recession, Japanese consumers no longer troop out to buy products just because they are new or incorporate the latest technology, as they did in the booming '80's. Price is always an important factor today. So too is how well a product or service fits into a lifestyle, and how meaningful are the benefits offered. Japan's new marketing environment is one where marketers need brand values to bond their offerings to consumers. Yet, strangely, ideas about brand building and brand management are undeveloped in Japan compared to other advanced countries. Most companies still cling to the belief that their corporate name provides an umbrella identity that enhances all their products. But in reality the power of the corporate brand has taken a tumble, undermined by recurrent bad news about management's abilities, profits, and the occasional scandal.

In deference to traditional ways, much Japanese advertising offers little more than a moment of entertainment that has no relationship to whatever is being advertised. Campaigns and themes can still change with seasons. " All to often, the products themselves are merely incidental, almost after thoughts in advertising which does little more than create a favorable mood," says Hotaka Katahira, professor of Marketing Science at Tokyo University. "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.

So when TTNet , a new telecommunications company affiliated with Tokyo Electric Power Co., began operations in January, 1998, offering low-cost local and long-distance telephone services for individual customers in the Tokyo region, their choice of a Western agency, McCann Erickson - the largest international agency in Japan - and brief to build a brand were unusual steps for a Japanese corporation. TTNet's rival is from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), Japan's domestic telephone giant which used to have a monopoly in providing local call services. More than a household name, NTT could rightly be described as a household institution - a Goliath in contrast with TTNet David.

For the January 1998 launch of TTNet, McCann creative director Masao Miyashita recreated The Kantaro Terauchi Family, a popular Japanese soap opera, using the original director and cast of celebrities to craft a series of vignettes about life in a highly dysfunctional, comic family.

The family first saw life as a TV soap opera, twenty years ago, as a typical Japanese family living downtown running a small family business. In the TV program were daily incidents of family life filled with laughter and tears, which made it one of the most popular programs of the time with average ratings of almost 40%. About 70% of TTNet's budgets were spent on TV, with newspapers taking most of the rest. Magazines and radio played a small part in the campaign.

This time the family's dramas all revolve around their phone services. Both the commercial and the upstart company appear became a rapid success: Three months after the campaign launched, TTNet claimed 1.16 million new users, about 16 percent more than had been projected. By the start of April this year, subscribers had topped 1.9 million households.

So far, the campaign has evolved through four stages. Pre-Launch: Family members explain the attributes of TTNet to the stubborn very Japanese father who heads the family and prefers to stick with the NTT, the former monopoly, and finally persuade him to switch. In the launch phase,: (Jan, 98 - Aug), the Terauchi family talk about how good the services is. In a follow-up campaign, (Sept.98 - Feb.99), the family cannot stop recommending TTNet to other people, in public baths, at Japanese bars, etc. From this March, Telephones with TTNet pre-installed were introduced, internet and international services also started. Kantaro Terauchi, the father, grows bigger and bigger to communicate that
TTNet has powered up.

Last fall, a special 2 hour TV program about the family was aired, and in February this year, the commercials spawned a live theatre show about - and starring the family - in a Ginza theatre. Though February is typically a difficult time to sell theatre seats, ticket sales exceeded an amazing 90%.So TTNet and the Terauchi Kantaro Family have been quite topical involving the media.

"The brand has clear positioning driven by a penetrating consumer truth: TTNet, is a new choice in the era of deregulation. We are trying to build the brand so that it becomes an integral and a relevant to people's lives, to invest it with emotional values that add relevant values to the more functional aspects of the service," 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.

NTT's reaction was predictable, they lowered their rates. However TTNet's successful launch enabled them to cut prices as well and maintain their price advantage. This in turn helped growth.

Awards have been given both for the service and the advertising, which has been cited as an important factor in TTNet's success. These have included the "Best Prize" from 'Nikkei Industry NP' magazine as one of the ten best hit products of 1998. Nikkei Trendy magazine similarly ranked TTNet as one of the top ten products of 1998. And in the New York Festival AME, a bronze prize.

According to Katahira, "Many Japanese advertisers are now saying that the role of mass advertising today is brand building. In their eyes, strong brands equal strong businesses. Yet they find to very difficult to achieve this since they have not yet un-learnt their old ways." Learning the lesson's of TTNet would be the way to step forward.