Brands in Japan have traditionally been little more than corporate umbrellas under which vast and disparate arrays of products have displayed with neither managers nor guardians to secure their fortunes.

But during the past decade of recession and decline, Western concepts of brand management have slowly begun to take root, helped in no small way by the work of agencies such as McCann, JWT, and Ogilvy in applying their own methodologies to brands in Japan.

The Japanese have a way of adopting foreign ideas and giving them unsual twists at the same time. The same is proving true of branding.

A gang of five manufacturers have joined forces to build a communal brand, WiLL,  that will allow each of them to promote products developed specifically for young people in their twenties or early thirties.  While such collaboration would be marketing heresy in the West, in Japan, it looks sensible team-work  to the collaborators since all  have found the market shares for their mainstay brands slipping among younger people.

One of the driving forces behind the  WiLL brand is  Toyota Motor Co. who’s  new subcompact car, the WiLL Vi, is targeted principally at women in their late 20s.  Others include  Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (the WiLL PC and refrigerator), Asahi Breweries Ltd.  (WiLL beer), Kao Corporation (WiLL fabric deodoriser spray),  Kinki Nippon Tourist Co (WiLL tours).

This disparate  range of products, are united visually by a square orange logo emblazoned with a the can-do  brand name and  slogan, “A spirit of fun and a sense of true quality,” devised by Hakuhodo Inc, Japan’s second largest advertising agency who have legitimised the radical project with their own marketing and advertising credentials.  The companies have also set up a Web site (http//:www.willshop.com) and mounted some joint promotions linking, for example the WiLL PC with Asahi’s new brew – perhaps the only one ever designed to go down alongside a computer screen!

While, while each of the five partners already has some successful products aimed at young consumers, they all are known more as steadfast, conservative giants than nifty innovative newcomers.  For example, Toyota’s Vitz car is already proving popular with young drivers.  Even so, Toyota sales are still biased toward older people with a domestic market share approaching 50% for consumers over 50  but much less for consumers in their 20s.

The WiLL players feel the project makes sense because consumers in their late 20s and early 30s are a hard to win.  They are not very brand-loyal and resist intrusive sales pitches, but like products that are  advertised and which fit into their own very personal life styles.  They are both eager to list their demanding personal preferences and  easily swayed by the latest trends. The step from this perception to creating a joint brand illustrates the differences in how  Japanese and Western minds connect ideas.

If the new brand meets the participants’s high expectations, it will surely prove that where there is a WiLL, there is also a Japanese way.