chocolate makes people love and hate. I'm greedy for its taste and afraid of its high calories. The antioxidant ingredients contained in chocolate are collectively called cocoa polyphenols. They can remove free radicals in the body, protect blood vessels, prevent inflammation, and enhance immunity. They are also closely related to preventing cancer. It can make people feel fragrant in their lips and teeth, and psychologically they can make people happy and excited. I am afraid that most people cannot resist it, and it is also addictive.
According to forecasts, global chocolate product sales will reach US$124 billion in 2020 and consumption will reach 10.6 million tons. The huge demand for has created one well-known world brand after another. This category can definitely be called the leader in the snack industry.
"Meiji" chocolate is one of them. Since its birth, it has occupied 30% of the market size of Japan's 500 billion yen. But in this article today, we do not intend to introduce Meiji Company or its chocolate brand for 104 years of development history. We only want to select three new products it has released over the long period of time. From these three sections, we can see how the brand can keenly grasp the signals of social and cultural changes, and embody it into marketing actions that consumers can perceive, and achieve a long-term harvest of reputation and sales. I hope this article can bring some small inspiration to food industry practitioners better complete the task of new product development.
70s, the single and worried Japanese society needed controversial small products to stimulate
1975. It has been 49 years since Meiji launched the first piece of milk chocolate in Japan. The European and American lifestyle represented by chocolate has long been accustomed to it. In this half century, Meiji milk chocolate representing European chocolate industry technology, Meiji almond chocolate and Hawaiian nut chocolate that imitates American flavors, and Meiji Apollo chocolate commemorating the first human moon landing have all been very successful in the market, winning the company the reputation of "chocolate is Meiji". The rapid economic growth since the 1950s came to an end in 1973. Japan's economy fell into a period of low growth. After the oil crisis, the average annual GDP growth rate dropped from more than 10% to below 5%. Japanese people who were unemployed, leniency, single, divorced, and were increasingly worried about their lives, were also downgraded from "family wear" to "single wear".
When dominant mainstream culture is run over by the wheel of social change, cultural gaps will inevitably arise, and then more new ideological opportunities will be generated. This is a good time for brands to use cultural symbols to do marketing actions. 's past prosperity brought the Japanese "desire to own" based on family units. The bigger the better, the more the better. However, the current recession and the increase in people living alone in all ages have made "light, thin, short, and small" a favorite. Not only that, behind the urban life of highway, many people have regained a strong bond to the mountains and rivers of their hometown. caters to such ideological opportunities, Meiji's chocolate dim sum product "Mushroom Mountain (きのののの)" came into being. In 1979, it also launched the same series "Bamboo Village (たけのののの)". Both are chocolate-matched with small cookies/cookies, designed in the shape of small mushrooms and bamboo shoots, one bite at a time, making it easy to grab, and the packaging design and fonts are full of rural children's fun.
90s, the Japanese society with the rise of female consciousness rewarded themselves with gentle and romantic products
1993, Japan's economic recession became more serious, and GDP even showed a negative growth of -0.5% that year, and the average annual GDP growth rate could not be maintained even 5%, and the average dropped to below 1%. However, the accumulated personal wealth in the past golden age has reached a new level, per capita GDP has increased significantly, and the main consumer group has also changed from a baby boomer generation to a new generation of human beings. Among them, there are fewer housewives and more beautiful people in the workplace. In the "smart saving" of mainstream culture, a new ideology of "paying for aesthetic fashion" has been divided. Women no longer only consider family expenses rationally, but will also pamper themselves emotionally, and even pursue high-end and over-consumption.At the same time, after entered the 1990s, people became more confused and anxious under the dual stimulation of consumerism and bubble disillusionment. People began to be keen on exploring their "real self" from consumption, and would understand more deeply what they wanted, pay more attention to the feelings brought by the color and appearance of the product, and inject more emotional considerations into rational choices.
Meiji is selling the "Meltykiss" chocolate at the right time. The appearance design is filled with snowflakes, which are beautiful and romantic. They are packaged independently. They are disassembled into a cube shape. There is cocoa powder on the surface and a sandwich sauce of various flavors inside. They are both mellow and gentle and delicate like snowflakes. They melt in the mouth. This is the meaning of "Snow Kiss". In terms of taste, in addition to traditional strawberries, hazelnuts, matcha, etc., there are also rum raisins, bitter wine, and particularly thickened cream, which has a strong petty bourgeois atmosphere. Japanese culture has a persistent love for winter and snow. Meiji designed this product as the concept of "winter limited". The packaging design and advertising are closely linked to snow, and are good at creating a sense of ritual in winter. After 2010, she also invited the "National Goddess" Yui Aragaki to endorse the product, and shoot a new TV commercial every winter. Her signature cheerful smile, combined with the colorful falling snowflakes, and the emphasis on the happiness of eating chocolate, once became the winter expectation of young Japanese people.
The new century, the complex and confusing Japanese society, the simple and connotative product is the antidote
In 2014, Japan had already entered an era of comprehensive and abundant material. With its strong economic foundation, in the appreciation of the yen and inflation, at least on the surface, it realized the dream that the whole society has been pursuing since World War II - living in Japan, you can also enjoy European and American consumption life and material richness. People have great freedom of consumption and can choose the product that suits them the most. But at the same time, the personalization of consumption has led to the transformation of goods into identity symbols, deepening the barriers and conflicts between social classes, and the proliferation of materials has damaged the ecological environment and created many social problems. People in the new century generally began to reflect, from pursuing famous brands to pursuing deep experiences, from consumerism to cherishing every little thing in daily life.
As Master Sato Shuo, who is responsible for the design of some of Meiji products, once said: "The production and manufacturing of products is a black box for consumers. If people do not know the process and story behind the production, they will not have the emotion of cherishing and using it, and it will be easier to discard it. This is the disadvantage of modern society. If people can observe things like designers, 'dissection' of the packaging, taste and even the touch in their mouths, and turn them into very detailed components, and they can feel the charm of each product ." Therefore, under the new ideological opportunity of reflecting on excessive consumption, advocating simplicity, and in-depth exploration of the connotation, Meiji Chocolate, which has always taken the popular route of the civilians, has divided it into one line to make Bean to Bar, and launched the "THE" series. The so-called Bean to Bar means that from raw materials to finished products, it strives to show the original flavor of cocoa beans. For this reason, chocolate masters need to control all aspects from the selection and baking of beans in the early stage to the later stage processing, minimize the interference of human factors and present the original flavor of the ingredients.
This was originally a niche hobby of chocolate gourmets, but Meiji positioned the "THE" series as a high-end plate-shaped chocolate that can be bought in supermarkets and convenience stores. The process starting from the production of cocoa beans is controlled by itself. All beans come from the contracted farm, and the ingredients ratio and taste have been adjusted. At the same time, the "THE" series products are packaged in a simple and fashionable way. The back is printed with a radar chart of the product scored from the taste dimensions of bitter, sweet, sour, and fragrant, guiding consumers to choose their tastes according to their preferences. Open the packaging. The chocolate is divided into three independent pouches. Each piece of chocolate has four different patterns. Meiji claims that along the different patterns, you can taste different cocoa tastes.
