Our Strategy
2016 the start and the beginning.
We were merely a small branch of a company that originated from the United States. Since we were unknown to the people of Japan, we needed to develop brand equity and have exposure throughout Japan. By utilizing the brand name C.W. Post, we designed variety of ideas to promote the brand name. The corporate brand name, or Post Foods, was lacking the exposure they needed. We set up a small shop and displayed our products on shelves to get exposure from the people. Slowly, we moved to the stores and gained brand equity and loyalty over time.
The market leader, Kellogg's had already set up an impressive establishment on the Japanese cereal market and was an economically strong company. We put countless days of market research to find out the exact brand needed to overtake Kellogg's. It was a tall task that needed quite a lot of effort. After comparing the two data of qualitative research and quantitative research, we found out that Kellogg's had not connected with the Japan's people and culture. Therefore, thinking of a design or brand that could stimulate a connection would engage the people to buy our product. With our research, we came up with the "DATTEBAYO FLAKES" for our manga and anime lovers in Japan. This anime-based cereal has a figure inside to furthur show the below-the-line promotion. This was a big hit for kids that loved catoons. After the hit, we needed to think of another brand that would have an additonal effect on the market. The 2016 Olympics. Since the Japan Basketball team came back with a bronze medal, we thought of celebrating and making a special brand the "Olympic Cereal". This was a big hit for sports fans around Japan as people celebrated countless wins in the Olympic events. This was a major achivement to our brand equity and was beginning to catch up to Kellogg's.
Also, by borrowing the promotional ideas of Post Foods, we have gained tremenous amount of knowledge on what to promote and write on our products. We made sure that people knew our cereal were home grown and had no outside taste to our pure Japanese grains. Also, we made sure our grains were top-quality and had all the nutrients you need to start your day. By releasing different flavors and shapes for our cereal brand, we made sure people of all ages could enjoy our cereal in different ways. We made sure that people could enjoy our grains by posting recipes and giving ideas to help promote out top quality grains and have customers enjoy our product in various ways.
By 2019, our market share was 38% and was on a steady decline. Our maturity has passed. This was a major turning point for our development and we needed to act fast to regain the momentum. The Rugby world cup was just around the corner and we decided that people needed a fighting spirit to cheer for the rugby team representing our country, By utilizing the Rugby world cup and promoting our new product, granola bars, the profit was starting to go back up by the time the world cup ended.
2019 revitalization of the brand and introducing a new product.
In 2019, our original products were fast approaching their maturity level and was about to reach it's saturation point. We needed to introduce something that would keep the original brands alive but also introduce new products to give it a fresh taste. We thought of how much success the granola bars had on the one-time special edition bars, so we decided to use that, but instead of granola bars, we used protein bars. Since protein bars are filled with nutrition, atheletes will enjoy our product. However, there was one problem that was standing in front of our goal. Kellogg's. They have built such an enormous brand loyalty and market presence that it was nearly impossible to overcome them. But with our excellent market research group and smart decisions led us to such an enormous growth only in a few years. There was one missing element that would turn the whole table over. That element was the 2020 Olympics. Using the olyimps that was held in Tokyo, we used that to our advantage and gained massive amount of customer's attention including that of foreigners. Since the theme was sports, we decided to design cereal boxes with different Japanese atheletes on there to attract many customers and target a wide-range of market segments. We used different marketing techniques to attract wide range of customers.
2020 and beyond
By utiizing the 5 Kellogg's lessons, you can create your own company and do the same thing. We will continue to work harder and keep developing brand extentions to furthur more add to the varitety of products.
In the beginning, the CW Post family cereal was not a big hit, japanese people have a taste for more savory and rich snacks, unlike our cereal, our cereals are too sweet and are too americanized for our japanese customers. In order to solve this, we have made different flavors that cater to japanese people, such as green tea, strawberry and original with less sugar. Japanese people also like fruits more than sugary candy, therefore we came up with our flavor of strawberry.
2015 Kellogg's Controversy
In 2015, many people disliked Kellogg's sweet and high carb cereals. This became a world wide brand loyalty loss for Kellogg's. This was one of the reason why we were successful. We took advantage of this declining market share of Kellogg's and made a cereal opposite of their product. A low carb low sweet cereal that are nutritious and will leave a satisfactory taste to the tongue of Japanese people. People in Japan dislike sweet products, and will generally pick non-sweet products. Since Kellogg's have a big market in the US, they will generally take more focus on the US instead of Japan, which makes them overlook certain things in the Japan market.
We took notice on this and made sure the Japanese citizen had a good meal every morning. We focused on our supply chain and made a pledge to the California Transparency Act of 2010.
The "DATTEBAYO FLAKES" was made to target the market segment of anime lovers in Japan. Japanese people like anime and this cereal includes Naruto figures to have below-the-line promotion.
The "Protein One" was designed to introduce more products in the market.