Changing Image, Growing Sales

Do you know "acerola"? It is famous tropical fruits which contains very rich vitamin C, and in Japan,"Nichirei Acerola Drink", which is made of its juice, is very popular today. Please watch the Videos. These are the series of CMs of it.

The very interesting feature of these CMs is that they have no explanation about the drink like "it contains rich viramins" or " it is good for your health". There is only one message: "let's (drink) the vitamin from the sun."

In fact, Nichirei, the frozen food manufacturer which began to sell the acerola drink in 1986, had been focusing on promoting its utility in much more conservative way like "acerolas contain 34 times much vitamin C as lemmons do." But they faced difficulties to keep their business; their sales was decreasing drastically from the peak, 12.6 billion yen in FY2002, to 5.5 billion len in FY2008. They finally spinned out this business in 2009.

On the other hand, the Suntory, who bought a production and sales right of this dirink for 1~2 billion yen, has been focusing on projecting easy and cheerful image. They thought that people have already known acerola is good for their health, but look it as a kind of supplements. So they tried to change this image with silly but cheerful CMs, and it seems to succeed; Its sales was doubled in 2010.