"The Little Voice of Vista": How to make your products sell well and last a long time
[
Time flies and the Lunar New Year holiday is over! Starting today, everyone is returning to work one after another. It’s a brand new year, let’s work hard together!
During the Chinese New Year, I accidentally found a book published five and a half years ago in the bookcase. After reading it, I got a lot of inspiration and brought back many memories. Although this book is out of print, there are still many things worth referencing, so let me share it with you in today’s program!
The title of this book is a bit long, it is called “How to make products sell well and last long?” The brand manager of Japan’s national snack POCKY teaches you the marketing planning power of products that have turned from black to red and have been selling well for 50 years! 》. As the name suggests, in this book, the author analyzes the sales secrets behind hot-selling products for readers, such as: How to bring old brands back to life? How to revive unsalable goods? How can we create a star product from scratch and create a buzz even before the product is launched on the market?
The author of this book Masahiro Ohta graduated from the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kobe University, Japan, and worked for [Esaki Gulico Co., Ltd.](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esaki Gulico) (now translated as Glico in Chinese). Engaged in chocolate product development at the Confectionery Development Research Institute. Later, he went to the Graduate School of Business Administration of the University of Texas in the United States for further study and obtained an MBA.
Ezaki Glico (Japanese: 江淰グリコ/えざきグリコ, English: Ezaki Glico) is a large Japanese food company that mainly produces and sells confectionery and pastries. It was founded in 1922 and is headquartered in Osaka.
After returning to China, he was engaged in the development of candy products. During his 10 years as the brand manager of [Pocky] (https://www.glicoshop.com), he was engaged in new product development, promotion strategies, sales strategies and other market introduction strategies, product regeneration and other brand management work. During this period, many new products such as Men’s Pocky and Mousse Pocky were developed. When he finally resigned, his title was General Manager of the Chocolate Food Group.
Later, he changed his career path and provided consulting services to many food and consumer goods manufacturers in Japan as a consultant. He also taught and lectured at corporate and public seminars as a lecturer. He is also a very active corporate coach, providing training and lectures for people from different walks of life, and his activities have expanded to the field of talent education. In addition, he also teaches product development and marketing courses at universities.
Looking back on the career development of the author of this book, the most prominent experience was the period when he served as the brand manager of Pocky, Japan’s best-selling national snack. During his ten-year tenure, he helped Japan’s Ezaki Gulico Co., Ltd. launch many best-selling products, causing the originally ordinary Pocky to trigger a rush every time it launched a new product.
In addition, he is also the driving force behind Pocky’s ability to launch more than 200 flavors and sell them in 30 countries, selling more than 5 billion boxes a year!
From the author’s prominent experience, it is not difficult to see how familiar he is with product planning, and because of this academic background, this book is more convincing. As a promoter of popular products, the author does not hesitate to disclose his rich personal practical experience in this book, including: How can an old brand come back to life and find a second spring for the company? How to revive unsalable goods and keep them selling for many years? Create star products from scratch and create buzz even before the products are launched.
The reason why I was deeply impressed by this book may be because of Pocky! In fact, I rarely eat snacks, but because I ate Pocky (ポッキー) when I was a child, I miss it and always have an inexplicable emotion. Therefore, every time I read “How to make products sell well and last long?” The brand manager of Japan’s national snack POCKY teaches you the marketing planning power of products that have turned from black to red and have been selling well for 50 years! 》When reading this book, I always think of many childhood memories…
The author points out that creating a hit product is not something that can be achieved overnight. Each basic step requires careful planning and step-by-step execution. He also generously disclosed his six steps to create long-selling products:
- Market research: In addition to identifying the age group, what else should be observed during market making research?
- Creative thinking: How can your own products borrow the popularity factors of hot-selling products?
- Concept development: How to express in one sentence what makes the product touching?
- Planning preparation: Product name, packaging and pricing, do you need to get a head start before going on the market?
- Sales support: Do you need more and wider product channels? How to promote effectively?
- Long-term sales of the product: What else needs to be done after it is launched to keep the product selling?
These six steps seem simple, but in fact each step is full of details. For example, how to say what touches people’s hearts about a product in one sentence, this is actually the so-called Unique Selling Proposition (Unique Selling Proposition).
I have mentioned in other articles before that a unique selling proposition should have at least three key points:
- Promise of benefits: Emphasize what specific special effects the product has and what practical benefits it can provide to consumers?
- Uniqueness: It has features that cannot be proposed or are not proposed by peers or competing products.
- Powerful: Focus your attention and make consumers feel compelled to pay attention.
In this book, the author not only explains the actual case of developing Pocky, but also shares many marketing planning secrets of Japanese products with readers. For example, the author quoted the “Nihon Keizai Shimbun” report on July 15, 2003, pointing out that the naming rule of the well-known company [Kobayashi Manufacturing Co., Ltd.] (https://www.kobayashi.co.jp) must allow the consumer public to understand within one second what kind of product it is? This is because “consumers only have 0.6 seconds from seeing the product to reaching out their hand in the store, so consumers must understand the content of the product in these 0.6 seconds.”
When it comes to this, I feel the same way. Because we live in an era of information explosion, we are attracted by many colorful novelties every day. How to make consumers interested in our products is obviously a very important issue.
I think this book has several commendable features. In addition to learning from the author’s many years of marketing experience, you can also observe the actual practices of Japanese companies in the field of marketing planning from some of the forms and steps provided in the book.
For example, the book mentions the key points of each stage of product planning. I think it is great and worthy of reference by marketers:
- Find out what you care about.
- Infer the users who are most supportive of that thing.
- Thoroughly explore the reasons for user support.
- Come up with a number of key words from the supported causes.
- Use the keywords you have thought of as a starting point to conceive products.
- Bring product ideas to the brainstorming session and let everyone brainstorm.
Finally, the author also summarized his many years of work experience and compiled ten key qualities that must be possessed to become a “big sales promoter”. As for which ten characteristics are they? Please bear with me for a moment. Friends who are interested can go to the library or second-hand bookstore to look for this book “How to Make Products Sell and Last?” The brand manager of Japan’s national snack POCKY teaches you the marketing planning power of products that have turned from black to red and have been selling well for 50 years! ](https://bit.ly/3Hw5KLn)》Let’s take a look!
Okay, our program today comes to an end! If you like “Vista’s Little Voice”, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, or go to Apple Podcast Give me a five-star review and share this show with friends who are interested.
Thank you, see you next time, Bye bye.
★ Welcome to sponsor a cup of coffee and cheer for Vista! You can also express your support by sponsoring multiple times, thank you.
★ Want to learn content marketing techniques? Welcome to register for the online course “[Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands] (https://hahow.in/cr/content-power)”.
If you want to hear me share about [Personal Brand](https://www.vistacheng.com/search?q=Personal Brand), [Content Marketing](https://www.contenthacker.today/2019/07/content-marketing-from-zero-t o-hero.html), Copywriting or Reading Experience and other information, welcome to subscribe to “Vista Newsletter” for free! Thanks.
Further reading
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: Vista Reading 1/30/2022 - 2/5/2022
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: Have you started writing your “Achievements List”
- “Vista’s Little Voice”: Vista Reading 2/13/2022 - 2/19/2022
