Four billion packets of free tissues are distributed every year in Japan. Tissue-pack marketing is a proven and inexpensive way to advertise. For a cost of as little as ￥10 to ￥25 you can get your message directly into the hands of potential customers.
In a recent Internet survey of over 100,000 Japanese consumers, 76 percent said they accept free tissues. When asked if the look at the advertisement accompanying the tissues, slightly more than half said they either “definitely look” or “at least glance at” the advertisement. When asked why, many respondents said they hoped to find a coupon or special offer. Yet others displayed a very Japanese sense of obligation for having received a gift, giving answers like “because they were so kind to give me something” and “it would be rude not to look.”
The concept of tissue-pack marketing was indeed developed in Japan. It dates back to the late 1960s, when Hiroshi Mori, the founder of a paper-goods manufacturer, was sniffing around for ways to expand demand for paper products. Thinking everyone has to blow their nose, and be prepared against public toilets with no tissues, Mori developed the machinery to fold and package tissues into easy-to-carry pocket-size packs. The new product was marketed only as a form of advertising and wasn’t sold to customers.
Even now, Japan is still the main market for tissue-pack advertising, but the practice is beginning to spread overseas. A subsidiary company of Japanese trading giant Itochu International, introduced tissue-pack marketing in new York in 2005 and now offers it throughout the United States.
It’s quite common to target a certain group; a company advertising a beauty product, for example, will ask distribution staff to favor women in their twenties when passing out the tissues. But such a request is tricky. “People like to receive free tissues, and passersby outside of the targeted group may as for a pack,” an Internet sales manager Natsuki Kobayashi admitted. “Refusing might create bad feelings and hurt the advertiser’s image, so we instruct our workers to give them to anyone who asks.”
Unfortunately for those of us who count on a steady supply of free nose-wipes, the tissue-pack marketing industry is suffering a slump along with its biggest users, the major consumer loan companies. With advertisers cutting back, some tissue-pack suppliers are reporting a 20 to25 percent drop in orders. Even so, the industry in Japan alone is still generating something in the range of ￥75 billion in sales. And that’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.
