Last Monday I was at a client meeting, and as I was busily expounding that successful brands need to stand for something and that using mass media is an important means to ensuring clarity around what the brand stands for, someone in the meeting brought up the example of Hello Kitty, pointing out that the cute and iconic cat has racked up billions in sales over the last 35 years without any real marketing support at all. So does Hello Kitty prove the theory that brands benefit from clarity, or is it the exception that proves the rule?
The success of Hello Kitty has been examined many times simply because it does seem to fly in the face of what we typically expect of a brand. Created by the Japanese company Sanrio, Hello Kitty made her debut in November 1974.
The little white cat’s face with no mouth was initially aimed at young girls and launched on the side of a plastic purse. But today Hello Kitty has found a much wider audience and appears on products as diverse as toasters, shoes, planes, and credit cards. She is sold in mass merchandise outlets like Target as well as high-end fashion outlets. And, as my friend in the meeting suggested, she has done all this without significant above-the-line advertising support (although she has appeared in TV series in some countries).
The most commonly cited reason for the success of Hello Kitty is that she allows people to make of her what they will. Without a mouth, she is devoid of any real expression; she is simply cute. She could be happy, sad, or reflective depending on the mood of the person looking at her. This property makes Hello Kitty a very different proposition from other licensed characters, most of which start out with a distinct identity and role based on movies, TV series, and comics. In fact, Hello Kitty is not really a character at all; she is an icon like the smiley face or the yin-yang.
But I suspect there is more to Hello Kitty’s success than simply iconic symbolism. Hello Kitty is managed like a fashion brand. Each season brings a new set of associations and products for the little cat. This means that she becomes not only desirable but collectable. While Hello Kitty appears on many different items, the production runs are said to be relatively short. That means that not only can people continue to add different items to their collections, but that there is a rarity value to them as well.
In these days of social media, it is very popular to talk about brands that are co-created by businesses and consumers. Superficially Hello Kitty would appear to be an example of a co-created brand, but in fact I think Hello Kitty is a very different proposition from most brands.
Most brands start with a defined origin and set of associations. Many are tied to one product. Most brands rely on projecting a clear identity in order to appeal to a specific target audience. Changing the essence of a typical brand on a regular basis would not only lead to a lack of clarity over what the brand stood for, it would also cause different people to interpret the brand in different ways, thus undermining its social value. (Click here for a post on this topic.)
But the success of Hello Kitty does not depend on her having a clear identity. Rather, the fact that her identity is not fixed and is subject to interpretation allows her to transcend a wide variety of product categories.
So what do you think? Do you think of Hello Kitty as a brand, a character, or an icon? Are there successful brands that are managed in the same way? Please share your thoughts.
(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...
Email This Post
January 19th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Very interesting article in the face of my everyday meetings with clients where the primary issue we deal with is brands not having clarity of associations and hence faltering at the higher levels of the brand pyramid! We have learnt and believe that while clarity is the most difficult task for a brand, it is also the one that creates a strong success story.
So what about Hello Kitty? Well, to me she is definitely not everything to everyone. She does have strong associations and very clear, distinct ones at that. And that value is that she is cute! It is not necessary that brands should have ‘associations’ that we see as associations. We typically tend to associate a brand with something strongly rooted in rational (even if it ladders to something emotional), something that the product/ service needs to talk about. In this case its about being cute! And because this value is so elastic it has been able to translate itself to almost every product one could think of! But again we would never have Hello Kitty on a product that cannot be cute. So I don’t think its about Hello Kitty not having an identity, its about she having an identity that can be stretched to a lot more products than most other brands one could think of.