Marketing

Within the Kirin Group, the marketing divisions of each operating company and the marketing central functions^*1 of Kirin Holdings Company, Limited, collaborated to improve the capabilities of the Group’s marketing divisions with quick decision-making and execution skills for responding to environmental changes. The Kirin Group has identified the below opportunities for improving the Group’s consumer-centric marketing skills and is promoting relative initiatives.

We launched the marketing central functions in 2022 and have identified three issues.

First is the generation of business results through improving our “ability to understand consumers.” We do not promote the conventional company-centric marketing that prioritizes the desires of corporations and will continue to change to a marketing system that places consumers at the center of all decisions and prioritizes meeting their actual needs.

The second is changing the image of our company. In order to contribute to the growth of the Health Science Domain, our Group strove to gain a more wide-spread image as “A Group that contributes to consumers’ health.”

The third is embodying our Group’s CSV-driven approach of “partnering with society in addressing social issues and achieving mutual growth” in our product and company brands. Our Group’s operating companies in the Food & Beverages Domain remained committed to various CSV initiatives, such as through the sale of KIRIN ICHIBAN Toretate Hop, made with Japanese hops, by Kirin Brewery Company, Limited. However, we realized there was still room to grow the CSV image throughout the Group and strove to further enhance this image.

To address the first issue of improving our “ability to understand consumers,” we are fostering human capital through systematic marketing training that is led by the marketing central functions and transcends the boundaries of operating companies.^*2 At the same time, marketing central functions are having marketing personnel socialize and share their knowledge with the marketing departments of operating companies. We are building a system for fostering brands and establishing strategies at all operating companies that is centered on human capital with a deep understanding of consumers that have been fostered and dispatched in this way. Based on their understanding of consumers, Lion Pty Ltd launched the KIRIN HYOKETSU brand in Australia and New Zealand.

In regard to the second issue of shifting the Kirin Group’s image, we are enhancing the company’s brand communication that we started in 2023. In the third pediatrician version of “KIRIN Joy brings us together,” we share scenes of pediatricians being explained the importance of immunity, which our Group has researched over many years, at our immune-care system seminars through videos and owned media. In the fourth kindergarten version, we launched commercials for TV to explain the importance of immune care habits to children and their guardians and show people creating opportunities to practice immune care. According to surveys, these activities are gradually improving our Group’s health image year over year and promoting the shift in our image.

Going forward, to address the third issue of embodying the Group’s CSV-driven approach, we will strengthen our commitment to social resolution activities using our representative brands (KIRIN ICHIBAN, Kirin Beer Harekaze, KIRIN HYOKETSU, Kirin Gogo-no-Kocha, and iMUSE) and soccer. In addition, based on “Responsibility of Kirin Group which runs Alcoholic Beverage Businesses,” we will bring joy to society and contribute to building a joyful future for consumers by addressing the social issues of “health and well-being,” “community engagement,” and “the environment” in terms of corporate and product brands.

In April 2024, Kirin Brewery launched Kirin Beer Harekaze as a brand that embodies our Group’s CSV-driven approach. Based on our desire to preserve Japanese seasonal traditions and to ensure a future where people continue to enjoy them, we started Harekaze ACTION to make donations from a portion of sales to support cherry blossom conservation activities, fireworks festivals, and more. More than 190 million people^*3 have joined this initiative, and donations collected for municipal governments have exceeded 130 million yen.^*4 As our first new standard beer product in 17 years, we managed to acquire new consumers who do not normally drink beer and achieved our year’s target sales volume of 130%.

Our partnership with the Japan Football Association started in 1978 and is more than 45 years old. In addition to the conventional support of the athletes representing Japan, since 1978, we have collaborated on activities to support healthy minds and bodies and contribute to a society where people socialize with each other and find joy. As activities aligned with our CSV Commitment of “creating bonds and trust for people’s well-being,” we started the “Kirin Family Challenge Cup” to deepen the bonds between family and friends through soccer and “Big Smile Field” to support recovery after the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, and by striving to resolve social issues in community engagement, we have strengthened our image as a company that grows together with society.