How Nestle used children to sell coffee in Japan

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This is Luv, and here’s your weekly Marketing Shot :)

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Back in the day, after the World War II, Japan was opening up to the world.

Western brands were entering fast, and many of them were growing like wildfire.

Nestle saw this and thought: here’s a golden chance to make coffee the next big thing in Japan.

They did everything right on paper. The coffee tasted great. It was priced low. They advertised everywhere. They gave out free samples.

But sales? Barely moved. Month after month, nothing clicked.

The team at Nestle couldn’t understand it. Why wasn’t Japan falling in love with coffee like the rest of the world?

The answer turned out to be simple, but deep. People in Japan had been drinking tea for thousands of years. Coffee wasn’t just a new drink, it was completely outside their daily life.

No memories. No comfort. No feeling attached to it.

That’s when Nestle brought in a cultural expert. He looked at the problem differently.

Instead of asking how to sell more coffee, he asked why the people didn’t care about it in the first place.

What he found changed everything. Japanese people had no childhood memories of coffee. No emotional link. So no amount of advertising could create love for it overnight.

His advice? Start small. Don’t sell coffee directly, sell the flavour first.

Get the children to like it. 

Make coffee-flavoured sweets, candies, little treats that kids could enjoy.

Plant the seed early, and let it grow over time.

And that’s exactly what Nestle did. Their coffee-flavoured sweets became a hit with young people.

Slowly, that familiar taste found its way into homes. Parents tried it too. And over the years, the flavour of coffee became part of Japanese life.

So when Nestle came back years later with their ready-to-drink coffee, they weren’t selling a foreign drink anymore.

They were offering something that people had grown up with. And this time, the market responded. Big time. Coffee sales took off, and Nestle became the market leader in Japan.

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That's a wrap for today! Stay tuned for the next edition.

Thanks,
Luv

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