Kumamon: The Billion-Dollar Success of Local Mascot

1653 Words4 Pages

Kumamon, which is a normal black bear with red round cheek earned 12,44 billion yen (1.1 billion dollars) in just two years even though that does not belong to Disney or Sanrio but belong to the local government. Kumamon was made for promoting Kumamoto prefecture (a prefecture is a state in the US) along with the starting operations of Kyushu Shinkansen. It has been recognized by so many Japanese people and achieved visible results as increasing tourists in Kumamoto. The reasons why Kumamon out of thousands of Yuru-Chara was succeeded in that way are considered three factors, which is its characteristics, social background, and well-considered strategies. Especially, the main reason for its success is that Kumamon played a role as the medium …show more content…

This is one of the Yuru-Chara (loose characters) in Japan which belong to Kumamoto prefecture government. Yuru-Chara stands for Yurui (which means loose or sometimes cute) mascot character and is defined as the mascot character invigorating local region, companies, and Japan in Yuru-Chara competition which Kumamon got the first place in 2011. As I mentioned above, this character has appeared in 2011 when the Kyushu Shinkansen (bullet train) which passing through Kumamoto started its operation. Kumamoto is little known by Japanese people. One research shows that less than 50 percent of middle school students can recognize the name of prefecture to the place. Because of this, Kumamoto needed to advertise itself more taking this opportunity. Thanks to the unique characteristics of Kumamon, social context in Japan, some distinctive strategies to make Kumamon famous, which I will discuss in this paper, economic effect Kumamon brought was 12.24 billion yen just in two years according to the bank of Japan and the number of tourists increased by 188 thousand people just in two years as well. Kumamon is literally everywhere in Japan now, so it is not an exaggeration to say that everyone in Japan knows

More about Kumamon: The Billion-Dollar Success of Local Mascot

Open Document