Tissue-pack marketing

A man hands out advertising tissues to passersby in Tokyo

Tissue-pack marketing is a type of guerrilla marketing that is a phenomenon in Japan. Companies use small, portable tissue packages to move advertising copy directly into consumers' hands. About 4 billion of these packages of tissues are distributed on the streets annually in Japan—largely outside of subway stations. This industry generates sales in the range of ¥75 billion annually.

Benefits

A variety of advertising tissue packages

Where the more traditional flyers are often discarded without being read or simply not accepted by the consumer, the same is not true of advertising tissue-packs. The most important reason for this is because the tissues add functionality to the advertisement.

This functionality has several benefits:

·      Gets the ad into consumers' hands

·      In a recent Internet survey of over 100,000 Japanese consumers conducted by Marsh Research, 76% said they accept free tissues. This is a much higher rate than either fliers or leaflets.

·      Gets consumers to read/look at the ad after they have accepted it

·      In the same study referenced above, of those that accepted the tissue-pack, slightly more than half of the participants said they either "definitely look" or "at least glance at" the advertisement.[1] One possible reason for this increased statistic when compared to fliers is that consumers were hoping to find coupons or special offers packaged inside with the tissues.

·      Helps consumers to retain the ad and its message

·      The advertisement on the package is more likely to be retained by the consumer because they are being consistently