Spoon & Tamago - japanese art, design and culture

Kirin is a beverage maker behind many of Japan’s favorite beers and soft drinks. Glico is the maker of gum, chocolates and other snacks. Despite their differences, the two companies and their respective marketing teams recently came together to create a joint-packaging campaign for two of their most popular products.

The collaboration involves Kirin’s tea brand “gogo no kocha” (午後の紅茶) and Glico’s medium-size brand of Pocky midi. Both are releasing new flavors and, in doing so, have joined hands visually through a packaging design that creates a dyptich-style portrait when placed side-by-side.

The lemon-flavored Pocky and the teagurt-flavored tea depict couples sharing an intimate moment and look adorable next to each other. Their flavors have also been manufactured to complement each other and the smart packaging design encourages consumers to pick up both. However, this requires a bit of coordination between manufacturers, retail outlets and retail associates, who are tasked with accurately displaying the products. And so far it looks like they’re doing a good job.

Whether it was intentional or not, the packaging design, which comes in a number of different designs, has already received praise from Japan’s LGBT community for not being exclusionary.

the variations can be combined in multiple ways, earning praise from Japan’s LGBT community (photo via zaikabou)

The project actually dates back to 2010 when Kirin and Glico signed a joint venture to utilize each others distribution networks. But it wasn’t until last year when they realized a more creative use of the tie up. They decided to experiment with a similar packaging design placed on Apple Tea and Custard-flavored pretzels (below), which proved so popular that it merited a 2nd round.

last year’s packaging collaboration was a success

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