Tissue Pack Marketing

I came across the word Tissue-Pack marketing by chance and I too, like many others I suppose, presumed it to do something with marketing of tissue packs.  I wasn’t entirely wrong with the notion as it did involve the product tissue pack in its proceedings. Just that, rather than marketing ‘OF’ the tissue pack it is the marketing ‘WITH’ the tissue pack. Tissue pack marketing is an innovative marketing method that has, in much subtler terms, been a phenomenon in its originating point Japan. It is a Guerilla Marketing Format in which Companies use small USE and THROW Tissue paper packs to move as advertisement copies directly into consumers’ hand. Thus we could even term it as advertising tissue pack.

Tissue pack marketing is an alternate to the Flyer (pamphlet) marketing. Just that it has done better than pamphlets .Probably it might be due to the functional aspect that a tissue paper brings into the marketing tool. Any consumer who is offered a tissue pack would have lesser chances to decline the same and once there is an advertisement on the same, the marketer has successfully placed the Ad in the consumer’s hand. According to a study, a large number of consumers accept free tissues with also a hope to find a coupon or a trial pack enclosed with it. All of these lead to a better probability that the consumer have a look on the Ad and consequentially better retainment of the same as they are consistently exposed to it.

According to study conducted by Marsh research in Japan, 76% respondents of over 100,000 said that they accept free tissue packs. Same study revealed that over 50% did atleast take a glance on the pack.

The history of Tissue pack marketing can been traced to late 1960 when Hiroshi Mori devised a better way to replace box of matchsticks, which was then the most used marketing freebie, with his tissue paper  as he felt the  latter had a better and wider appeal. He even developed the machinery to fold and package tissues into easy-to-carry, pocket-size packs.

Today Tissue pack marketing is gaining its momentum on a global scale. Pocket tissue advertising was introduced in Montreal and Ontario, Canada in the year of 2000.In the United States, a subsidiary of the Japanese trading company Itochu, AdPack USA, introduced tissue-pack marketing in New York in 2005, and now offers it throughout the country. In 2012, the tissue marketing company Adtishoo launched operations in the United Kingdom

In India, least to my observation, the usage of advertisement on tissue papers is only confined to restaurants where the respective restaurants have their name printed on individual tissue leaf. Though it does bring a functional angle that a tissue pack does, it fails on the note that its life is very limited compared to a tissue pack which would be in vicinity of the customer till he completely consumes the tissue leafs. Thus in India, tissue pack marketing does have a huge scope to be adopted.

Contributed By                

Varun Vipin

MBA FT 2012-14