The Better Drinks Co. products are now sold in over 20 export markets, and in 2014 Charlie’s juices launched nationwide in the Japanese market to an overwhelmingly positive response from consumers. More than 100,000 Charlie’s juices were sold on the launch day alone via an exclusive partnership with 7-Eleven Japan.
The Better Drinks Co. is now owned by Japanese parent company Asahi Group Holdings, though product development and marketing is still headed up by a team of Kiwis. CEO Craig Cotton says telling The Better Drinks Co.’s New Zealand Story helped build this success by ensuring the Charlie’s brand stands out in a highly competitive overseas market.
The story behind the pure environment where The Better Drinks Co.’s fruit grows is an integral part of introducing potential overseas customers to products. When Craig met initially with the Japanese project team for the launch of Charlie’s in Japan, he said they already viewed New Zealand as a country with beautiful scenery and open spaces thanks to films such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as the 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign.
“Export markets are pretty critical to us to be honest. In 2014 we further expanded our export markets by launching Charlie’s nationwide in Japan. When we talk to customers in off shore markets they tend to already have a sense of New Zealand’s natural beauty and purity thanks to The Lord of the Rings movies. In Japan especially, they’re quite familiar with Tourism New Zealand campaigns that entice people to visit by using stunning images of our open spaces,” says Craig.
“When we started discussions in Japan, we naturally introduced the product development and marketing teams to the New Zealand story by talking about our open spaces. We established the quality of our good, honest products by telling them about the purity of our air, our clear water and the fertile soils our fruit thrives in. We used this knowledge as a platform to build on, before telling the broader story of our product, our culture, our people and the really unique and exciting things we’re creating.”
New Zealand’s clean, green image sets the scene for Better Drink’s Co.’s natural fruit juices, but what really sets the product and The Better Drinks Co. apart on a global stage is the open, honest and passionate attitude of the team. Despite the fact that The Better Drinks Co.’s parent company is Japanese, it wasn’t plain sailing convincing the Asahi board to trust that Charlie’s juices could be a hit in Japan.
“You just can’t turn up with a great product and think that’s the job done in overseas markets. What you are ultimately selling them on is you. You’re selling the culture you’re from, the values you have as a team and the idea that you’re going to be easy and reliable to work with. You have to prove that working with you is going to be a simple, valuable and enjoyable experience.
Without a doubt, one of the key reasons we have been successful in launching Charlie’s in Japan is the culture of the people in our business. It’s just so important to the Japanese. It was hard for our parent company to trust us because we were unproved in their home market. Keeping face is absolutely critical to them and we couldn’t let Asahi down. To convince them we could be successful, we had to take them through our unique New Zealand story and attributes. When you sit down at a boardroom table with a potential customer, telling the story of our passion and integrity as Kiwis can be the difference between them choosing to work with you or another foreign competitor.
From the day Marc, Stefan and Simon started Charlie’s, the brand has been focused on making a good, honest product and doing that in an honest way. We do that by living and breathing our values, or as we call them, our ‘Vitamin C’s’. These are being very committed, very creative and very commercial in everything we do. I think these are values we’re all raised on as Kiwi’s and they’re incredibly important for developing strong international business relationships.
Highlighting our integrity, our honesty and our ‘straight-upness’ was critical and one of the key ways we use the New Zealand Story. It was the foundation on which we built the trust that led to Charlie’s ranging in 17,000 7-Eleven stores in Japan,” says Craig.
Japan is a very competitive market and Craig says it takes some serious creativity and innovation to stand out from the crowd. In a beverage market full of products from concentrate, Charlie’s has turned heads by innovating a not-from-concentrate juice product that stays true to the original Charlie’s brand, that is packaged in a square Charlie’s bottle with a wide mouth and transparent labelling, a design that is unique in the Japanese market. A QR code on all Japanese packaging linking to the Charlie’s story further cemented Asahi’s belief that The Better drinks Co. was ready to take on the big players.
“There are a lot of big players and a lot of big budgets on the international stage. Unfortunately we’re not at that level, so we have to be very nimble and very adaptable. To create amazing products with a small team and a small budget in a tiny corner of the world, we’ve had to become incredibly innovative. In a crowded market like Japan, customers really expect innovation in everything - from the product itself, the packaging, the marketing and even the logistics of your business. In many ways, being small can actually be an advantage when it comes to innovation, but you still have to convince your business customers of that, which is where telling the Open Minds story of your business becomes so important.
We used the New Zealand Story to respond to any scepticism and turn our small size into one of our strengths by explaining that as Kiwis we thrive on being challenged. If you say we can’t do it, you can bet we’ll find a way to do it faster, better and more creatively than the others simply because that’s the New Zealand spirit. When we tell our international customers about the innovation in our business and show what we can and have achieved, they are often blown away because they don’t necessarily expect it from a New Zealand company.”
For Craig and the Better Drinks Co. team, the New Zealand Story has been an essential part of launching into international markets. Craig knew the product could hold its own, once consumers were introduced to the brand, building on the local population’s knowledge of New Zealand and expanding it further.
“When we initially set our sights on the Japan market, we recognised that we didn’t have a rich brand history to draw on, so we decided to use the New Zealand Story as the foundation for positioning Charlie’s, using it to help introduce ourselves, our business, our brand and our values.
Anchoring our market entry in the New Zealand Story provided a great foundation for us to build our own brand story, and also provided us with a faster path to market than what it would have been if we had to start from scratch with customers.
So, for anyone trying to do business overseas, the New Zealand Story really does help make sure that your storytelling is consistent if it doesn’t come naturally to you. It really helped us set the scene for our customers and tell our nation and brand stories to make sure we ticked the key boxes in describing our New Zealand way of doing business.”