Satoshi Yamazaki: High School Girls × Corporations → A New Culture?

2018/08/31

At the beginning of this year, we launched a new business from Shiseido. It is the POSME project, which creates new products and services through open innovation between corporations and high school girls, who have long been the drivers of youth culture.

The first product is the "Play Color Chip." It is a chip-style cosmetic designed for sharing, which can be divided into single-use portions to match the habits of young people who routinely exchange and gift items as a means of communication. We evolved the common sense that cosmetics are something used alone to prepare for going out into something used outside together with friends.

Additionally, we opened "POSME LAB SHIBUYA" in Shibuya as a co-creation space for planning such products and disseminating information. Furthermore, we organized a marketing team called "POSME & Co." consisting of high school girls gathered through public recruitment. Centered around them, we are exchanging opinions with teens nationwide and exploring ways to share information.

This project has been widely featured in the context of a new approach to the younger generation from a large corporation, based on keywords such as Generation Z (born in the 2000s with a strong entrepreneurial spirit) and the senior shift in Japan's super-aging society. However, it has actually only been a year and a half since its conception, and I am the only employee fully committed to it; the rest is supported by the cooperation of people inside and outside the company who want to be involved. The reason I chose a style of launching the brand in an unfinished state with just one product and completing it through an incomplete organizational structure is "personalization." I designed the project with a strong awareness of the religious aspect inherent in brands, where those who agree with the philosophy give it physical form.

However, it is easier said than done. Communication with high school girls of a different generation, or with companies from different industries, did not always mesh well, and the work of synthesizing ideas and building a brand from scratch was more taxing than imagined. Nevertheless, when I see the people involved confidently saying, "We are creating this brand," regarding the things that took shape through continued discussion, I am convinced that the creative process is not in vain. I want to work hard every day with the goal of becoming a brand that broadcasts Japan's new culture.

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.