Anime and Gen Z—how Duolingo, Ikea and others are using Japanese cartoons to reach younger consumers

Brands eager to connect with elusive Gen Z consumers are embracing an increasingly popular entertainment genre to gain their favor: anime. In the last few years, anime has exploded from a niche interest to a mainstream entertainment format, largely driven by the genre’s surging popularity among Gen Z. A growing number of brands, including Ikea, Duolingo and McDonald’s, are jumping on the anime bandwagon and incorporating anime-inspired imagery and themes into their marketing. Brands are leveraging the genre's popularity to create commercials or content series that emulate the distinct animation style; collaborating with anime series or major players in the industry; or sharing social media posts nodding to popular shows. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Duolingo (@duolingo) “Gen Z, more than any other generation, is such a global generation. They’re not just watching American-made content—they’re listening to K-pop, watching anime or incorporating Korean beauty products into their daily routines,” said Anastasia Pelot, a content marketing manager at youth market research firm YPulse. “Global content is here—in their living rooms and on their phone screens—and they don’t have to go out of their way to be able to experience it.” Also read: Brands resonating with Gen Z In a YPulse survey of 16- to 34-year-old consumers conducted in February 2022, 66% responded that they “like anime,” and just over one-third reported watching anime at least once per week. Data from Morning Consult echoed YPulse’s findings, with 42% of millennials and 25% of Gen Z adults identifying as anime fans in an October 2022 survey. Demand for anime content surged 118% between 2020 and 2022, according to Parrot Analytics, a global entertainment analytics company. Global media companies have leveraged this growing consumption of anime, with Netflix striking distribution deals and spearheading live-action adaptations of popular series including “Cowboy Bebop” and “One Piece”—the latter of which Netflix unveiled a trailer for at last week’s San Diego Comic-Con. Welcome to the Great Pirate Era. The legendary quest to discover the ONE PIECE sets sail August 31 pic.twitter.com/iwTZutjJaS— Netflix (@netflix) July 22, 2023 The anime boom extends beyond just streaming series. Duolingo recently found that Japanese is the fourth-most-common language among the app’s U.S. users—particularly those below age 30, who comprise 86% of Japanese language learners on the app. The language's popularity among Duolingo's target Gen Z audience drove it to team up with anime streaming service Crunchyroll in May, said Michaela Kron, Duolingo’s U.S. marketing director. The two companies brought about 50 words and phrases from notable anime series to Duolingo’s Japanese course, as well as well-known memes stemming from anime, such as the “Is this a pigeon?” meme that originated from an anime screencap, Kron said. Duolingo and Crunchyroll chose phrases and memes that would “maximize their social sharing potential,” she said, tying into the anime genre’s ubiquity on social media. On TikTok, the hashtag #Anime has over 1 trillion views, 2 billion of those in just the past week, according to data from the platform. Duolingo and Crunchyroll announced their partnership with an anime-style social video showing a meeting between their two mascots, Duo and Hime. @duolingo our @crunchyroll collab is all going according to plan 🤭 To celebrate our new OTP, you get a free month of Crunchyroll Mega Fan for all of your anime needs😮💨 link in bio #anime #languagelearning #duolingo #dulapeep ♬ original sound - Duolingo Duolingo’s social media team also nodded to anime fans in a series of posts across TikTok, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) following the partnership announcement. In one TikTok video, the team dressed Duo in the outfit worn by the main character of the anime series “Sailor Moon” and swapped the mascot’s eyes for the large, sparkly ones often seen in anime—a suggestion that came directly from anime fans on Duolingo’s team, rather than Crunchyroll, Kron said. Another Duolingo employee crafted a list of anime references and popular phrases among fans, based on their own experience as an anime fan, for the social media team to include in comments, she said. “We are very fortunate within Duolingo to have some really diehard anime fans, and I think this campaign really started with that passion,” she said. “Pop culture is this really ubiquitous, fun aspect of people’s lives, and with that comes certain fandoms and interests. Often, those tie back to language, and anime is such a great example of that.” Ikea, meanwhile, wove anime into its back-to-college campaign with a series of three anime-style videos depicting college students in various living situations. The company was quick to embrace the concept of a mini-series based on the “slice of life” anime sub-genre—which consists of series focusing on everyday elements of life, such as education or relationships—as a way to connect with Gen Z, said Sho Matsuzaki, a creative director at Ogilvy New York who worked on the Ikea campaign. View this post on Instagram A post shared by IKEA USA (@ikeausa) The three videos, created by animation studio Clubcamping, emulate the animation style of “Lofi Girl,” a YouTube channel featuring a livestream of an anime character studying or relaxing in her room while soothing music plays in the background, said Fanny Josefsson, another creative director at Ogilvy. The livestream was viewed nearly 670 million times between 2020 and 2022, and “Lofi Girl’s” massive popularity only further convinced the Ogilvy team that anime could present a key opportunity for Ikea to resonate with Gen Z consumers stocking up for college in a new way, Matsuzaki and Josefsson said. Ad Age Gen Z Contributor Column We welcome Gen Zers to submit fresh takes exploring Gen Z within the ad industry Learn more here “When we were looking into what are some trends or topics that Gen Z is sort of being drawn to, one of the things that kept coming up was anime,” Matsuzaki said. “And part of it was honestly our junior art director, who is Gen Z and kept insisting, ‘Anime isn’t a niche thing anymore. People in my generation are watching this stuff.’ It came as a bit of a surprise to me, but … with exposure from Netflix and HBO picking up these anime shows and making live-action remakes, it’s putting big names and big money in front of these titles and making them a big part of the cultural zeitgeist.” Earlier this year, Nissan teamed up with Lofi Girl to promote its electric vehicle, the Nissan Ariya. The automaker created a four-hour-long video in a similar anime-inspired art style that depicts a female cartoon character driving the vehicle model, set to relaxing music. It has become Nissan's most-viewed YouTube video, drawing in over 18 million views in the five months since its release. Creative studio The Mayda Creative Co. was behind the effort. Nearly a third of 16- to 34-year-olds are interested in seeing brands create original anime content in the same vein as Ikea’s campaign. Brands such as Acura and Taco Bell have also previously tapped into branded anime mini-series and short films. Ogilvy’s team also worked with Ikea to create a manga—a Japanese style of graphic novel that is often the source material for anime series—to accompany the campaign. Matsuzaki views the manga as a “love letter to direhard anime fans” who enjoyed the genre even before its recent rise to pop culture prominence. Axe created a manga called “Shonen Baby” as part of its ongoing partnership with rapper Lil Baby. The Unilever-owned male grooming brand has infused anime-inspired visuals into its marketing since its 2021 “The New Axe Effect” campaign, said Caroline Gregory, global brand director at Axe, in an email. But when the brand teamed up with Lil Baby, a big fan of anime and manga himself, Axe plunged headfirst into anime-inspired marketing with flashy, colorful content blending real-life visuals and animated elements, including its “G.O.A.T Mall” video spot in March of this year and the “Shonen Baby” manga released in May, she said. @axe Buy AXE at @Walmart before June 15th and get an invite to @Lil Baby’s debut manga, Shonen Baby. Checkout axegoat.com for all the details. #shonenbaby #lilbaby #lilbaby4pf ♬ original sound - AXE Both of this year’s anime-inspired campaigns have been well-received by Axe’s social media audience, many of whom are fans of the genre themselves, Gregory said. The TikTok video announcing the launch of the “Shonen Baby” manga, for example, received over 57 million views on the platform, and the “G.O.A.T Mall” commercial is one of Axe’s most-viewed YouTube videos, she said. Some brands have moved beyond anime-inspired content series or commercials to collaborate with popular anime series on products, such as clothing, makeup and shoes. Gucci, for example, has created two collections featuring anime cats: a bright blue robotic cat named “Doraemon” and a white cat whose lower half is a banana named “Bananya.” Makeup brands, including the Gen Z-oriented ColourPop, have also collaborated with anime series including “Sailor Moon” and “Naruto.” @colourpopco Believe it! 🧡🍥🍜 ♬ original sound - ColourPop Cosmetics Other brands have sought to connect with anime fans through major community gatherings, such as Anime Expo in Los Angeles. At this year’s event, which ran from July 1-4 and drew over 150,000 attendees, McDonald’s hosted an activation in partnership with Webtoon, a platform for Korean digital comics that share stylistic similarities to Japanese manga. The two companies created a “pop-up restaurant” that essentially served as “an official McDonald’s in Webtoon-style for fans to experience,” said Elizabeth Campbell, VP of field marketing and local culture for McDonald’s USA, in an email. McDonald’s began leaning into anime and digital comics last year, when the brand shared fan art of the anime-inspired mascot of content creator group, OfflineTV, eating the restaurant brand’s french fries, Campbell said. The positive response to that post pushed McDonald’s to partner with Webtoon last year on its “Drawing on Heritage” campaign to uplift four Webtoon artists for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Showing up at Anime Expo was a natural next step for McDonald’s as the brand continues to explore the anime space and “adjacent art styles,” she said. @tuonto Rolled... INTO McDONALD'sxWEBTOON BOOTH HEHEHEEH #ad #McDxWEBTOON #AnimeExpo2023 ♬ original sound - tuonto “Anime has become a driving force in culture,” Campbell said. “It’s bigger than just animation—we’re seeing fans rally around the food, fashion, storytelling and even the voice actors playing their favorite characters.”

Anime and Gen Z—how Duolingo, Ikea and others are using Japanese cartoons to reach younger consumers

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