New Campaign From Glico and Kirin Lets You Play Matchmaker With Packaging

This week in genius marketing: Glico and Kirin teamed up to create a joint packaging campaign for their most popular products. When you put a specially-packaged Kirin tea (called "gogo no kocha") next to a box of Glico's specially-packaged Pocky (the midi variety), the illustrations line up to show a couple canoodling. Since both products are releasing new products at the same time—"teagurt"-flavored tea and lemon-flavored Pocky—they decided to celebrate with the "Sweet Love Story" collaboration.

Kirin's new bottles of tea each feature one of six different well-dressed characters; Glico's new Pocky will have one of two yellow-clad characters (because lemon!). Shops and consumers can mix and match the drinks and snacks to create 12 different variations of a cute couple sharing a romantic moment. The campaign has already gotten some praise from Japan's LGBT community for including same-sex couples.

This is the second time the two companies teamed up to tell a love story. In 2010, they paired their apple tea and custard Pocky with illustrations of princes and princesses.

This packaging is pretty clever, because just trying one product means splitting up a couple. Trying both the tea and Pocky lets the buyer indulge their inner matchmaker, which is pretty strong in all of us. Plus, who can deny a tasty snack and beverage combo?

[h/t Spoon & Tamago]