Nov 7 For the first time in its 92-year history, Japanese snacks maker Ezaki Glico is getting serious about growing overseas, aiming to fatten its Pocky biscuit into a $1 billion brand to rival global giants such as Hershey's and Oreo.
The company's Glico brand and its 48-year-old stick-shaped, chocolate-coated Pocky pretzels are household names in Japan but elsewhere the marque has stalled, capping the firm's overseas business at just a tenth of its $3 billion revenue.
Now, the company is rewriting its branding and marketing strategies for Pocky, targeting a more than doubling in sales to $1 billion by 2020. Only 21 snack brands in the world belong to the billion-dollar club, none of them Asian.
The plan involves the adoption of the Pocky name everywhere except Europe, where a joint venture is complicating matters, plus uniform new packaging and a universal tagline: "Share Happiness".