The hurdles are high, but if they succeed it would mean a huge boost to profits," said Tomonobu Tsunoyama, senior analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center, the research arm of Tokai Tokyo Securities.
The task has fallen on Tsuyoshi Matsuki, appointed as global brand manager for Pocky, a post created in Thailand in 2012.
To strengthen the product's brand identity, Matsuki standardised the package design to a red box for regular chocolate-flavoured Pocky, and came up with the new marketing slogan. This year in Malaysia, he re-branded the snack from "Rocky", its name there for the past four decades.