At the request of importers of Jamaican coffee in Japan, the Jamaica Coffee Exporters Association (JCEA) is about to kick off a ¥6 million (J$6.4 million) marketing campaign inside the Asian country to re-energise demand for the luxurious Blue Mountain brew and diversify its consumption base.
The target of the campaign: The moneyed 30- to 50-year-old demographic.
Jamaican coffee exporters, working with the Association of Japanese Importers of Jamaican Coffee (AJIJC), have tapped the youthful international beauty Yendi Phillipps as the face of the 'JBM Golden Balance Campaign'.
Phillipps will make her first pitch inside Japan on June 15 and 16, and will participate in a Father's Day event, the Coffee Industry Board (CIB) said.
The promotion comes against the background of about a 40 per cent fall-off in coffee earnings from the Japanese market in the past year.
Japan has forced down the price of the coffee it buys, which has cut into the revenue of growers and processors.
In the past year, growers have been exiting the sector, notwithstanding entreaties from both the Jamaica Agricultural Society and the CoffeeIndustry Board to stay the course and not uproot their trees.
CIB Director General Christopher Gentles said he could not immediately quantify the levels of attrition, but that the withdrawals were related both to climate change and storm events as well as market challenges within the industry.
"The level of attrition we cannot assess at this point in time; however, we are encouraging farmers that there is some recovery in the market," Gentles said.
In pre-recession times, Japan bought as much as 85 per cent of Jamaican coffee, but supplies to that market fell last year to around 50 per cent, according to the 2010 Economic and Social Survey Jamaica.
Gentles said Friday that the new marketing campaign is one of several funded from a US$0.20 cess per pound on coffee sent to Japan. Half of the cess is paid to the board by JCEA members and half by AJIJC.
"We are trying to engage a younger and wealthy demographic, as the existing set of coffee drinkers in Japan ageing baby boomers," Gentles explains.
"Our diehard consumers are getting older. We have to renew the image to appeal to those who are younger."
Richard Sharpe, president of the JCEA, said the programme was a direct request of the AJIJC. "We do campaigns based on the advice of importers. They know the market better than we do," he said.
The campaign will pitch Jamaica Blue Mountain as a premium coffee with a "golden balance, and is therefore equal to the number-one balance in the world."
Indeed, CIB said Phillipps was selected for the pitch because of her 'golden body'.
"Miss Phillipps, who received the award for the Best Beach Body in Miss Universe, can be described as being of golden proportions and is a fitting pairing with the world's finest coffee with its golden balance — Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee," said the coffee regulator's release.
Her role will include sampling coffee, client interaction in cafés, and media events.
The promotions will highlight the product's aroma, flavour, and rich mouth feel, and stress that Jamaica Blue Mountain is grown in a unique climate and is picked and processed by hand."
Both Gentles and Sharpe said that they would also have loved to have Usain Bolt on-board, but that they could not afford his fees.
"Usain is in the Diamond League and is also very expensive. He is very popular in Japan, but we can't afford him," Sharpe said.
He adds, however, that the JCEA and the CIB will be piggy-backing on Bolt's popularity during London 2010, at which time the use of his image will be less costly.
Last year, the value of coffee exports saw a dramatic 46 per cent drop to US$19.2 million, coming from US$35.7 million in 2009.
Deliveries of Blue Mountain cherry coffee declined by 25 per cent to 7,535 tonnes, while non-Blue Mountain beans fell by 34.3 per cent to 1,586 tonnes.
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