Truly Deeply/Madly

Con­tin­u­ing the theme from an ear­lier blog, which sang the praises of endur­ing sto­ry­telling of the comic series Archie, here is another exam­ple of superb cre­ativ­ity expressed through a comic series. What is inter­est­ing here is that this par­tic­u­lar comic series truly dri­ves brand pref­er­ence. It is a Japan­ese Manga comic series  with a very novel plot. Called “The Drops of the Gods” it fol­lows the main char­ac­ter Shizuku as he learns about wine, allow­ing the reader to do the same.

At the start of the series, Shizuku has rebelled against his father, a famous wine critic, by refus­ing to drink wine and work­ing instead for a brew­ery. Sud­denly, though, his father dies and leaves in his will a descrip­tion of 12 wines he con­sid­ers the world’s best, com­par­ing them to the dis­ci­ples of Jesus. Pit­ted against his adopted brother, who hap­pens to be a som­me­lier, Shizuku must catch up in his knowl­edge so he can find the 12 wines men­tioned in his father’s will and inherit his father’s vast cel­lar.

Cre­ated and writ­ten by a middle-aged Japan­ese sister-and-brother team, Yuko Kibayashi, 49, and her brother, Shin, 46, writ­ing under the pseu­do­nym Tadashi Agi, they came up with the series while col­lab­o­rat­ing on another comic four or five years ago. Nei­ther has any pro­fes­sional wine-tasting cre­den­tials; they say they are inter­ested not in using the sommelier’s jar­gon but rather in describ­ing wine from the aver­age drinker’s per­spec­tive. But they do smack of authen­tic­ity. They have long been wine lovers — so much so that they rent an apart­ment just to stock their 3,000-bottle col­lec­tion and pay for an earthquake-warning sys­tem to pro­tect it. Pas­sion is a great dri­ver and they are dri­ven. The comic — which appears every Thurs­day in Japan in a mag­a­zine called the Weekly Morn­ing and has been com­piled into 17 books thus far.

Since com­ing out of nowhere four to five years ago, this 20-something Japan­ese would-be som­me­lier has quickly become the most influ­en­tial voice in Asia’s wine mar­kets. In Japan, wine sell­ers grab copies of the mag­a­zine as soon as it comes out on Thurs­days, quickly show­cas­ing a fea­tured wine in their stores or on their Web sites. Peo­ple reg­u­larly enquire about spe­cific wines that are ref­er­enced in the comic series.

The wines fea­tured in the comic are selected by the Kibayashis, who say they have no spon­sor. They do, how­ever, accept free bot­tles from wine importers, although no guar­an­tee that they will appear in the sto­ry­line (but a great way to add to their wine col­lec­tion and force them to build their prop­erty port­fo­lio!). In gen­eral, French wines have got­ten the most atten­tion in the series. The Kibayashis are unabashed Fran­cophiles who say they do not feel Amer­i­can wines have the Old World’s depth. But the good news is that some Aus­tralian wines cut the mus­tard. In fact as reported in The Age recently the comic has been extolling the virtues of d’Arenberg’s 2006 Laugh­ing Magpie, hand-cultivated shi­raz viog­nier blend. The story has the main char­ac­ter Kan­zaki trav­el­ing aboard to sam­ple the Laugh­ing Mag­pie, result­ing in the fol­low­ing descrip­tion of the wine, ‘ it’s spicy and over­flow­ing with ener­getic life. It’s both exotic and made for nor­mal peo­ple at the same time.’

And you guessed it, the Laugh­ing Mag­pie is in deed laugh­ing. The 200 bot­tles avail­able in Japan sold out imme­di­ately, and since then demand has exceed sup­ply, with d’Arenberg win­ery hav­ing to move into an early release of the 2007 vin­tage.

The Drops of the Gods is a won­der­ful exam­ple of imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­ity.
It has devel­oped a superb story plot to enable it to explore the joys of wine dis­cov­ery. For­get, that it is a comic or that it is about wine, sim­ply take it as a chal­lenge. A chal­lenge to cre­ate an imag­i­na­tive vehi­cle or medium that allows you to evolve a sto­ry­line for your brand that is both flex­i­ble and engag­ing. Five years ago in Japan there was no comic series called the Drops of the Gods. Imag­i­na­tion has pro­duced an amaz­ingly pow­er­ful voice on all things wine. Where will your brand sto­ry­telling magic reside?

If you would like to share a glass of the Laugh­ing Mag­pie and kick around some ideas on how best
to evolve your brand’s sto­ry­line get in touch. At the very least you will get to enjoy a few Drops of
the Gods.

Pete

Tags: Authentic, Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Brand-Storytelling, code of visual langauge, Corporate Image, d'Arenberg’s-2006-Laughing-Magpie, Graphic Design Melbourne, The-Drops-of-the-Gods, Visual Language, Weekly-Morning

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Brand Voice, Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.