Case study
CASE STUDY
The cat that conquered the world: Hello
Kitty and the spread of Nippon culture
Jan Charbonneau
School of Marketing and Tourism, Central Queensland University
2
‘We recognize and accept that we have failed to
meet everyone’s expectations. We sincerely
apologize and ask for your forgiveness for any
inconvenience and disappointment this may have
caused. We wish to extend our sincere apologies
and thanks to the Singapore Police Force, Ministry
of the Environment, Singapore Civil Defence Force,
and everyone who has been inconvenienced
during this promotion.’
Stephens (2000) reporting on a full page statement by
McDonald’s Singapore appearing in Singapore newspapers,
January 2000.
‘During this promotion’? They can’t possibly mean a
marketing promotion, can they? The police, government
and civil defence forces needed for a marketing
promotion? The answer is yes—a marketing promotion,
needing the forces of law and order. McDonald’s in
Singapore underestimated the appeal of a white kitten
with bow and no mouth and her mouthless boyfriend and
the chaos caused when consumers felt they might miss
out. The kitten in question is, of course, ‘Hello Kitty’ and
her boyfriend, ‘Dear Daniel’. And the promotion—buy a
burger meal and get a 22 cm high Hello Kitty or Dear
Daniel for $2.60 Singapore dollars, a major savings
compared with the regular retail price.
When McDonald’s began the promotion on New Year’s
Day 2000, it had 2.4 million dolls on hand (in 12
different sets), which according to their estimates was
sufficient quantity for a six-week promotion. What
McDonald’s failed to add into their calculations was first,
the broad-based appeal of Hello Kitty, and secondly, the
Singaporean phenomenon known as kiasu, roughly
translated as ‘the fear of missing out’. Kiasu led
thousands of Singaporeans to wait in line all night to be
the first through the doors to get the increasingly scarce
dolls. Queue jumping led to the arrest of six people and
the injury of a policeman. One man was charged with
disorderly behaviour over protests after McDonald’s
opened a different door to the one he had been waiting
at for 12 hours. At its height, this McKitty McFrenzy
generated almost 300,000 daily visits to McDonald’s.
And they were not all prepubescent girls. Grandparents
lined for hours to get the toys for their grandchildren (or
so they claimed!). Fathers fought for the toy for their
children (again, so they claimed!).And over 20s wanted
Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel for traditional Valentine’s Day
love gifts.
McDonald’s acknowledged that it was caught
unawares and had seriously underestimated demand. To
quell the negative publicity (which reached world media)
they resorted to selling vouchers for Hello Kitty and Dear
Daniel dolls dressed in Chinese wedding outfits,
redeemable when stocks arrived in July 2000.
Embarrassed by garbage bins overflowing with discarded
burger meals in the early weeks of the promotion,
McDonald’s introduced a system where the cost of the
meal could be donated to charity.By mid-Februar y 2000,
$37 000 Singaporean dollars had been donated to
charity compared to estimated takings of $11.7 million
for McDonald’s. All for a little white kitten!
When Sanrio of Japan created Hello Kitty in 1974—
yes she’s in her late 20s!—little did its founder, Shintaro
Tsunji, know that he was creating a multibillion dollar
empire that would not just take hold in Japan but would
take Nippon culture not only to Asia but the rest of the
Source: © Sanrio Co., Ltd.
