100 Stories1985 Asahi Beer Campaign

In 1981, Asahi Kasei acquired 22 million shares of Asahi Beer (it was renamed Asahi Beer in 1989) and formed a business partnership with the company.
Although the tie-up caused quite a stir in the media as it was a partnership between two companies in completely different fields, it was a decision made after much thought and consideration by Kagayaki Miyazaki, who was the top executive at the time.

The impetus for this decision came from Ichiro Isoda, then president of Sumitomo Bank, the main bank for the two companies, who asked the company to take a stake in Asahi Breweries.

At the time, nearly 64 million shares of Asahi Breweries stock had been bought up by a certain group, and negotiations to repurchase the shares were nearing their conclusion. Asahi Kasei was one of the companies that had been offered the opportunity to buy back the shares.

President Kagayaki Miyazaki hesitated, but thought that combining Asahi Beer's fermentation technology with Asahi Kasei's bio-chemicals would broaden the scope of the technology, and that both companies would gain a great deal in R&D, information exchange, sales, and many other areas.

Asahi Kasei is also involved in the food industry, and the partnership with Asahi Breweries would be an extremely powerful reinforcement to strengthen their presence in the industry. The fact that Asahi Kasei considered beer, whiskey, and soft drinks to be promising areas in the food industry was also a factor in their acceptance of this offer.

Miyazaki also considered the merits for Asahi Kasei as well as to Asahi Breweries. Of course, the stabilization of the stock was a definite advantage of joining forces with Asahi Kasei, but Miyazaki also developed some unique policies.

One such measure was Asahi Kasei Group's “Asahi Beer Campaign.” The idea was to increase Asahi Beer's market share by establishing an organization in Nobeoka called the Drink Promotion Office. Miyazaki himself switched from the beer he had been drinking to Asahi Beer. He also decided to drink whiskey made by Nikka Whiskey, a subsidiary of Asahi Breweries.

As a result, Asahi Beer's market share, which had been less than 10% in Nobeoka, jumped to over 30%. Subsequently, the Designated Case Buying Campaign and Designated Drinking Campaign were developed through unions in districts other than Nobeoka, and when Super Dry was launched in March 1987, its market share accelerated to 63% in 1989.
Of course, the industry was not so easy to push into, and it wasn’t as though the Asahi Beer Campaign was enough to increase the overall market share of Asahi Beer; it was certain that the market share gain was largely due to Asahi Beer's corporate efforts and other factors, but Miyazaki's enthusiasm for the campaign was evident: “Since we went to the trouble of forming a partnership, we want to cooperate fully with our partner.”

It is also worth mentioning that each and every employee in this campaign was united in pursuit of the goal. Despite the fact that it was a seemingly unrelated company, the spirit of everyone working together to help Asahi Breweries was clearly conveyed to the employees. If one were to say that Asahi Kasei employees simply drank beer, that might be true. However, the cooperation of everyone toward a goal, however small it may be, was a characteristic of Asahi Kasei that has been passed down since the company's inception.