The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 1996
Lotte turns 11/11 into Pepero Day — Korea's chocolate-stick gift holiday
Lotte built a gift holiday from a visual pun: 11/11 looks like two Pepero sticks, so the date became Korea's snack-gifting day — sales jumped sevenfold.
Lotte Confectionery
What it had to solve
By the mid-1990s Pepero sold steadily in Korea but was just another snack; Lotte wanted a bigger, self-renewing sales occasion than a launch campaign.
How it works
November 11 in South Korea is Pepero Day, a gift-giving occasion built on a visual pun: two Pepero sticks side by side look like the number 11, and 11/11 is the day to give them. The Korea Herald traces Lotte Confectionery's marketing campaign designating the date to 1996, while KBS World reports the tradition began with middle-school girls in Busan in 1994, handing friends Pepero with the wish to become tall and thin — 'like the number 1' — before Lotte started pushing the date itself.
The company noticed an emergent custom and industrialized it. According to the Korea Herald, Lotte Confectionery launched a campaign in 1996 making November 11 Pepero Day, filling street stalls, convenience stores and supermarkets with the chocolate-covered sticks. The effect was dramatic: sales jumped about sevenfold, and Lotte's cumulative Pepero sales rose from 163 billion won in the 1983–1995 period to 1.1 trillion won between 1996 and September 2016.
What started as one snack's promotion became a shared calendar ritual. KBS World notes that about two-thirds of Pepero's yearly sales now fall in the two months before November 11, and the Korea Herald reports that nearly half of all Pepero sales are concentrated in November itself. The day also lifts the whole sweets category — jellies, candies and other chocolates all spike during the week — and high-end bakeries and chocolatiers now sell gourmet Pepero alongside the original sticks.
Why it lands
- The date was free cultural infrastructure: 11/11 already looked like the product and already carried a student superstition, so the campaign amplified an existing behavior instead of creating one.
- A gifting day sells in a season, not a moment — November becomes a month-long sales window with a fixed, self-renewing deadline every year.
- The story was giftable: 'eat a stick, wish to be tall and thin like the number 1' is one line any student can pass on, which is how word of mouth did most of the distribution.
- By attaching the meaning to the date rather than to a single ad, Lotte made the holiday feel cultural and shared, so competitors and bakeries joined in and enlarged the occasion for everyone.
What it did
Pepero sales jumped about sevenfold after the day took off. Lotte puts cumulative sales at 163 billion won for 1983–1995 versus 1.1 trillion won for 1996 to September 2016, with nearly half of annual sales now landing in November.
What you can take
If your product's shape maps onto a date, own the date: a repeatable gifting occasion turns one snack into an annual cultural event. Feed a tradition that already started instead of inventing one.
Since then
Pepero Day became one of South Korea's fixed cultural dates. Nearly half of annual Pepero sales land in November, the whole sweets market spikes that week, and the custom outgrew its maker: high-end bakeries and chocolatiers now sell their own gourmet Pepero, and the day is widely treated as a modern Korean tradition comparable to Valentine's Day rather than as a company promotion.
Sources
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