Suntory Iyemon: a whisky firm and a 1790 Kyoto teahouse bottle green tea as a drama

By 2004 every drink maker in Japan sold PET-bottle green tea, and Suntory — great at whisky, weak in tea — had never had a hit in it. Competing on taste claims alone was hopeless against Ito En, Kirin and Coca-Cola's scale.

Build the brand on a real 1790 Kyoto teahouse — its founder's name, its tea master's blend, a bamboo flask as the bottle — told as a two-decade period drama on TV.

Suntory partnered with Fukujuen, the Kyoto tea house founded in 1790: the brand took the name of its founder Fukui Iyemon, Fukujuen's tea master has owned leaf sourcing and blending since day one, and the bottle reproduces the bamboo flask of that era. Hakuhodo and Hakuhodo Design built the campaign around a serial CM directed by Shinji Nakajima — Motoki as 'Iyemon-han', Miyazawa as his wife, from courtship to marriage — scored by Joe Hisaishi's 'Oriental Wind'. At launch Suntory even got 7-Eleven to clear rivals' bottles from shelves on day one.

Iyemon went from zero to a fixture of the category: the launch campaign ranked No. 2 in the TV CM division of the 2005 45th ACC CM Festival, and twenty years on the brand still sits in the top two of Japan's PET green-tea market against Ayataka and Namacha, with the same couple format intact.

Bottled green tea was the bloodiest shelf in 2000s Japan, and Suntory was losing it. Its answer was not another taste test win but a change of identity: Iyemon, launched on 16 March 2004, is named for Fukui Iyemon, founder of Fukujuen, a Kyoto tea house founded in 1790, whose tea master — not a beverage lab — has been responsible for leaf selection and blending since the first bottle.

Every asset pointed the same direction. The PET bottle copies the bamboo flask a Kyoto customer of 1790 would have carried, so the container itself argues 'this is tea, not a soft drink'. The CMs, directed by Shinji Nakajima, play as a slow period drama: Masahiro Motoki as Iyemon, Rie Miyazawa as the woman he courts and marries, with Joe Hisaishi's 'Oriental Wind' under it — a serial the brand has kept recasting for twenty years.

The launch made sure the story reached hands as well as screens: Suntory persuaded 7-Eleven, then the country's biggest chain, to pull competing green teas from shelves for the launch date — shelf space as a plot device for a brand whose whole pitch was seriousness.

The industry noticed early: the 'Shishou ni' and related spots took No. 2 in the TV CM division of the 2005 ACC CM Festival. Two decades later the brand is still a top-two player in Japanese PET green tea, fighting Ayataka and Namacha with the same Kyoto story it told on day one.

Authenticity was structural, not cosmetic: a real tea master owning the blend beats any 'expert-approved' label, and it cannot be copied by rivals without hiring Fukujuen.

The 1790 bamboo flask made the bottle the advertisement — a shape nobody else could use without admitting it was copying.

Serial storytelling gave a commodity repeat attention: viewers came back for the couple's story, not for tasting notes, so the media buy bought memory instead of reach.

Distribution was choreographed into the narrative — clearing 7-Eleven shelves on launch day made the brand's arrival itself feel like an event.

When you cannot out-spend a category, out-source your credibility to its oldest living craftsman — and give that partnership a story form people want to keep watching.

Iyemon became Suntory's tea platform: relaunches in 2010, 2012, 2017 and 2024 kept the bamboo motif while the taste pushed deeper-steamed first-flush leaf; the brand even went to San Francisco as 'IYEMON CHA' in 2008. In 2020 its sales grew 30% year on year and it took its first No. 1 in the value share of Japan's unsweetened tea market, before settling back to a stable top-two position. The CM couple format, recast over the years, ran into its third decade in 2024 — when the brand, for the first time, flipped its advertising to speak from the drinker's side with actor Masato Sakai.