Joint campaign with Japanese online giant drives wool sales

The two-month campaign, which was launched in November last year, put Merino wool at the front of digitally savvy shoppers’ minds – all with the aim to make Merino wool the most coveted apparel fibre for Japanese consumers during the peak selling winter season.

Rakuten Fashion is a huge and growing premium fashion e-commerce platform. Its parent company is a Japanese e-commerce titan with annual revenue in the past financial year worth A$25 billion.

“The objective of our marketing campaign with Rakuten Fashion was twofold: education and action. Firstly, to increase Japanese consumers’ awareness of Merino wool’s eco-credentials and benefits, and secondly, drive large-scale consumer purchases of Merino wool apparel throughout the autumn/winter season,” said AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea, Samuel Cockedey.

“This was the largest campaign of this type we have ever conducted in the Japanese market. It showcased Merino wool products from 790 brands, with more than 2.3 million wool rich products available to purchase, an increase in volume of 15.7% from last year.”

“The campaign performed extremely well, in line with our objectives. Even with the same budget as last year, the campaign promoted an increased number of wool rich products containing in total an estimated 575,000 kg of wool.”

Samuel Cockedey, AWI Regional Manager Japan & Korea

Digital and social marketing campaign

The key objective of the campaign was to direct consumers to a wool landing page on the Rakuten Fashion website which showcased an enormous range of shoppable wool-rich apparel and accessory products for men, women and children.

The wool hub also included editorial content highlighting the benefits of Australian Merino wool including its quality and eco-credentials. The key message of the campaign centred on ‘Merino wool, a gift from nature’, which resonated well in the Japanese market.

A multi-channel digital and social campaign on Rakuten Fashion’s owned media drove online traffic to the wool landing page through advertising banners on the Rakuten Fashion website, push notifications on its mobile application, e-newsletters to its large client base of consumers, and posts on its Instagram channel. Additional online traffic was driven through Woolmark’s own digital and social channels.

The digital campaign performed extremely well, achieving 78 million impressions (which is the number of times the campaign was seen online) and 450,000 clicks through to the wool hub page where customers could buy wool products.

Celebrity imagery boosts sales

The campaign included imagery featuring famous Japanese influencers Kiko Mizuhara and Keigo Okazaki (pictured at the top of the page) which significantly boosted engagement and sales. Kiko Mizuhara is a Los Angeles-based actress and model who grew up in Japan and is regularly listed as one of the top 3 Instagram influencers in Japan. Keigo Okazaki is a notable male fashion model and musician.

“A key learning from the last year’s campaign with Rakuten Fashion was that using models or influencers with a strong follower base in the key campaign visuals can make up for reduced media buy budgets, and the two celebrities we used in the most recent campaign reflected this by again boosting engagement and sales,” Samuel said.

This article appeared in the Winter 2025 edition of AWI’s Beyond the Bale magazine that was published in June 2025. Reproduction of the article is encouraged.