Three New Consumer Desires in an Emotionally Muted Society — and How Brands Are Responding

Hiroko Matsui (Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living) breaks down three emerging consumer needs in an emotionally suppressed society and the brand strategies responding to them.

• McDonald’s Japan “No Smile” hiring campaign won a Cannes Lions award
• Hakuhodo conducted in-depth interviews with 52 people and identified three core desires: regulate, express, and connect
• Regulation tools: contemporary tanka poetry, AI-generated spiritual perspectives, and checking others’ social feeds to calibrate one’s own emotions
• Expression tools: anonymous fan communities, internet memes, and AI-assisted message drafting to create psychological safety
• In collaboration with DAZN, AI converts live sports-watching emotions into song lyrics and serves beverage ads at peak excitement moments
• Gal-style brainstorming (cgo.com): a facilitation format built around self-directedness, intuition, and positivity — designed so participants feel safe speaking up
• In Hawaii, showing bad temper twice can legally result on termination — mood self-management is becoming law
• National caloric intake has fallen to postwar levels, suggesting energy deficiency as a contributing factor to emotional suppression

2026-04-13 · Watch on YouTube

Japanese page: 感情ミュート社会の新欲求と企業対応