How JCB rebranded with ‘Better with Omotenashi’

The Quest for Global Recognition

Despite being a prominent international brand known for its credit card and electronic payment services, JCB struggled with familiarity among its European Merchant and Acquirer target audiences – with some in the region confusing the brand with the similarly named digger company.

Luckily, this made our goals clear:

• Rebrand and reposition JCB Europe as a collaborative, trusted global brand that empowers customers to accelerate growth in secure, seamless, and efficient ways
• Differentiate JCB by helping it cut through and ensure its target audiences understood the brand’s unique qualities, values, and customer-centric approach

Getting to Know Our Audience

JCB has two audience segments:

• Acquirers (Payment Service Providers) – their direct audience. Financial institutions who process card payments for businesses. The more JCB Cards accepted in Europe, the more convenient and enjoyable it is for JCB Cardmembers (end-customers) to shop in Europe and spend money.
• Merchants – their indirect audience. These are the retailers who JCB Cardmembers visit to purchase goods when they travel to Europe. By encouraging Merchants to ask their Acquiring partners to accept JCB, they have a direct influence on what payment brands are accepted by Acquirers.

Understanding What Makes JCB Unique

To inform and shape our approach, we conducted a set of primary and secondary research initiatives:

• Stakeholder alignment interviews – Twenty 60-minute interviews with the JCB Executive Leadership team in Europe and Asia that allowed us to capture insights on where the brand stood at the time and ensured our goals, expectations, and criteria for success aligned – galvanising trust and buy-in between our agency and client teams.
• Sales team surveys – A confidential online survey sent to all senior sales leads that revealed insights from those who’re often customers’ first point of contact. This revealed their pain points and feedback on brand perceptions, ensuring we knew what was necessary to sell effectively and resonate with our target audience.
• Voice of the Customer interviews and surveys – Six 30-minute virtual interviews and 14 online surveys with existing Merchants and Acquirers who’d explored the role and value JCB brought to their business – revealing opinions on brand experience and what made JCB distinct from the market.
• Voice of the Employee survey – Honest feedback from employees on JCB’s key brand strengths and weaknesses; sentiment around brand values, vision, and mission; and what working at JCB was like from a cultural, personality, and engagement perspective.
• ‘Prospect buyer’ brand health survey – 300 prospect buyers matching JCB’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and their current levels of awareness, familiarity, sentiment, and consideration of the JCB brand to find valuable insights into their challenges, priorities, and most sought-after qualities/attributes.
• Competitor benchmarking – Secondary desk research benchmarking the JCB brand’s positioning, purpose, and value proposition against 11 key competitors (creative expression in-market through imagery, messaging, and tone of voice).

From Japan to the World

While the market showed its hesitancy to adopt a Japanese brand in lieu of its perceived more innovative and dynamic competitors in VISA/Mastercard/AMEX, our research phase revealed a startling truth:

Existing customers, employees, and stakeholders LOVED the cultural differences and values JCB brought to the European market. The business took more pride in the level of quality, care, and consideration it gave its customers. JCB’s Japanese heritage set them apart.

The same audiences revealed competitors paid less attention to customer care and building strong, supportive relationships with its customers compared to JCB.

Business Is Better With Omotenashi

Rather than shy away from JCB’s heritage, we decided to lean into it. Enter the ‘Better With Omotenashi’ brand and creative platform.

Omotenashi is the uniquely Japanese art of customer care, diligence, and consideration. By focusing on the extra level of support partners could get from JCB, we transformed concerns about its speed of service into a celebrated aspect of its brand experience.

Using the principles of Omotenashi as a charming and powerful canvas for expression, we developed a series of beautiful watercolour-style illustrations in keeping with the traditional Japanese art style, Nihonga. Each promoted the key qualities and values of a JCB partnership while also exuding a sense of warmth, quality, and consideration through the deliberate use of subtle colours and precise brushstrokes – all to show JCB was ‘Uniquely Yours’. This creative approach starkly contrasted a market filled with business blues and suited-up salespeople, aiding standout from launch.

Customer-First Activation

We wanted to engage, educate, and inspire our audience, so we used a multi-channel strategy to bring ‘Better With Omotenashi’ to life across:

• Digital amplification – Using LinkedIn, YouTube, and programmatic and display ads in industry publications like the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and The Economist to drive awareness. Owned social channels amplified engagement, while white papers and eGuides provided in-depth insights, establishing our credibility.
• Thought leadership – A video series featuring key customers and prospects about real-world applications of Omotenashi in payments, fostering deeper audience connection.
• Live engagements – PR and events that included JCB’s first-ever panel discussion with top decision-makers representing the business and its customers underscoring the industry's shift towards trust-based economies to spark meaningful dialogue and reinforce JCB’s leadership.

Game-Changing Results

We’ve delivered some outstanding results, far exceeding our targets across all our key metrics, but most critically across awareness, familiarity, and consideration.