Aflac Duck Case Study

Summary
The case study is about an insurance company named American Family Life
Assurance Company. In the case, the CEO Daniel of Aflac (Acronym) tells how he
makes Aflac successful and famous. Daniel shutdown the old underperforming
operations, when he joined the company as CEO. To distinguish from others whose
name start with American, he choices to use acronym that is Aflac. Daniel focus is to
increase name recognition. For that purpose, he invited several agencies to test their
ideas. Out of them, New York based Kaplan Thaler Group invented the idea of Aflac
duck. Aflac CEO, Daniel allowed them to test the commercial. The previous
commercials of Aflac were underperforming as compared to other financial services
commercials and only one commercial of Aflac scored 12 that is 12% name
recognition among people in past six years.
In Kaplan Thaler testing a commercial featuring an actor of a hit television show
scored 18 that are 50% better but the testing of duck ad scored 27. Daniel consults it
with its CEO friends, who suggest him to go with the safe choice; commercial
featuring the actor. Daniel decided to run the ad for two weeks as a test and if
anything goes wrong, he will pull the ad. The first ad of Aflac duck was aired on New
Years Day on CNN and many business people were watching the news because of
possible destruction of Y2K virus. So, they got maximum saturation. The idea was so
successful that people demanded stuffed animal version of duck and they start selling
it and donate its proceeds to Aflac Cancer Center.
The confirmation of the idea is done, when all the ducks put on the table at Disney
studio for an event sponsored by Aflac is picked up by all the members and the sales
were up 29% and the name recognition is up by 67%. Today, the Aflac name
recognition is higher than 90%.
The Daniel decided to fit the duck idea in Japan but the director in Japan didnt
accept it. The marketing director feel not to change the strategy but the duck had
become an integral part of the company. So, they half heartedly agree to dub the US
commercial in Japan that didnt work well. When the Daniel promises to pay
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$50,000 bonus to marketing director to make the duck work in Japan, he makes
some cultural adjustments. First of all, he used a softer voice for the duck. They call
people from US to shoot a real duck ad. The Japanese Aflac duck exceeded the
expectations and its jingle become no. 1 downloaded cell phone ringtone in Japan.
Recently, they had introduced a new idea of a cat duck that also gain success in
Japan but now Daniel is thinking how he can sell it in US.

Difference between American & Japanese

Culture/Consumer
In Japanese culture, they find it extremely rude to ignore the people because they are
very friendly, loyal, and give value to hospitality. So, the consumers in Japanese
context need a product or focus to the ads/messages that identify with the loyalty.
Thats why Aflac Japan changes the voice to a softer tone and introduces a white
duck that interacts with people and is a sage financial adviser who helps protect
families.
Whereas in American culture, people attach to the one who strive to be identify.
Thats why for American consumer Aflac introduces a boisterous duck who is funny
and attractive.
The ad used by the company for name recognition was basically associated with
funniness and designed according to the American sense of humor. In Japanese
culture, they dont use harsh words and dont like verbal humor. So, the ad was not
able to attract them. In Japanese context the voice artist is assumed to be yelling on
them. As far other things are concerned American sense of humor is way different
then other countries. They mostly like verbal humor in their ads. So, the company
uses verbal humor for Americans.

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