4/21/2005

In Japan it is all about seasons. Summer comes and you get the ads for ice cream popping up. That’s quite normal. But drinks are also very seasonal, colors, smells etc. Pocari Sweat is usually drank when it’s hot outside and you sweat. Hence the name.

Talking of the name, a lot of people wonder about Japanese brands naming, and as you can imagine, Pocari Sweat is no exception. One theory is that Pocari is very close to the Japanese word “pokkari”, which has the meaning of “clouds floating in the sky.” The logo of Pocari Sweat is white letters on solid blue background, and the drink comes in summer when the sky is bright blue. Cheap and efficient marketing applied to the first word. And it works: look at the huge ad on Shibuya Station these days. It is bright, and blue, and the sky behind the girl is the same hue as the big brand label next to it. It is even more sky-like than the actual grey sky behind it. The message? Drink Pocari Sweat and it’s summer. Or the opposite…

Now, the second word: “Sweat”. That’s a bit trickier obviously. Pocari Sweat is usually drank in hot summer, or after sport, when you sweat. But according to a spokesperson at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., the same company who does CalorieMate:

‘Pocari’ sounds relaxing, easeful, light to Japanese people. It dosen’t have any English meaning. ‘Sweat’ has the meaning of diligence and effort in Japanese.

This would imply that you don’t DRINK sweat, but rather you earned your drink WITH your sweat. Cultural difference I guess. To me, it sounds like something they tried to get meanings attached to afterwards. But it works nonetheless. Well, anyway, most people call it “Pocari” and drop the “Sweat”.

Official English-language homepage here.