Brewing for (long) life: Nagano’s new food promotion slogan

The Shinmai Web news site, which covers Nagano Prefecture, has a report on a new logo and slogan for promoting the area’s fermented food.Sporting four white circles with a mustard-yellow background, one with a smaller circle emerging from it like budding yeast, the logo has four kanji characters 発酵長寿 (hakkō-chōju) which means “fermentation – longevity”.

Nagano has many producers of fermented products such as miso and sake, as well as local ones like tōfu and kanten. A new prefecture-wide and nationwide campaign aims to promote the area as a mecca for both fermented and natural food and long life. As well as the logo and slogan, the prefecture plans to hold a fermented food summit in November.The prefectural industrial labour department says it’s the first time a single prefecture has tried marketing itself on the basis of fermentation, so they hope that in the future when people see “fermentation” they’ll think “Nagano”.

The logo was created by a designer in Nagano City and made to resemble yeast, and will be available for use by prefectural food producers whose products are supposed to promote longevity, and restaurants and other retailers selling fermented foods.

The prefecture also plans to support new product development and sales channels, as well as making more information available. The prefectural food industry association will appoint a coordinator for distributing information on research and development for functional foods in June, and the November fermented foods summit will have a number of national firsts, such as an amazake appraisal.

Nagano prefecture announced its “vision for revival of the food industry” in September 2017, aimed at breathing new life into regional food products such as fermented foods. The industry generated JPY 65.11 billion of food and drink exports in 2014, and the prefecture aims to push it up to JPY 77 billion by 2022.

Links

• Original article (Japanese, Shinmai Web, 9 May 2018) Click through to see logo.