by Menno » Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:16 pm
You would think that the name change to Up Front Promotion would be enough of a hint who's responsible for this kind of stuff. The name change did came together with a different approach to marketing and promotion, but all in all it's more the bigger amount of money that's available now then when a couple of years ago when Mano-chan and S/mileage debuted.
I would
2002 - 2008: The arrogant years - H!P was the biggest, but sales went down dramatically.
2008 - 2012: Biting the straw years - AKB came up, UF needed to do something, but because of the fall in sales and other income losses, the money did stream away into AKB there was not enough budget to so some real promotion that would really made it work. I also have the feeling that they didn't really know where to go with all the groups.
2012 - 2013: The turn around years - After Pyocopyoco Ultra it became obvious that things couldn't go on like this. The focus came back on Morning Musume, focusing on giving them a clear and unique style which resulted in better quality song and more and more promotion. This actually helped the other groups, especially C-ute who finally came out as the group that got a bigger fan base then just the regular fans (before this it was always mentioned, but it never showed in the actual sales numbers). Berryz and S/mileage also consolidated. All this has come together in the launch of Juice = Juice, they have a very clear style (musically and appearance), plus there's money to execute a launch properly on the promotional side.
But to keep this level of promotion up they need to keep on selling enough CDs for a couple of singles, otherwise the promotion will be scaled back again. But first we have to see how this 1st major single does, all the pre-release events must have helped already which will show in the 1st day chart, but they have to keep the momentum going.