50 years of Hello Kitty, from marketing case to men's collection

"She's not just a kitten, she's a marketing lesson": thus is the title of the report dedicated to Hello Kitty just published by The Brandformance Society, a unit of Celeste Commerce Hub that focuses on the relationships between branding skills and a brand's economic performance.

In November 2024, the most famous brand of the Japanese giant Sanrio celebrated 50 years with a wave of international collaborations, content that quickly went viral, a boom in online searches and the confirmation of the existence of an ever-growing community that knows no geographical or - perhaps surprisingly - gender boundaries, even though it is precisely the universe of a kitten (kitty, officially created in 1974).

The confirmation comes from the Pitti Uomo, which hosts the Hello Péro menswear capsule, born as part of the collaboration between Sanrio and Péro, an Indian brand that the Florence fair had already hosted five years ago - with considerable feedback from buyers and the press - in the 99th edition (we are now at 108th). At that time, the cue was the tenth anniversary of Péro, a brand founded by the Indian stylist and entrepreneur Aneeth Arora, which has always presented women's and men's collections, although in Italy the best known and distributed are the former. It is therefore a double anniversary: Hello Kitty's 50 (51 to be precise) and Péro's 15.

The capsule is narrated with an installation in the spaces of the Futuro Maschile section of Pitti and is an immersion in the world of Hello Kitty and, at the same time, in the extraordinarily creative and artisanal world of Péro: the result is bows, apples and cupcakes on clothes and accessories, for a super ironic wardrobe that plays with oversize effects and playful combinations. We repeat: designed for a male audience. The prints are enriched with embroidered beads, fabric origami, tassels, crochet, appliqués, patchwork and wooden buttons. Very fine fabrics - silk, gabardine and taffeta - all sourced from India, and making it all the more special are Hello Kitty pendants, socks, bags, hats and rumāl (handkerchiefs) made by Péro.

Returning to The Brandformance Society report, some numbers and curiosities: today Hello Kitty is the second largest media franchise in the world in terms of box office, after Pokémon but ahead of Mickey Mouse and Star Wars and since its creation, Hello Kitty has become an ambassador for Unicef, a special envoy of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the face of cafés, restaurants and parks. Since last May, one can pass through the Oita Hello Kitty Airport, which until October will be fully branded in the kawaii (cute, in Japanese) style of the kitten. There are currently 75 collaborations entered into by Sanrio with brands from different sectors, totalling almost 1,100 products. In Italy, in addition to the Péro clothing and accessories collections, the product line created with Yamamay can be purchased.