Go With the Cat

I’m not sure how many of you follow this sort of feel-good news on the Internet, but the story of the stationmaster in Japan who is actually a cat hit about a year ago. It seems there was a station on a Japanese light rail system that decided to adopt a cat as a mascot to improve customer relations. So they chose a tortoiseshell cat that had been born next door and lived around the station, made her an honorary stationmaster, and produced a cat-sized version of a stationmaster’s cap for the cat to wear. It was cute, and it did in fact both improve customer relations and bring some much-needed favorable publicity to the failing rail line…

A few years later, the cat’s station was converted over to an automated facility because the line was losing money, and all of the human personnel were transferred to other locations, but the cat stayed on (as cats are wont to do) – still wearing her cap (as cats are somewhat less wont to do). The rail company apparently figured that people in the area would go right on feeding the cat, and people who rode the line would go right on enjoying having the cat there, so why mess with a good thing? The cat became the only remaining employee of the station, and no one thought anymore about it. That is, until the traffic on that rail line started to pick up…

According to the story being reported on ABC News Online, approximately 55,000 additional passengers used the light rail line in 2007 alone – specifically to travel to the automated station and have their picture taken with Tama the tortoiseshell. This has resulted in an estimated $10.44 million US (about 1.1 billion yen) flowing into the local economy, just for fiscal 2007, with an even bigger impact expected this year. Of course, part of the effect is being attributed to the children’s books and other tie-in merchandising about the cat, but it’s still rather a large impact for an animal mascot to have on a local economy. Apparently the Japanese like cats a lot more than anyone realized…

Now, I’m not suggesting that your business could duplicate these effects just by “hiring” a cute animal and dressing it up like one of your employees. People in the US don’t have quite the same attachment to anthropomorphic animals that the folks in Japan have, and are unlikely to travel out of their way for a photo opportunity with one, let alone an actual animal dressed up in human costume. Animals of various types have been used as business mascots for decades in North America, and no one is likely to think there is anything particularly amazing about a bookstore cat or a library cat, to take the obvious examples. Even more to the point, most businesses in this country will have health code issues if they keep a live animal on the premises. It’s the principle that we should be looking at in this story…

Adopting a cat and equipping it as a stationmaster didn’t require a lot of money or time, and yet this change in the routine was enough to catch the imagination of the rail line’s customers and bring them flocking to see her. Eventually, it was enough to catch the imagination of the general public and bring people from all over the country to see her. So I have to ask you: is there something that YOUR business could do to cut through the clutter, attract attention, and maybe even improve your relations with your customers? Something that might put a friendly face on your operations (even if it’s a cat’s face) and make people want to come and see you? You might want to look into the idea…