A Japanese salaryman walks out of the office for the last time to a standing ovation from colleagues.
The scenario is familiar in graying Japan. That's one reason platinum producers are using it in a TV commercial to revive jewelry sales that once accounted for almost half of the global total. The advertisement aims to draw on Japan's male-centered culture of work and obligation to halt a five-year slide in purchases of necklaces, bracelets and rings.
On the train home, the businessman doesn't think about how tough or exhilarating the decades of toil have been. He wonders about his wife and mentally rehearses an apology for devoting more to his career than to her. Back home, he hands her flowers and a ring. A voice-over exhorts: "Propose again."
"In Japan, retiring men are looked to as trendsetters with lots of pension money,'' said Hisako Hankinson, representative of the Japan office of the Platinum Guild International, a promotion group started by Anglo Platinum Ltd, the world's biggest producer. "We focused on men's retirement day'' to create a new gift-giving occasion, she said.
Platinum sales
About a fifth of Japanese are over 65, almost twice the proportion in the United States and three times China's rate. A decline in marriages is sapping the market for platinum bridal jewelry, which makes up about half of the total, Hankinson said. Platinum makers are also targeting Japan because many there see yellow gold, the rival metal, as flashy, Bloomberg News said.
The Guild in 2006 forecast that its "Thanks Day" campaign targeting retirees, which includes in-store promotions and magazine and TV advertising, would add 88 billion yen (US$806 million) in sales of platinum jewelry by 2009. It has yet to set a new target after prices for the metal jumped 48 percent since 2006.
Sales of all jewelry will fall 3.2 percent to 1.16 trillion yen next year, estimates Yutaka Fukasawa, senior researcher at Tokyo-based Yano Research Institute Ltd, which publishes an annual report on Japan's market.
In 2007, sales of new platinum for jewelry in Japan slumped 22 percent, Johnson Matthey Plc, a London-based metals refiner, said in its "Platinum 2008" report released in May. The 80,000-ounce plunge outweighed the 10,000-ounce increase for platinum automobile catalysts, marking a drop in overall Japanese consumption.
