With Japan's aging population and increase in lifestyle-related diseases, rising costs of medical care have become a social issue. A percentage deducted of employee's salary as a part of Health insurance premiums has risen from 7.3% in 2007 to 9.2% in 2019 and is expected to be ~10% by 2022. So managing employee's health has become increasingly important for companies.

We developed SUNTORY+ as a service to support corporate health management. It aims to promote awareness about healthier lifestyles and reduce medical costs incurred by companies.

We are convinced that SUNTORY+ will be a catalyst to create a new concept of a healthy lifestyle and change the perception that health can be fun and easy. Ultimately, we are looking to expand our business not only to the B-to-B market but also to the to-C. Through SUNTORY+ we hope to create a society where people can lead healthier and affluent lives.

SUNTORY+ is a health-management service, conceptualized around the idea of "building habits with small steps under no unnecessary constraints".

While researching about health services for less health-conscious people we realized, those that recorded diet, exercise, etc., (commonplace among many apps) are difficult to continue unless one is highly health-conscious.

Hence the key concept of SUNTORY+ was decided as "Cultivating healthy habits through small changes without any constraints".

Under the supervision of experts, 60 simple health-tasks like "drinking glass of water every morning" were designed (based on proper scientific evidence) to prevent lifestyle-related diseases without any drastic lifestyle change. Based on in-app lifestyle analysis personalized tasks are suggested, and on continuing these health tasks users can participate in periodic lotteries to win coupons that can be exchanged for health-beverages at vending-machines (which are familiar to Japanese) thus supporting users to continue their health activities as an extension of their daily lives.

Our target are companies that need support for health-management. With 60% of corporate health insurance unions in Japan in the deficit (Health Insurance Federation of Japan, 1991) and increasing medical costs, there is a growing need for companies to establish corporate health-management programs. Although 52% of companies with over 1,001 employees responded to have introduced health management (HR Research Institute 2019), they've been ineffective as the majority (~60%) of the employees actively involved were highly health-conscious. 70% of people in the indifferent-to-health group, didn't have healthy habits and ran risk of contracting various lifestyle-related diseases.

SUNTORY+ approaches to solve these issues through three points of contact, health app, vending machines, and health beverages, by providing an experience that enables user in the indifferent-to-health group to continue healthy habits as an extension of their everyday routine without difficulty. It causes behavioral changes in users thus reducing medical costs borne by companies.

To ensure that we communicate the value of SUNTORY+ properly to our users, we spent 6 months brainstorming around user-centric prototypes and developing service concepts that captured user insights. We designed our Core Identity (Vision, Mission, and Value) and specifically defined the ideologies and guidelines of the service brand to ensure a highly consistent experience across all aspects of the service, including crucial aspects like designing of the health tasks.

With the majority of our target audience in the age group of 35-50 years and with various degrees of smartphone experience, we wanted our app to be a simple and delightful experience so that we can communicate the perception of positivity and simplicity to our users, thus helping them positively experience a "healthy lifestyle" which is often thought to be strict and constraining.

Under the supervision of experts, we prepared 60 low-hurdle health tasks (based on proper scientific evidence) designed to prevent lifestyle-related diseases. The iconography, summary and description of each task are kept simple and have easy-to-understand language. The lifestyle diseases each task addressed are colour-coded for easier differentiation.

Illustrations for badges received upon leveling-up give our users a sense of achievement and positivity.

All animations within the app are designed to give the users a sense of delight and achievement. We went a step further with our task completing animations by controlling their rarity (from common to extremely rare) to always give the element of surprise and discovery to the users each time they completed the tasks.

We also limited the number of Tabs on the main screen to 2 so that we don't overwhelm users even with the least smartphone experience and also to be precise with the users about the core aspects of the App (adding or completing tasks & keeping a track of one's progress)

SUNTORY+ symbolizes the transformation of Suntory from a "beverage manufacturer" to a "service manufacturer that creates brand experiences through real and digital platform".

Adopted by over 100 companies(mainly large Japanese corporations) within the 6 months of release, SUNTORY+ has been successful at enrolling previously unapproachable customers by providing solutions to their issues rather than selling something.

In contrast to many to-B healthcare services, SUNTORY+ provides its services for free. Instead, it contributes to business through installation of new vending machines upon enrolling in the service and generates revenue through beverage sales. Taking advantage of our strength in the health beverage portfolio, this is a unique business model difficult for other companies to imitate.

With an average retention rate of 14% after the first month for most health apps (Adjust Global App Trends 2019), SUNTORY+ achieved high retention of over 50% while still enabling users to experience a consistent healthy lifestyle.