Case study
Brand Storytelling Award (APAC) finalist GROOVE helps grow APRIL's sales by 219%
Learn how GROOVE leveraged Amazon Ads solutions including AI Creative Studio to help APRIL transform its copy paper brand story and drive significant sales growth in Japan.
key insights
219%
Increase in sales through Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Brands video, and Brand Stores
57%
Increase in purchase rate
31%
Increase in monthly sales volume
The Amazon Ads Partner Awards celebrate ingenuity and innovation in digital advertising. The Brand Storytelling Award (APAC) category recognizes partners who showcase how they used Amazon Ads brand building solutions to create powerful brand stories, build emotional connections, and deliver measurable impact. GROOVE is a finalist in this award for their campaign for APRIL which helped transform their brand perception among Japanese audiences and drove strong conversion results using Amazon Ads solutions.
Goals
As one of the world's largest and most advanced pulp and paper manufacturers, APRIL needed to establish meaningful recognition and build trust with Japanese shoppers who typically associated lower prices with inferior quality. APRIL partnered with GROOVE to tackle complex challenges in Japan's competitive copy paper category. The partnership focused on communicating APRIL's unique story of natural forest preservation and sustainable paper production through large-scale forest restoration, using 100% responsibly managed plantations. GROOVE aimed to help APRIL give shoppers a genuine “reason to choose” copy paper—often chosen only by size or price—and a story worth sharing. This narrative needed to resonate with Japanese audiences while maintaining the brand's price positioning.
Approach
GROOVE developed a comprehensive strategy combining creative storytelling with Amazon Ads solutions. The team leveraged AI Creative Studio to generate custom backgrounds for product packaging, reducing creative production time from one hour to just minutes per image. This allowed the team to invest more time in refining brand messaging that highlighted APRIL's sustainability commitment and product quality.
The creative strategy focused on communicating APRIL's dedication to forest restoration and 100% responsibly managed plantations, while also emphasizing the paper's premium performance characteristics. Through testing of various ad tones, GROOVE verified that environmental messaging would resonate in Japan. The team crafted compelling narratives for Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Brands video, and their Brand Store, ensuring consistent storytelling across the shopping journey while maintaining local relevance.
Seiji Kawasaki, EC Sales & Marketing Manager, APRIL/ASIA SYMBOL JAPAN TRADING Co. Ltd.Our brand message, refined and validated in the Japanese market, is being deployed to our global subsidiaries.
Results
By fully leveraging Amazon Ads solutions and insights, and their own creative ideas, GROOVE identified the best message for their brand. They crafted a compelling brand story and reflected it in Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Brands video, and their Brand Store, resulting in a 219% increase in sales. The campaign also delivered a 57% improvement in overall purchase rate and 31% monthly sales volume growth.1
Customer reviews began highlighting both product quality and eco-friendly benefits. The unique green design strengthened brand recall, putting Paper One top-of-mind for copy paper buyers. Once buried in price competition, the brand developed a story and became a preferred choice. This transformation from a price-driven commodity to a preferred brand choice represented a fundamental shift.
Sources
1 APRIL, Japan, 2024–2025.