On my quest I approached my guests with a 1st basic question to start the dialogue. What’s the state of the communication industry in Japan in lieu of the latest social growth and developments in the country?
Jeff tells me that we have seen a major shift this year. People are now much more open towards the idea of using their real names when joining social sites and participating in on-line conversations. This has created a major case in favor of Facebook which is now poised to dominate the Japanese market with its long-standing model of networking. He wonders “How many friends in Mixi add others?” The answer is perhaps an easy guess for a platform notorious for promoting interests over individuals.
Satoko shares the excitement by saying that finally the foreign social players have come into play changing the Galapagos reality that has not only characterized the mobile-phone market for many years, but also impacted the local social media and kept it isolated from global trends. In her words “The black boat carrying the media has arrived.” and I must say, it is obviously here to say.
My dialogue continued with a 2nd important question. What excites marketers in Japan these days?
Influence. The ability to influence people via social media and to gain traction through the social power appears as a clearly defined trend. Of course this is not new and the same applies to pretty much every market these days. However Jeff tells us that relevancy is amplified in Japan by the power of corporations participating in the social media and that the current status of the space has created opportunities for B2B activities of social nature that in a recent past did not exist. “if you don’t have well-known institutions participating in your dialogue, you don’t have a share of voice” adds Jeff while I think that his statement in hand with a changing perception in the role of corporations and their regained credibility in recent years is nothing but a key to succeed for marketers in Japan today. I confirm my perception when Jeff adds “if you think about it, podcasts never took off because there was no real participation validated by big names.” His closing remark ” As business get involved in platforms like Facebook, there’s more legitimacy and this is what is going to continue to drive growth in Japan.”
Satoko gives a different view in line with the economic reality of Japan. Today, while challenges exist in the global economy, we still retain the 2nd largest buying power in the world mainly powered by demand of luxury goods. This together with the well-established technological platform we enjoy these days means that we don’t have to educate consumers to do a particular thing. They already know and in some cases they have already known certain things for a while even though they did not have a particular reason to learn them. All things considered, and added to this reality the fact that we are in a homogeneous society with widely adopted standards in terms of education an behavior, we can market faster and perhaps more effectively than in other markets. In other words, or in her words, “marketing can be planned more effectively with better expected results than in other markets.”
Looking ahead I asked a 3rd question. Perhaps one, if not the, main question everyone who has read this far wants to know. What is the immediate future of our industry as seen by you and your agency? Yes, this the typical question many people are likely to ask this time of the year. What happens in Japan in 2012?
A re-rationalization of overall spend that allocates more budgets and activities to the digital side of the communication strategies clients plan or ask the agency to plan for them is something that pops to Jeff’s mind. This will likely be followed by the allocation of discretionary budgets to digital. Budgets that in previous years were allocated to other activities.
Satoko expects further growth in the channels of influence and sees more clear chances to influence audiences building upon the maturity acquired by the social media so far. While all platforms, especially the foreign ones will continue to gain ground, there is already a big, diverse audience that can be marketed to. This alone can be characterized as a big trend and is something that will bring more growth and expanded maturity to all digital communication efforts with more carefully thought-out campaigns and better digital/social planning.
My dialogue concluded with one final big question. What’s your take on social CRM? Big question with a few takes and possible answers. In a country that has been collecting data for a number of years I was particularly curious to learn the view of the two agencies.
Jeff sees that the whole key to running a successful CRM program in Japan resides on having the right ways to integrate social in it. As we stand now, many CRM programs in Japan are in a nice box, but they need to be socialized. What this means is that people who have given their names and are participating in a CRM program have to be communicated in specific ways that enable them to participate in certain social activities. In other words Jeff says “We should expect a social connection from CRM out to social.” This in his view is the first step towards integrating CRM with social media and actually creating social CRM programs.
Social platforms are established and they already carry a CRM capability asserts Satoko and in today’s Japan market and especially when it comes to building and/or converting CRM efforts into social engagement, “we must look at the nature of the social platform” she adds. We know what people are doing in certain networks, we can clearly target them, we can figure out what they’re talking about and can actually listen to some conversations so, we can therefore target individuals much more effectively and these are individuals that are likely to be interested in giving us their names to participate in a one-to-one engagement mechanism. CRM from her perspective is about creating, developing and converting users with the power of the self-segmentation characteristics the social media already offers.
Fascinating topics that are most definitely going to be part of many physical and social-media conversations in the days ahead prior, during and after ad:tech Tokyo 2011. We should expect the event to help us delve into the views of agencies and participants and deeply explore many views that along the lines of Jeff’s and Satoko’s are crafting the digital-communication reality of Japan as we speak.
