Twisted View of Marketing in Japan

Yesterday, October 29, I joined a seminar by Senden Kaigi as a guest speaker.

It made me feel like I was on edge, unexpectedly.

Being a speaker or a trainer has been a big part of my job for years, so that I did not expect to feel that way.  But it was very different that every listener/trainee is first-to-meet, everyone has different background, level of experience, and has a different kind of work.

Among others, what made it tough to me was difference between this group and group of people I had dealt with in my previous job.  When I was working in the US invested company, key task of presenter was to control lots of questions and comments from audience, and to communicate what is supposed to be communicated within given hours.  On the contrary, when you get your first meeting with all the Japanese people, challenge for presenter comes to deal with silence, though I anticipated it.  You are very lucky if anyone ask any question.  It is very hard to read their face to know their reaction.  If you ask the audience “So, how do you understand?”, you see entire classroom looking down on their desk, hearing noise that suddenly people start writing something on paper in the complete silence.

I was, I have to say, quite nervous, standing in the silence.

I think I know this.  It reminds me of a high school class…

Well, I should not say “Japanese are…” to blame on audience.  Content and delivery of my presentation had something to be improved.

(Later, when I chatted with some of them over smoking outside, and read feedback sheet, I became a bit less tensed, “Phew, they in fact understood and enjoyed my presentation”, though.)

This one day seminar by Senden Kaigi was to discuss “Rules and tips for Ad/SP Agencies to get their proposals approved by clients”, targeting to mid-small sized Agencies (I mean, not big ones like D and HH), to reveal insights of how clients want Agencies to present their proposals.

Main trainer was Mr. Yasuhiro Yamamoto, CEO of Business Value Creations, who (flawlessly and professionally) provided comprehensive training to cover all the areas and elements from approaching to client, organizing presentations, and summarizing discussions.  Then, I (in faltering and trembling manner) discussed only one tip to make any creative presentation clear and concise.

What is the tip?

Well, I cannot tell you here.

But it is all about “Hey, you think you are making clear sense to your clients, but they do not understand your presentations as well as you want them to.  Try hard to make it much clearer.” and it seemed quite eye-opening to the audience.

Agency people talk to themselves, “How come clients do not understand what I am telling this hard?”

Whereas, client people sigh, “Why do they have to present it in hard to understand and vague way?”

There exist lots of this type of sad dis-communication, much more than you think.

(If you are facing the similar issue, please write to me!)

In any case, I learned that I have to re-polish my presentation skills.

It is an irony if I make bad presentation to make a point that “You should make your presentation clearer!”

The seminar made me think over my skills.

Dear attendees, thank you for staying with me to go through my presentation.

“O.”

Wow, that's a big theme!  Do I have any answer to this big question of “What it takes to be No.1”?  Of course, not.  I just wanted to chat some tips or source of inspiration for it today.

As always, excuse me staring with my personal matter.  I do not like TOYOTA, Panasonic, NTT, and Asahi, all the leading brands/companies of Japan.  Only “regret” is WWAN of my mobile PC being NTT’s Docomo’s, but I believe it is the only one I have from these companies/brands.  For info, I was a big fan of NIKE in 80’s, but not any longer.  (I am not particular about computer, but I am supposed to be anti-WINDOWS probably, if I have to choose.  Fast is, not surprisingly, my very first computer in my life was Mac…)

Twisted way of thinking and leading life?  Yeah, the title of this blog says so.

I think I am “hard to be a use of No.1 brand” kinda person.

OK, then, you can think it the other way around.  Make your brand be disliked by me to be No.1?

Well, that is not very actionable.  Let me discuss this a bit differently to make the point clear.

Why do people like cars that are quite boring?

Why are people willing to pay for second hand innovations?

Why are people paying obviously high cost to get mediocre service from semi-government company?

Why do people like drinking sweet and foam-less beer despite, knowing its name “Super Dry”?

Why….

The “reason” is seemingly because they like “not having particular reason, but feels good”, versus people like me wanting clear “reason” for choices.

“Seems not bad”, “Don’t think too hard, it’s been that way”, “Not bothered to think about it”, “Not like to be asked ‘Why’ for my choice”, “I trust it, so I don’t have to get bothered”, etc.  Those are vague but solid reasons.  They are not conscious reasons for choice, but are “best conscious choice for not being forced to choose” in other words.

I think it is quite similar to “healthy conservatism” in (Japanese) political psychology.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has recently been retaining high approval rate by people called “national citizen” because (ironically) these people with “healthy conservatism” are supporting the party.  They did not want to choose the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP – conservatives in Japan despite its name), resulting in DPJ’s historic win.  DPJ’s policies, and its vision of “Yu-Ai/ the spirit of fraternity” are well based on “healthy conservatism”.  Or said differently, policies are based on thinking that you do not have to be on the side of positive approval of them, but you are not clearly on the other side.

Well, this Blog is not the place to discuss politics.  Let’s go back to where we were.

If you are a manager of No.1 Brand, learn from big mistakes that the LDP committed.

Particularly, be careful if you are making “Unnecessary Change on your Equity/Images”.  Aren’t you committing to things that can turn off your customers with “healthy conservatism”?  Something like the Prime Minister Koizumi did.  It could give you “historic victory” short term, but don’t touch it.

Who are your “local farmers, construction industry, local post offices, and leaders of big industries”?  You better know them, who they are, and see of you are NOT doing anything wrong to turn them off.

If you are working on brands to be but not yet No.1, learn from the DPJ’s big success.

Is your vision/equity full of “fraternity” to embrace heart of users with “healthy conservatism”?   Being edgy won’t make you No.1.

Take a close look at your category’s No.1 brand.  Is it making any break down, like the LDP?  Or is there any chance to make the break-down happen?  “Healthy-conservative” people won’t choose you with substantive reason, so you better know if the time is with you.

Is your “manifesto” list up everything, vaguely promising things that you don’t know if you really can but you hope you can?  “Healthy-conservative” people do not demand “best” quality, but they are very keen if you can do things that any brands in the category should be able to.

And, to be No.1, you must be able to do very good job in providing the very category benefit/function/service, to be trusted to “lead the country (category)”.

Excuse me, It’s been quite abstract, this time.

At least, I can tell, Kao is dumping a gem into trash can, if they are milking “Revue” brand after buying Kanebo cosmetics.

“O.”

After reading the very long Profile on the left side of this Blog, you would still have this question.

“ETOJIYA” is a name of my Company, “ETOJIYA Corporation”.

It is Marketing-one-stop-shop, or I want it to be that someday.

Yeah, I understand that, but why the hell it is named as “ETOJIYA”?

Ah, you are asking source of or meaning of the name.

“E” is a "picture" in Japanese.  It means picture or painting, art direction, and something like vision/dream.

“Ji” is a "word".  It could mean words/sentence, copy writing, and strategy or statement.

“To” is "and", to make connections between these two.

“Ya” simply means "store/house".

Also it is a play on word to be “A-to-Z Ya”, dealing with anything I can.

So, it expresses my passion of “As long as it has something to do with Marketing, I will be sitting next to you to help you from A to Z.”

Well, that is what I selfishly believe, but people around me always say it sounds like a name of a bar or a Soba restaurant.

But, they never forget to add “And it goes very well with who you are, “O.”-san.”

I take it as a compliment, though.

“O.”

I do not eat much between meals, and when I was a salary-man, I rarely stayed late in the office, so I don’t have habit of eating supli-food (or energy bar).  Fortunately (at least as of now), I don’t have to be cautious about my weight and thus am not sensitive to calories of what I eat.

Therefore, I am not sure if I have a license to discuss “Why SOYJOY sells so well?” but let me discuss that today, as it looks obvious to me that it sells.

Putting conclusion first, I suppose it is simply because the brand does very basic thing very right, which is “People buy food/snack because it looks/feels delicious.”

If you visit convenience stores to look for supli-food (energy bar) for your slight hunger, you would be stunned with its wide range of kinds and number of brands.  At least, it surprised me, non-user of the category.  And of course, many of them, or all the brands scream out on their package that how low the calorie is, how less it impacts to your weight (or seems to), how less you take excess things, or how much and easy you can intake required vitamins and fibers.  I just remember the category is called “function food”

Among them, shinning is SOYJOY.

While it is largely due to its big space/good position on shelf as a leading brand, there is another fact grabbing your eyes.

That is, it looks delicious.

They try to tell you how effective in functions they are, as the entire category is for minimizing bad influence to health or taking something good to health.

Differentiation.

In the world of Marketing, you always and repeatedly get taught how important it is.  It can roughly be defined as “I am different (from anyone else) in this aspect, and I am better, so that you should choose me (over others)”  Maybe too easy/rough, though.

Often due to legal/regulations, direct and specific expression of “how and where I am better” cannot be made.  Then, they instead utilize superiority of raw materials and ingredients, image of superiority of them, comparison to XX number of Lemon, XX thousands of pieces of peas, etc.  Some say it is endorsed (or seems endorsed) by some professional figure, organization, or celebrity, which has health-oriented images.

As they try way too hard to be distinctive/different, they often forget the very important thing.

Differentiation/distinctiveness is after all an “excuse” for users to buy, not necessarily “the reason to buy”.  People buy food as it looks tasty.

SOYJOY’s package design is very very well crafted, that is why it sells.  It always puts tasty photo of ingredient fruit, and it always has a picture of what is inside, nicely baked and quite inviting.  Choice of colors for different flavors is also well considered.  The design may look a bit ordinary, but it is crafted right.

Of course, they do not forget to put important “excuse” as supli/function-food by telling you it is made of soy beans and use of fruit that has “good-to-health” images.

I believe SOYJOY is very good success case for in-the-store marketing.

(I recently saw their completely new TV commercial, but) I do not believe they needed the TV campaign using a lot of big celebs.  The campaign certainly has contributed a lot to building awareness/popularity, but it does not justify dumping so much bucks…  Well, they are such a big Company and it is selling that well, the waste cannot hurt them anyway, I guess.  At least, I can tell you that they made Ad Agency, TV stations, and celeb offices very happy.

People buy food/drinks because it looks delicious.

People buy cosmetics because it looks making them beautiful.

People buy detergent because it looks washing dirt out.

That is truth, I guess.

Aren’t you in the maze of differentiation to forget the truth?

“O.”

In the past few years or so till 6 months ago, TV advertising campaign from ST was on air quite often, and it was quite “?”.  Particularly, ones in the most recent year were felt like “Hey, you must be kidding!”

One day, watching TV with one of my friends, I said jokingly to him, who is quite familiar to this industry,

“Well, if they continue this kinda advertising, it wouldn’t be too far that the Shacho (company president) gets fired.”

“Ah, recently, they changed their Shacho, indeed.”

What?  I see…  According to him, the previous Shacho retired and succeeded the position to his son, but recently, the previous Shacho had to make a come-back.

Oh, my...

(Well, I do not know if this advertising had anything to do with this Shacho changes, though.)

The campaign features “A comfortable life without malodor” of “Tonosama (Load) and his family in the future” in quite large scale dramatization.  On the floor of his chateau or castle, a big group of his women and men, and even some Nonjias, I recall, sing and dance in line like musical show, and then Tonosama does “Shu!” (to deodorize the big hall).

It is for the product called “Shoushu (deodorizing) Plug”.

Later, I also saw a piece of film where the Load and his family live with hi-tech robot, don’t know why/for what.

(Different campaign for another product is also funny, known as one of those funny Japanese advertising, that a lot of, somehow, Gaijins show up and powerfully sings the name of the brand “Shoushu Riki (Power)”.  Or, there is another series for mothballs where you see a character of what you don’t know in strange animal costume.  I saw the recent pool-out spot of it the other day, singing funny wordplay.)

In any case, all of them seem to me large scale drama that is quite expensive to make.  While I do not have any data with me to say anything for sure, I suppose amount of media should also be relatively high in this category.

Well, I have to say it is a bit too much.  It is not the kind of advertising that you cannot get what it wants to say, but it makes you wonder why they have to take that approach to say it.  Or, said differently, it tries hard to be funny for its sake.  What made them do so?

Here goes another story of big Ad Agency’s trick or set-up?

But, all the film have a consistent idea and all of them look similar, bunching them as one campaign.  So there must be some intent behind it.

“Just a ‘Shu (splash/spray)’ deodorizes your living space, so innovative and easy that your family can enjoy comfortable fun life.”  That is what they want to convey.  Nothing is wrong with it.  However, as it is, it’s just too generic and ordinary to know why the product is good and how, when you see hundreds of similar kind of deodorizing products out there.

There is no fresh/eye-opening element in its idea, to start with.

Under the not eye-opening idea, they would have tried so many things to make it fly.  After all, it would end up no way but making its execution showy and funny…

“Innovative = Future”, “Family = the Load and his people/family”, “Life with fun = Musical show”, “Living space = Big floor in the castle”, making everything big and showy.

I guess many people still remember advertising from ST for “Shoshu Pot”, funny and cute commercial.  Some may have sung its song together.  I am pretty sure that it gave them a big success to their business.  In my view, it was a clean hit in the category of hard to be distinctive and low share of mind.

Now, I think I got something.  It was their success model:  When you have unique naming for product and unique advertising, it can sell even in this tough category.  This big investment could be a result of stretched or too vague interpretation of their success/experiences.  And, the newly succeeded Shacho tried just too hard to be Shacho?

My advise is to air that “Shoshu Pot” advertising once again.  I bet it sells again.  That was a great piece of advertising.  (I could not find it in You Tube.  Lots of kids show up and sing play-on-word of the name of the product many times, nothing else, but cute and funny.)

By the way, there I guess still remains a strange culture that “TV commercial is for Shocho’s fun”.  It is no longer good old days of high economic growth like in 60’s and 90’s.  It should be cut out now, as later is better than never.  Big Ad Agencies are the only ones making money out of it.