Café au lait sama — New key Social Media influencers for male consumerism
by kana in on 16 May 2012
Men with high interests in fashion and beauty who love to act in a self indulged & manly manner towards females.. These men are now newly identified as Sir Café au lait in research around fashion/beauty awareness in young generations carried out by Dentsu Lab. These young males are considered to be highly active in the consumerism of male products especially in the Social Media arena. So yes, these guys are the ones you want to be targeting to spread your buzz!
Café au lait sama? I know what you mean. Here’s a boring explanation of what it is: The Japanese language uses a broad array of honorific suffixes for addressing or referring to people. Sama (様 【さま】) is a markedly more respectful version of san. It is used mainly to refer to people much higher in rank than oneself, toward one’s customers, and sometimes toward people one greatly admires. When used to refer to oneself, sama expresses extreme arrogance (or self-effacing irony), as with ore-sama (俺様, “my esteemed self”). — From Wikipedia.
The men categorised as Sir Café au lait have both male and female elements in their personalities. They have high interests in the fashion and beauty fields. Around 70% of them use hair wax and skin toning lotion daily. More than 70% of them have a ‘favourite fashion label’. Also they don’t miss the biggest habit in the female world — 55% of them are into ‘relationship talk’ (girls talk, basically) amongst boys. They are eager to work hard to further their career and have very high aspirations. They are also highly influential. More than 70% says their friends bought something they recommended in the past. They are into shopping themselves.
So how big is the percentage these useful boys dominate in Japan? Pure Sir Café au lait are only 10% (appx) of all (sadly). But don’t be disappointed because tier two group (appx 31%) are warming up the benches just behind the frontline.
More than 61% of them use smartphones and more than 62% love tweeting and sharing on Facebook. Compared to other categories, they are doubly more active in the Social Media.
Let’s get ready to get the attention of these boys! Here’s a quick list of what I think would be important to appeal to them. Not that I’ve carried out a large amount of research, but browsing through the internet and I can see the trends going around.
1. Good looking smooth design — A big ‘NO’ to bad design
2. Anything Italian, Pitti Uomo is a bang on
3. European based Satorialism (They probably love chest hair too!)
4. New Technology (Business focused)
5. Quality Craftsmanship
6. New trends in Europe are H O T
7. iPad online magazines
8. A text balance in design of 50-50% English & Japanese
9. Foreign influence — Travel is H O T
10. Business, Business, Business
I hope you found it interesting. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ Team
Original Source:
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/1205/02/news068.html
Tokyu Hands Social Media Strategy — Twitter
by kana in on 01 May 2012
In Japan, Social Media is considered to be a place for individuals and business accounts. This can also be said about the western market. We as individuals surf through Social Media interacting with friends and getting interesting information shared by the people we follow. Also we know people do share information companies share on their pages. What we should remember in the Japanese Social Media scene though, is that we need to have ‘base relationship’ with the user before introducing a new service or product, so that it doesn’t appear too much like a sales activity. Also the information companies release needs to be interesting enough to be shared by users. If users think it’s useful for others too, then they wil share.
Tokyu Hands has always been one of my favourite stores in Japan. (They have pretty much everything we need in the shop.) And they have been making very good use of their Twitter account. Twitter is a good place to have one-on-one interaction with other users. The reason they are so good at Twitter marketing is their balance between ‘responses’, ‘chit-chat’ and ‘sales talk’. Half of their tweets are dominated by their responses to individuals.
Responses are mainly based on replying to users or reacting to users mentioning about Tokyu Hands. Chit-chat is done to show familiarity. And lastly they spend appx 20% of their tweets releasing sales & marketing information of their business.
Here is the list of rules for Tokyu Hands staff who look after their Twitter account.
1.Tweet something fun at the same time everyday.
2. Respond to ‘replies’ as much as you can.
3. Search by ‘Hands (Tokyu Hands)’ and actively respond to interesting ones.
4. Try to keep variety in what you’re tweeting.
5. Try not to destroy someone’s conversation, keep harmony.
6. If there’s something you couldn’t answer, make suggestions such as introducing the nearest branch.
7. Try to tweet with photos from inside the store, showcasing new products.
8. Tweet natural, there is no need to be someone you’re not.
9. Keep the same mannerism in Twitter and in the stores.
10. The company Twitter account should never get depressed or be disappointed
Thanks,
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ Team
Origitnal Source:
http://markezine.jp/article/detail/15542
Japan’s biggest ham company’s Social Media strategy — Hamu Kakaricho (Section boss Mr Ham)
by kana in on 23 April 2012
Japan has always been known as a nation with big passion for characters/mascots. One of the biggest Japanese Ham companies, Ito Ham, has attracted over 22,000 fans using this.
Hamu Kakaricho (Section boss Mr Ham) is a ‘SNS character/mascot’ of Ito Ham. It’s basically ham stuck in a bento box right next to white rice with a pickled plum — sitting on a bed of lettuce. He has number of different facial expressions but in general he is slightly tired or in distress with a little sigh by his face. It seems the bento box he’s in performs as his body which we can see in the cover image of the Facebook page.
He rules the Social Media pages of Ito Ham, employed as section boss. He has a proven track record of response speed and he shows great care and customer service mannerism. The interaction between fans and Hamu Kakaricho is actually quite fun to read — and fans love recipe suggestions Hamu Kakaricho makes. Everyone feels like being a friend with him because of his friendly responses.
He even has his own emoticon like this ε=(公 ）.
So, the section boss Mr Ham is obviously not just a ham that’s good at responding on Facebook. It’s a member of Marketing department of Ito Ham. He’s decided to use Mr Ham to get closer to the consumers. He says to NHK, “without a tool of Hamu Kakaricho, we couldn’t possibly interact with the consumers in a friendly manner. So it’s a huge win.”
Using the face of Hamu Kakaricho, Ito Ham says they succeeded in capturing consumers’ real voices, in real time.
Hamu Kakaricho’s slightly tired face is strangely familiar to us. When I think of ‘section bosses’, I guess I have an image of slightly tired looking men (I’m not trying to be sexist. But I guess this is an influence from Japanese TV soaps built up over time). And when you look at Hamu Kakaricho with a little sigh by his face, you would feel like being nice and want to encourage him.
Ito Ham also never forgets to entertain, with some fun content, like a 4 scene comic ‘Hamu Kakaricho’s little mumble’ every now and then.
Thanks,
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ Team
http://www.nhk.or.jp/sakidori/backnumber/120129.html
http://www.facebook.com/itoham
Twitter profile & brand page released in Japan
by kana in on 09 April 2012
Happy Easter Everyone !
Just a quick news flash —
Twitter launched new Profile page and Brand page service in Japan on the 2nd of April 2012. The services are provided for the Twitter advertising ‘Promo-Shohin’ users.
In the new profile pages, users can show selected a tweet at the top of the timeline as a ‘Pin Tweet’. Pin Tweets are shown with a URL together with videos or embedded photos.
The brand pages don’t show any banners adverts, so a brand can dominate the page to create a brand environment without having any distractions. Users include NTT Docomo, Lawson and Warner Entertainment Japan.
Thanks
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ Team
Facebook Japan to reach 10 million VS. Mixi & DeNA social commerce service starts today
by kana in on 22 March 2012
Waboom! The world’s biggest Social Media platform, Facebook, has finally hit 10 million active users in Japan, according to IBT Japan. To clarify the definition of ‘active user’, we mean the people who’re logged in more than once over a period of one month. If we talk about the number of registered users, it’s expected to be more than 15 million.
Mixi had 15 million active users at the end of last year. There has been some interesting stories around Mixi’s user numbers. The first one I remember reading is a news site’s infographics showing Japanese Social Media platforms’ active user numbers that had old figures for Mixi, stating they couldn’t get the numbers from them, but they had the latest figures for Twitter and Facebook.
We all knew Facebook was expanding and more people are moving from Mixi to Facebook. It looks like it’s only a matter of time before we see proper white paper statistics.
Facebook is expected to grow even bigger. They almost doubled their active user number since last September. But apparently they are moving their marketing department from Singapore to Japan so they can start really hitting the domestic sales and marketing using the Japanese staff in the country.
On the other hand, we also knew that Mixi was planning to expand and also engage the current users with social commerce strategy, Today, Mixi and DeNA have released their collaboration social commerce service, Mixi Mall. This service isn’t Groupon style, but a form of social commerce where people start wanting something via communication among their friends. That sounds like ‘social commerce’ to me. It’s also unlike the Facebook gift service, with this service it’s always subjective. I think the strategy is very Mixi and very Japanese.
Hmm, the battle continues… But, I see the parting ways. They have different interests and qualities. Facebook to become a business promotion place, whereas Mixi is doing what they are good at which is to keep the closed community rolling in their own way.
Thanks
Kana & The JAPAN BAZZ Team
Original Source:
http://jp.ibtimes.com/articles/27996/20120316/619643.htm
http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/jp20120321mixi-mall-launch/
UNIQLO & G.U. Campaigns in Japan
by kana in on 20 March 2012
UNIQLO has launched “Uniqlo Check-In Chance” campaign for their Ginza store opening.
http://www.uniqlo.com/check-in-ginza/
How it works:
By checking into any of it’s 62 stores in Tokyo, everyone can get a 100 yen coupon.
From there 20 people will win either 2,000 yen or 1,000 yen coupons.
Late last year, Uniqlo did another check-in campaign celebrating the establishment of the company. The total check-in numbers of the campaign exceeded 202K. The target for this campaign was the whole of Japan.
While the big papa UNIQLO is hitting the Tokyo audience, mini UNIQLO, g.u., a cheaper sister brand which sells jeans for the unbelievable price of 990 yen, is spreading the word through a musical chair campaign counting down the opening of the Ginza store on the 30th March 2012.
How it works:
The face for this campaign is a microsite — Users participate using either a Facebook, Twitter or Mixi account. Users then have to wait until they’ve been ordered to “Sit down on the silver chair” via a notification that comes in once/twice a day.
Users can win a 500 yen coupon. This campaign is designed for users to try as many times as they like by providing various opportunities to participate.
What’s consistent though, is the music. I noticed Japanese Social Media campaigns always come with crazy music that stays in your mind either even if like it or not. Not my favourite part, but I guess it’s working….?! I tend to hit mute when I review any Japanese campaigns now. I’m not a big fan of this tactic!
Also, I have been thinking of the shrinking number campaigns using Mixi. We all know Mixi is a closed world and is not suitable for spreading the word. I think for g.u. campaign it was quite easy to sync the profile pictures from Twitter, Facebook and Mixi using the various APIs. But when it comes to rich content sharing, Facebook is the best for its flexibility, openness and of course the fact that it’s a platform that’s specially altered for brand promotions. Twitter is of course is still a loud bird we always need to utilise!
Thanks
Kana & The Japan Buzz
Japanese Social Media: 5 measurements Vol.2
by kana in on 14 March 2012
It’s getting warmer and warmer in London these days. I can’t help to wonder if Spring is here already. Saying this though, I know it snowed in April a couple years ago, so I’m fully aware that the English weather can be fooling us, just when we begin to feel the presence of Spring on our toes. So let’s not get too excited.
The same sentiment is occurring in the Japanese Social Media world. Everyone is very excited about recent changes. We’ve started to see some differences in the movement between the Western side of the Social Media world and the Japanese Social Media world. We’ll be digging these up in the future. So for now, let’s get the basics right.
In the last post I discussed about blogs as a Social Media platform and how to measure them. In this post let’s look at Twitter using the 5 measurements from my last post. I think this will be very helpful as a summary of the major platforms for those who are just starting up with their Japanese Social Media marketing and also those who want to reinforce their knowledge.
Twitter — 5 measurements applied
Twitter is a real time, highly spreadable Social Media platform utilising ‘interest graph’. Users have a passive attitude towards collecting information via the people they follow. Twitter can be said to be the most popular flowing type medium. Information on Twitter flows quickly. Also despite its openness, Twitter isn’t a strong tool for SEO.
Via the RT button, a maximum of 140 characters text spreads across the web. The 140 letter policy is applied in the same way for the Japanese language. However it actually allows for a lot more characters than we can write in English as our multi-bit character is also counted as one letter, also Kanji letters can be used to shorten words. Some utilise this advantage and write very informative tweets. But some prefer to use Hiragana which is a simpler alphabet in order to create ‘simple and casual’ tweets to express themselves and their current situations.
Twitter is known for its loose connection with other uses/followers. Even though we have block function, usually users are not so fussed about who and who not to follow. Twitter’s highly spreadable nature is based on this loose connection among users via the ‘interest graph’. Anything that has strong impression or something people can relate to can spread rapidly via the RT button. Connections on Twitter don’t require any confirmation from the followed user. This is a characteristic different from Mixi or Facebook.
Vol.3 for Facebook and Mixi will be coming shortly.
Thanks,
Kana & The Japan Buzz Team
Japanese Social Media: 5 measurements Vol.1
by kana in on 05 March 2012
Using these 5 measurements in relation to how information is used to promote your brand on each Social Media platform (including blogs) allows us to organise and understand our Japanese Social Media activity more effectively.
1. Freshness
Is it a live or archived information?
2. Openness
Is the information open to the public or closed?
3. How it’s shared
Is it shared on the ‘Interest graph’ or ‘Social graph’?
Previously I’ve described about the relationship between these two graphs. Just to give you a heads up, ‘Interest graph’ means Social Media platforms that are publicly open and users connect each other through interests, like Twitter and Facebook. Whereas Mixi is a more of a closed community where friends connect with real life friends and families, and is often referred to as the ‘Social axis’ in the Japanese Social Media field.
4. How it spreads
Is it a wide spread viral type or long tailed archive type?
5. How it’s obtained
Are users actively looking for it or are users’ friends bringing it to them?
Blogs — 5 measurements applied
Let’s take a look at each platform with these 5 measurements applied. The first one we can look at is blogs.
1. Freshness
Blogs archive information and not necessarily the latest information.
2. Openness
Blogs are open media, and anyone on the Internet can access them. This openess also means it’s a good for search engine rankings, as they trawl through websites. Any keywords bloggers write will remain for search engines to find unless the page gets deleted or altered.
3 & 5. How it’s shared & obtained
The main source of traffic for blogs is search engines. The open nature of blogs allows them to be found by keywords. If a blog contains many different topics, search engine users may also be able to find some unexpected information. Saying this though, despite blogs being actively searched for, they can often be hard to be found unless marketing is carried out on different platforms.
4. How it spreads
Blogs aren’t so strong in spreading buzz on their own. Blogs can come into their own when combined with other Social Media platforms that have a powerful spreading nature such as Twitter and Facebook. Relying only on links and search engines to get traffic might not be the best way to spread the buzz anymore.
Whilst bloggers can blog about pretty much anything, they often want to write about the brands and businesses, blogs are also popular among businesses and brands. Popular ones in Japan include Shacho (CEO) blogs, Marketing/PR blogs and blogs run by branches of a larger corporations.
In the next post, we’ll be taking a look at Twitter and Facebook (and a little bit of Mixi)!
Thanks,
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ
New Facebook Timeline for Brands: Cover image list
by kana in on 01 March 2012
With the new Facebook timeline, the cover image is a perfect place to tell a story about your brand. And this is no exception when it comes to Japanese Social Media practice. Tell a good story about what you’re doing and who you are.
Here are my favourite Facebook cover images and why.
Roppongi Nouen
http://www.facebook.com/ropponginouen
No text used, but fantastic use of space. Smily faces with fresh vegetables they grew in their Roppongi Farm. The imagery tells people a story about what they do. There’s no need to use any text.
The Olympic Games
http://www.facebook.com/olympics
A rich & timely image makes for a good promotion.
Macy’s
http://www.facebook.com/Macys
Look at the top handle attached to the profile image, that’s a Macy’s shopping bag! When there’s no text inserted in the image, it’s good to have punchy text like this within the original image.
Captain Morgan USA
http://www.facebook.com/CaptainMorganUSA
This is another example with a good profile image use. It’s fun but not too playful in a good way.
CastleVille
http://www.facebook.com/castleville
It’s good not to leave too much blank space unless it’s utilised to make maximum impact for your cover image. Also it’s good to have the brand logo somewhere if it’s not in the profile image.
Louis Vuitton
http://www.facebook.com/LouisVuitton
History of Louis Vitton trunks. Heritage brands often seem to use the ‘timeline’ to make a history of images. It’s therefore a natural move for this luxury brand.
Burberry
http://www.facebook.com/burberry
Another heritage brand’s history theme cover image. T.BURBERRY & SONS.
No need to worry. We have sometime to do the transition. Observe, learn and make most of it! Here are some useful links.
About New Facebook Pages:
https://www.facebook.com/about/pages/
Help for Facebook Page Timeline
https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=203955942973503
Preview the New Facebook Pages
https://www.facebook.com/pages/status/
Thanks,
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ Team
CyberAgent and Yahoo start an advertising product for Smartphones
by kana in on 22 February 2012
Yesterday CyberAgent and Yahoo Japan launched their brand new collaboration, an advertising product called ‘Broad Campus Yahoo! JAPAN x Ameba’.
The collaboration combines the Ameba advertising product, which is run by CyberAgent, ‘Ameba for Smartphone Touch Campus’, and ‘Yahoo! JAPAN Smart Panel Expand’ provided by Yahoo Japan. The advertisement owner is able to publish an Ad to the Smartphone pages of Ameba and Yahoo with one purchase. According to CyberAgent, this is going to be the largest Smartphone advertising product in Japan.
How it works:
1. One Purchase
Your Ad will be published on both Ameba and Yahoo Japan mobile sites (smartphone)
2. Rich Content
Advertisers can utilise post tap Ad banners using rich & creative expandable screens and animations.
3. Competitive Price
The platform is cheaper compared to publishing advertisements separately.
CyberAgent says they’ll be working on new product development in this field.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, Smartphones are playing a key role in digital marketing this year in Japan. For those who have a bit of cash for advertising, it might be interesting to give this platform a go. The reason I say this is because, believe or not, Yahoo! JAPAN is still the most popular search engine in Japan followed by Google Japan, according to donnamedia’s study carried out in December 2011. Yahoo! JAPAN has 6.4 billion page view monthly whereas Google Japan has 4.1 billion. It’s a fresh change to see YouTube sitting at 3rd followed by Bing. It makes you think about your SEO strategy doesn’t it?
Thanks,
Kana & The JAPAN BUZZ Team
Original Source:
http://www.cyberagent.co.jp/news/press/2012/0221_2.html
http://markezine.jp/article/detail/15227