Reels by Instagram is used by many brands in Japan to attract customers and followers. It’s a place where users can create short video content that is entertaining and immersive. It’s a bit like TikTok and users are shown videos one after the other. Reels can also be shown to users even if they are not your followers. The video duration is as short as 15 to 90 seconds, so it’s important to summarize what you want to convey and make the video suitable for reels. If a video is a hit, it will be played tens of millions of times, which has the advantage of allowing many people to see your content.
In this article, we will introduce some successful Reels made by Japanese companies.
1. Beauty/ SHISEIDO (@shiseido)
SHISEIDO is a Japanese beauty and cosmetics brand, ranking No. 1 in Japan and No. 5 in the world, it develops many popular products. Shiseido’s Instagram account features popular models, singers, actors, athletes and Instagrammers. It’s simple and sophisticated, and the brand image is well expressed. Through Reels, they show skin improvements, before/afters and explain the selling points of each product in an easy to understand manner. The brands simple and powerful message is shown via their Reels.
2. Gourmet/ Afternoon Tea (@afternoontea_official)
Afternoon Tea is a Japanese brand that operates cafes, daily necessities and miscellaneous goods. Customers can enjoy tea and sweets in the tearoom or can buy sundries and groceries at stores and online shops. On their Reels they display their brand logo, making it easy to understand where the content came from. Afternoon Tea Reels mainly showcases their latest products, such as limited edition menus or their attractive sweets and meals. All posts have high production quality, and introduce all the dishes very attractively. There are many close-ups of food making them look delicious and making viewers hungry.
3. Travel / RETRIP (@retrip_news)
RETRIP’s Reels show videos of recommended tourist areas, restaurants and shops to help users plan their trips. Another characteristic is that it makes extensive use of user provided photos and videos. Utilizing user provided photos and videos is a very helpful technique that saves time on producing materials. They also actively increase their number of followers by putting an app promotion at the end of their Instagram videos, a point that other brands should take note of.
4. Fashion / SNIDEL (@snidel_official)
Based on a concept of “street and formal”, SNIDEL is a womenswear brand that combines street culture and elegance. The brand showcases products and emphasizes product points in way that is difficult to convey with photos alone, such as clothing details, fabric texture, and length. In addition, these reels make customers want to go shopping to see the actual products.
5. Lifestyle / C CHANNEL(@cchannel_jp)
C CHANNEL is a lifestyle brand. that solves women’s “wants to knows” in one minute, mainly for women aged 20 to 34. This example reel is about face mask life hacks. It shows how to adjust the size of the face mask and the length of the ear loop according to the size of the face, preventing the ear from becoming hurt, C Channel post videos about lifestyle, lifehack, fashion, hairstyles, makeup videos and more. There videos have many views.
Each Product, service and industry is different, so every successful company using Reels does so in their own way and with their own ingenuity. By making good use of Reels, as in the cases we introduced in this article, it may be an opportunity for more users to see your content and to let more people know about your products and services.
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