Fujiko Suda: Worklife

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SNS Activities by Market Sector ->">Japanese SNS Activities by Market Sector

About 3 years ago, I found myself doing some SNS based PR work for my friends, and one project lead to another. It has been excit­ing and fun to be involved within this new ground, and like every­thing else before in my life, work came in not as result of for­mal edu­ca­tion, but learn­ing by read­ing up every­thing I come upon on the sub­ject, and con­tin­u­ously exper­i­ment­ing with any­thing inter­est­ing that could be tried. As I accu­mu­late the years of expe­ri­ence, it is very inter­est­ing how the shapes and details of the mar­ket become vis­i­ble as whole. It’s like liv­ing Eames’ Power of Ten video.

Recently, I was hap­pily busy work­ing on research that touched at var­i­ous ties with SNS PR in the fields of sci­en­tific com­mu­nity, retail food and bev­er­age and fashion/lifestyle. These projects were won­der­ful, won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn about the Japan­ese behav­iors and busi­ness mar­ket­ing that sup­ports Japan­ese inter­ests and lifestyles. Although briefly and gen­er­ally, I would like to share with you what I discovered.

There is so much excit­ing, inter­est­ing, and won­der­ful activ­i­ties are hap­pen­ing within the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity in Japan. It’s great if you could read Japan­ese. YouTube has tens and thou­sands of really good videos in Japan­ese, and in Nico Nico Doga, maybe even more. Unfor­tu­nately, some­one who is very inter­ested in the sub­ject can’t access as they can’t even be searched because of the lan­guage prob­lem. The lan­guage issue is not just for Japan, it is a global chal­lenge. But I feel con­scious that for an advanced coun­try, per­haps Japan has infe­rior sys­tem of teach­ing real, usable Eng­lish or other for­eign lan­guage. Despite the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity being at the top level of human’s basic well being, right up there along with polit­i­cal com­mu­nity, to me, SNS in Japan­ese sci­en­tific com­mu­nity is not able to make the dif­fer­ence it could glob­ally because of Japan­ese lan­guage only limitation.

In retail food and bev­er­age, the ser­vices are really at the state of the art, total sci­ence in design, pro­duc­tion, deliv­ery and ser­vices. I mean, the whole cycle is really awe­some. The brands are rapidly fig­ur­ing out how to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tively using SNS, but it isn’t how most of us thought it would be maybe even 2 years ago. It’s applic­a­ble to any other mar­ket. As an employee of one of major SNS plat­form com­pany said, peo­ple wants to “feel like” they are inter­act­ing with a brand. Brands will have “fan“s or “like“s with­out much trou­ble, but for peo­ple to actu­ally visit their home­page or SNS sites repeat­edly, peo­ple want to feel like they are hav­ing con­ver­sa­tion with a per­son who rep­re­sents the brand. That’s just one detail, but other waysa re their usage of dig­i­tal mail mag­a­zines and apps that offers sav­ings and spe­cials to fans and cus­tomers. Con­ve­nience store brands in Japan are doing some really amaz­ing things. I hope the com­pa­nies doing research in Japan are access­ing the appro­pri­ate infor­mants to access deep things that are hap­pen­ing here.

I’ve helped with youth and gam­ing research pre­vi­ously, but recent oppor­tu­nity I had to pre­pare pro­posal for the youth fash­ion use of web in Japan was truly reveal­ing. It’s all about flock­ing around mod­els, famous and not so famous. And as for lifestyles blog­gers, it seems really unbal­anced. Those who are famous and active are organic or LOHAS. This is so inter­est­ing, because as peo­ple who have been to Tokyo could tell you from their visit(s), major­ity of peo­ple across the gen­er­a­tions around Tokyo area are very sophis­ti­cated with the over­all effect. Major­ity are highly fash­ion­able. Young girls are just as stu­dious as any­body in the his­tory, but it seemed amaz­ingly shal­low, com­pared to art, busi­ness, and sci­ence. This reminded me of the fash­ion research I helped about 6 years ago, when the researchers were per­plexed that the respon­dents kept on say­ing “I don’t care about fash­ion”, yet obser­va­tions at home vis­its and answers to indi­rect ques­tions showed how fiercely they paid atten­tion to how they looked, and the time they spent in cre­at­ing their spe­cial look by the way they shopped and coor­di­nated the clothes they wore. Just yes­ter­day, one of my part­ners were say­ing that in China the cul­ture is such that it is impor­tant to aug­ment your talk on what you do, and in Japan, it is impor­tant to under­tone your talk on your efforts.

Of course, not of these find­ings stand alone, that in cul­tural per­spec­tive, what is applic­a­ble in one sec­tor is pretty much applic­a­ble in another. And when put together, they fit together like Eame’s Power of Ten.

Posted in Business in Japan , Communication , Culture Difference Japan Asia US Europe And All , Education in Japan , Ethnography , Experience design , Industrial Design , Insight , Learning from people, books , Reputation Economy , Work life | SNS Activities by Market Sector">02 Feb, 2012 | Add a comment

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