What Can Japanese Marketing Teach Global Brands?
In the 21st century, has there ever been a more dramatic term to describe Japan than the word "Galapagos"? Originally coined in the early 2000s to describe Japan's isolation from the rest of the world as cell phones evolved on their own, the term was likened to the ecosystem of the "Galapagos Islands," but over the past two decades it has been used in the context of "Japan gone bad" in every area, from marketing and technology to culture and politics.
Japan has never succeeded in the world because it does not look at the world, only at home. However, the time may have come for Japan to be freed from this spell. As we enter the 2020s, the winds are changing in such a way that it seems so.
At least in the area of Japanese culture such as entertainment and food, the insular nature of Japan is the source of creativity, and there is a marked tendency for evolution that is out of step with global trends to produce absolute popularity overseas. Of course, Japanese creations such as animation have long been a strength of Japanese Marketing.
However, as the world becomes more connected through technological advancement and the world turns its attention to more diverse content after a pandemic, the spotlight is now shining on the heretical culture that Japan has uniquely (and sometimes perversely) nurtured. This is quite paradoxical to the development of content tailored to global marketing, which was the forte of South Korea, especially K-POP, and the failure of Cool Japan, which used this as a reference to market itself as Japanese.
How to move forward? And how can Japanese cultural products be more successful on the global stage? To understand this, let's first examine the success of Japanese cultural products on a global stage.
Anime, Japanese Cultural Products and Global Marketing
Generally speaking, Japanese cultural products have evolved out of step with global trends, with little awareness of overseas expansion, but are beginning to garner popularity around the world.
There are few Japanese cultural products which have fully harnessed Japanese culture overseas. Of course, Anime has been enthusiastically popular outside Japan since the 1990s, but until the last five or ten years, its popularity was clearly niche. Combined with the fact that the Japanese entertainment industry was terribly reluctant to expand overseas via the Internet, its popularity was limited to a small group of geeks. However, this has now completely changed, and as we enter the 2020s, the tide of hits is changing.
Anime hits overseas are beginning to come from productions that were not so much aimed at overseas consumers. This is because streaming services such as Netflix (230 million paying subscribers) and Crunchyroll (10.7 million paying subscribers, which specializes in anime) have spread beyond borders, and the Japanese anime industry has begun to be more open to digital development. This is the reason why even seemingly "Galapagos" works, both old and new, are beginning to be in the spotlight.
What Anime and Japanese Marketing Have Learned from K-Pop
This approach is important because it shows that music and AI will have a growing impact on the way companies consider branding their products, and that if they can effectively use them, local products that have not been successfully marketed in the past may be able to be more widely distributed around the world.
In the area of music, K-pop in particular has boldly adopted global music trends and formed dance groups with members fluent in each country's language to conquer markets in every country, a major difference from Japan's "Galapagos" style, which is optimized for the domestic Japanese market.
However, such an era is coming to an end. The new era of anime theme songs and related music has become a huge hit. As anime is making breakthroughs around the world, the presence of Japanese music is being raised at the same time. The term "tie-up" refers to the provision of theme songs and other music in conjunction with anime.
This is a long-standing practice in Japan and has been used since the 1990s to promote new artists, not only in anime, but also in TV dramas. However, this has proven to be unexpectedly powerful in the global era of anime. In particular, there is a clear trend for artists to not only provide theme songs, but also to reproduce the world view of the anime and then demonstrate their own creativity in their songs, which have become big hits.
What Vocaloid Teaches Us About Harnessing Artificial Intelligence
Another keyword that should not be forgotten is "vocaloid", a singing voice synthesizing software developed by Yamaha in the early 2000s. While the innovation of having a machine sing song was initially dismissed as strange overseas, it revolutionized music in the world of J-pop. It is packed with developments that change key and rhythm several times in a song.
This is a feature not seen in the English-speaking world, where songs are often written for dancing, and is an interesting part of the music that seems "strange" to those who have studied music theory. The evidence for this is that the top artists who are making breakthroughs outside of Japan are all from vocaloid backgrounds, and even Spotify has grown to create a new category called "Gacha Pop," which is the world's later response to J-POP that has evolved independently in Japan.
It can be said that this is the ultimate system of "Neo-Galapagos," in which the world reacts to J-pop that has evolved independently in Japan. It is very suggestive to use machines that can sing songs as a familiar presence rather than as an "enemy," especially now that AI is dominating the market.
What Global Brands Can Learn from Japanese Marketing
In this example of the Japanese entertainment industry, we have seen how anime, music, and technology are closely linked and successfully tied together to gain popularity around the world, despite the fact that they were not aware of it. Based on this example, my suggestion to branding professionals is to first apply technology to their own branding. In particular, the use of new technologies, such as AI, will enable approaches that have not been taken before.
The next suggestion I would like to make is to tie up content across genres, and to tackle music and culture well in this context. As we learned in class, the influence of governments, politicians, traditional media, and corporations is slowly declining, while new entities such as music and celebrities are increasing their influence. Through these efforts, we believe that products and services that have not been branded as well as we would like may be able to open up new opportunities to capture new markets.
Final Thoughts on Applying Japanese Marketing
Based on this case study of the Japanese entertainment industry, then, if we ask whether Japan will be all right if it "remains Galapagos", the answer to this question would be "no". Just as there is still a divergence from the global trend over EVs (as was the original meaning of "Galapagos"), Japan's unique evolution in terms of regulations, standardization, and rule formation has never become the global standard.
Nor have there been nearly as many successful attempts to Galapagosize technology, content, and other platforms. The important point is that "Galapagos = Success" never means success. The prerequisite for all of products and services is to push creativity and quality within the given platform and rules.
By pushing one's creativity and quality to the limit while being subconsciously exposed to the culture and market context of each society, and by carefully selecting the competitive advantages of new branding such as technology and music, one can communicate with consumers around the word and ultimately win recognition.
Photo by Alex Knight via UnSplash
About The Author
Yoshiyuki Watabe is a Japanese professional currently living in Boston. After graduating with a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, he has spent most of his professional career working for big technology companies such as Cisco Systems, helping Japanese companies with digital transformation. At Hult International Business School, he rotated between campuses in Dubai, Boston, and San Francisco, where he was exposed to various countries and regional cultures. He is interested in the science of human behavior and decision-making, and at Hult, he focuses on courses related to marketing and data science.
References for Japanese Cultural Products on The Global Stage
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