Category Archives: Japan

Sidhwani Goes to Hollywood?

Japan, Lifestyle, , , , , ,

Updated Bollywood Marketing

It used to be that when Indian filmmakers wanted to promote one of their new movies, they would just get a “giant, hand-painted poster, a television or cinema trailer and the pulling power of a star actor.” These days much more is needed. And Ritesh Sidhwani, producer of the upcoming movie “Hrithik Roshan film Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara” (You Only Live Once), is not about to be left behind.

RS Phones Home

Some years ago it was ET phoning home. Now Ritesh Sidhwani is using a similar technique, but not in his movie; rather as a way of promoting it. Mobile phones are the new way of marketing movies and that is what Sidhwani is trying to do. This move is being implemented through a joint collaboration between Aircel (a leading mobile phone company in India) and Excel Entertainment film studio. The venture will result in two three-minute trailers which will be sent (for free) to the phone company’s 55 million subscribers. Since India is anyway the “world’s fastest-growing cellular market and the second largest after China,” (boasting 752.2m mobile phone subscribers at the end of 2010) this new marketing method seems like a slam dunk.

Sidhwani is already extremely hopeful that this new method will yield excellent results. He claims that by utilizing this technology he has been better able to engage in “more targeted marketing for films.” This is very helpful in today’s ever-increasingly competitive environment when there are so many diverse types of entertainment battling for their share of the market, which has decreased by 20 percent over the last three years. Sidhwani claimed that it is bound to work great since “mobile reach is much wider,” with everyone (especially the younger crowd) anyway watching Internet promos. There has been an increase of 22.6% year-on-year of Internet subscribers, with 10.99m having access to a broadband connection (an increase of 40% from 2010). It is predicted that a staggering 82% of India will be mobile-phone-clad in just three years’ time.

Bollywood “Likes” Facebook

As well as the mobile phone industry, it seems Bollywood is taking it all a step further. The movie is set to have a Facebook page. Clearly the industry is headed in “movie marketing to the next level.” It is honing in on where people are going in 2011 and responding extremely well to it. That has to be good for Bollywood business.

SEO Takes a Ride

Consumerism, Economy, Japan, , , ,

Suzuki Seeks Google Guidance

You wouldn’t necessarily put the two together – Suzuki and Google – just in the same way you might have gone “hmmm” the first time you were told to put peanut butter and jelly together (especially if you’re British). But somehow, just as the latter works supremely well in combination, the former might have a thing or two going for it as well.

It seems that Maruti Suzuki is going to be doing more than Googling for guidance on marketing techniques. In fact it is looking to “tie up” with the company in order to acquiesce a “more focused foray into the digital marketing space.” It won’t be restricting itself just to Google though since Suzuki is also looking into working with other “specialists” in the digital marketing field.
Suzuki is not stupid, fast recognizing that it has to respond to an eternally changing digital media world. Thus it understands the need to bring in specialist help, said the company’s marketing chief general manager, Shashank Srivastava.

Team Effort

Suzuki has thus already been working closely with Google on “search engine optimization and online reputation management initiatives,” which basically means Google is assisting the auto company in traffic keyword tracking. This enables Suzuki to thereafter respond as needed. For example if there has been a media posting (on say Facebook or Twitter) regarding the company’s services, it will be alerted and given an immediate opportunity to respond.

Marketing Surge for Suzuki

In general Maruti Suzuki has been surging forth in its marketing effort. Indeed the budget allocated to its promotion, doubled this year. It has “created social networking profiles of all its products,” with its prime hits being A-Star and Ritz since they attract the younger customers as well as netting in the most Facebook fans.

Suzuki Sells on its Own

The argument could also be made however, that the company’s cars speak for themselves. The new Suzuki Swift is even better than the one it replaced if that was possible since you probably would be hard pressed to find any complaints on that one. It is a great price and is truly able to “offer something that stands out from the comparatively bland and boring cookie-cutter crowd.” It boasts additional windscreen rake, a cool new front bumper, better angular headlights and some brand new tail light clusters.

Still, as the saying goes, you can never be too rich or too thin. Perhaps in today’s Facebook and Twitter world, you can never have too much SEO work on your product or service either.

PTJ: Post Traumatic Japan

Consumerism, Economy, Japan, , , ,

Japan and Travel

The question on everyone’s lips of course is, how is Japan faring, post trauma? What does its road to recovery look like? According to Tourism Australia, pretty good. It looks like the company is going to begin marketing in the country next month again since “officials claimed they were confident of a swift recovery.” Marketing in Japan was put on hold last month by Tourism Australia but that things will be speeding up, pretty much because the company’s MD Andrew McEvoy sees how it is “in the Japanese DNA to travel,” so they won’t be sitting still all that much longer.

Japan isn’t set to sit in the sidelines forever. Indeed it is thought that the country is going to recover fast and “get strong again,” leading to increased growth. There doesn’t seem to be the need to be placing any ads but there are already notable signs that people want to start traveling again.

This is especially timely since next week it is Golden Week, traditionally a very major travel season for the Japanese. As well, schoolteachers were looking at Australian tour opportunities via Tourism Australia. Clearly the Japanese are not living in the past; in fact they are heading out to the future with enthusiasm.

Japanese Industry

As well, news today in Japanese industry is that as the country recovers, demand will increase in Japan for beef, copper and iron ore. According to Melbourne’s National Australia Bank Ltd’s commodities economist Ben Westmore, building up the country again could “drive demand for steelmaking materials and metals used in construction.” Given that the local protein supply was damaged, this will probably result in an increased need for imported dairy products and beef as well.

Further, there will probably be the need for more food imports due to the possibility of radiation leaks from the nuclear plant in Japan. So it looks like in general there will be more business inside of Japan and more travel outside during the coming months as the country goes from strength to strength following its recent travesty.

Mega-Marketing Millions: SEO Style

Economy, Japan, Tech News, , , ,

The way to go with marketing these days – if you want to be up with top technological techniques – is SEO. Japanese car manufacturer Honda, could learn a thing or two from this marketing method. It is using just one website for different selling points. For example, whether you were looking to buy a used car or were just thinking about maybe becoming a new customer. This made things very confusing since if you would put in a Google search for Honda, you would be sent to their primary site and then you would have to spend time roaming it before reaching your particular area of interest.

Honda Hails SEO Help

So how did the extremely successful and popular Japanese car manufacturer solve this issue? It brought in the SEO experts who developed a “one size fits all solution.” What they did was set up a section that just focused on used cars and then redirected all traffic to that. They then established a map based on the user’s location so that if someone from the Sacramento area was looking for a car, the map would provide them with a list nearby and then put that potential new customer in contact with the current owner.
Higher Hits for Honda!

Well, Honda couldn’t have been happier with the results! In just a few months following their SEO work, their search queries escalated “from tens to thousands.”

SEO, SEM and SES Success

It seems that if you want to be any kind of success in today’s Internet market, the following acronyms need to mean something more than just a few letters. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Strategies (SES) are today’s mandatory media tools.

Indeed, you just need to look at what’s been going on in India to have this theory proved. Figures for 2009-10 show that of the 785 crore* spent on online advertising market in the country, a staggering 368 crore of this was spent in the field of search advertising; this amount is expected to further increase for 460 crore for 2010-11.

So, no matter what business you are, if you want to market your product well and continue to grow, or to at least really start to put yourself out there, you could be well advised to become extremely familiar with SEO, SEM and SES.

*a unit in the Indian numbering system equalling ten million (10000000; 107), or 100 lakh.

NZ: Marketing and Markets

Consumerism, Economy, Japan, ,

It’s not always the case that the more money spent on marketing, the better your product will well.  That’s what energy-Drink Manufacturer Red Bull New Zealand just found out.  Although the company netted 7.5 percent gain in 2010 sales (its second best since it first launched more than ten years ago), other factors have been at play.  Still, the company can celebrate a tad since a staggering $30.3 million of the caffeine-infused energy drinks were purchased by New Zealanders last year, that is made with taurine (an amino acid that was originally located in bull bile; hence Red Bull).

But it didn’t come cheap.  The company paid for this with larger marketing and administration costs which “wiped out most of its net profit” that plummeted to $888,171 from $10.7 million.  It’s not always in the sales pitch.

New Zealand Market Recovers Following Japan’s Disaster

V – an energy drink produced by Frucor – is in direct competition with Red Bull.  The latter drink has a hold on around 60 percent of the market share, selling approximately $90m of the drink annually.Good news on the horizon for New Zealanders as its dollar just now jumped ahead “recovering the more than US2c lost in the last week in the wake of Japan’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, followed by a nuclear crisis in the world’s third-largest economy.”

According to HiFX Daniel Bell, “Investors have shrugged off concerns in Japan and the Middle East for now to give risk assets a boost with equities, commodities and high yielding growth currencies all benefiting.”

So things are looking up for New Zealanders and manufacturing companies like Red Bull and V are likely to continue making good profits; so long as they’re careful with their expenses and make the right marketing decisions.