Marketing in Tokyo: Our Experience

“Tokyo gives the most authentic glimpse of the future” student Zaki (Pakistan) reflects as we returned from our week of exploring the art of marketing in Japan’s capital. Throughout the past weeks in Japan, nine of us have been specifically studying global marketing as well as Japanese unique and diverse marketing tactics. Not only have we been studying these concepts, but we are applying them as marketing and branding consultants for Mazda and the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF).

The group traveled to Tokyo, the biggest city in the world, to sit down with local experts in the field and to witness firsthand the large-scale marketing and advertising techniques found everywhere you look.

Tokyo is not only the capital of Japan, but also the capital of Japanese culture, unique advertisements, mass public advertising, and creative marketing techniques. By even just by walking down the street, we were able to identify so many different advertisements going on.

In our short trip, we had fun and learned a lot. In our first seminar, with Jeff Crawford from Zo Digital Japan,  we learned more about characteristics of Japanese marketing, and went through case studies of success and failure of familiar brands. We gained a strong insight and clearer idea on what we’re dealing with as a marketing consultancy. Jeff’s talk made us think about how we are using these different technological advancements in the online world to become a more integrated society but at the same time, the same tools are used by corporations to manipulate their consumers. We gained valuable feedback from him on our Marketing Strategies for Mazda and RERF, seeing he had experience working with some of the world’s biggest tech companies such as Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft.

We attended the Tokyo Technology Marketing Fair, and experienced cutting edge technologies being used in the field of marketing. It was difficult because most of the booths and presentations were in Japanese but we still gained inspiration for our showcase from the use of virtual reality in marketing.

We had the opportunity to meet Ed Thompson for a walking tour in the core of Tokyo. Besides passing through the chaos at the Shibuya crossing, we were able to identify the marketing tactics used subliminally in the advertisements around us.

We had a great meeting with EAT creative. EAT is a creative branding agency that consults with large organizations and businesses to allow for a smooth transition between different cultural markets. We had the privilege to meet with a couple of people from their team, and we got an insight of a real-life implementation of what we were learning about.

All of these experiences have helped us grow immensely, and truly understand the extent that differences in culture impacts what brands need to do in order to meet their target audience. From meetings with large, successful organizations to Robot Restaurants and marketing fairs; we have only caught a glimpse of what Tokyo offers.

The Fun Stuff: