Category: 日本 | japan | 일본

Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.

There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

Things that caught my eye this week

Post author By admin
Post date November 21, 2020
No Comments on Things that caught my eye this week

Reading Time: 2 minutes

House music producer Roy Davis Jr put together an amazing mix for Phonica Records and I have been vibing off it for most of the week.

Roy Davis Jr for Phonica Records

An old, but good music video put together by my long time colleague Haruka. It’s a mix of found footage and painting done on 16mm film.

Gates to the city by Haruka Ikezawa

I’m not so sure if it was the best portable stereo; but the JVC / Victor RC-M90 was an archetypal boombox of the 1980s beloved by hip hop fans and gadget lovers. Techmoan does a good tour of the device. What’s interesting is how quality seems to have reached a peak in the late 1970s, early 1980s in hi-fi equipment. Quality seems to have declined as more overseas manufacturing was undertaken by the Japanese brands.

If you are buying a major Japanese brand like Sony etc; try to buy a ‘Made in Japan’ product is still a great rule of thumb. More gadget related posts here.

Leo Burnett did a great advert for McDonalds. It tells the story of story of a single mum trying to get her son into the Christmas spirit. However, she faces an unresponsive child; until his inner child wins out. The Drum did a walk through of the ad with the creative team who worked on it at Leo Burnett here.

Leo Burnett for McDonalds UK

Finally, the IPA did a three hour webinar A New Way to Track Consumer Demand, that is now available online.

Finally Sony launched the PlayStation 5 in the UK this week. As I write this, there is a strong secondary market at three times the original retail price of the consoles. They’re the hot item for Christmas.

This was supported by buzz marketing with a takeover of London Underground signs at Oxford Circus station. The square logo (all the shapes are from the PlayStation controller) contrasts with the closed Microsoft store behind it.

Social media spread images of the signs and it was all very nice. I think part of its success was the counterintuitive aspect of a stunt in a high footfall area in central London – during the COVID19 lockdown, when other brand marketers are spending their budgets online…

playstation5 taken by Ian Wood — London Underground sign photo by Ian Wood

Bonus content: Clifford Stott is an expert in policing. He walked away from a Hong Kong government review into the 2019 protests. He goes into failings of the review and everything that went on in this report: Patterns of ‘Disorder’ During the 2019 Protests in Hong Kong: Policing, Social Identity, Intergroup Dynamics, and Radicalization by Clifford Stott, Lawrence Ho, Matt Radburn, Ying Tung Chan, Arabella Kyprianides, Patricio Saavedra Morales.

He talks about his findings with the Hong Kong Free Press.

ICYMI | 万一你错过了| 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

Post author By admin
Post date November 19, 2020
No Comments on ICYMI | 万一你错过了| 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

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Apple’s M1 ARM Pivot: A Step Into the Reality Distortion Field | Chips | TechNewsWorld – pretty much many of the points that I was thinking about. More here on the M1 Apple M1 Processor, Passing on the Chiplets | EE Times

BMW Unveils Anime-Like Electric Scooter Concept – Core77 – nice but I would still want Kenada’s bike

The Biden team’s tug of war over Facebook – POLITICO – Facebook is the new Goldman Sachs….

5G has been heralded as a tech game changer but consumers in China are underwhelmed by spotty coverage and hard sell | South China Morning Post

How to appeal to Gen Z in Asia | Vogue Business – “Chinese luxury consumers’ offline and online lives are becoming increasingly intertwined,” says Mark Morris, Burberry’s senior vice president of digital commerce. “They are demanding a more seamless blend of content and capabilities across their two worlds.” Working with local experts like Mr Bags and relatively lower-tier influencers (Ching has 6.6 million fans on Weibo, which is mid-range for a Chinese KOL) helped reach this level of engagement. “Gen Z wants to be approached in a narrow and deep, insightful way instead of using a mass approach with a big talent [and] hashtag ads,” says Rie Tanaka, senior business strategist and senior researcher at Japanese PR firm Dentsu

Europe is ready for Biden to start, says E.U. foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell – The Washington Post – Western governments may have been “a bit naive” about Beijing’s manipulation of global trade rules – strategic reset inbound

Five-Year Plan, 15-Year Vision by Geoff Yu, Bank of New York Mellon – at the outset a new long-term objective for 2035 was established: China is expected to “largely realize socialist modernization” by that year. Specifically, this means achieving GDP per capita of a “moderately (or mid-level, depending on the translation) developed country”. Again, we underscore that the FYP itself does not contain a corresponding numerical target, but during his remarks at the plan’s launch, President Xi Jinping remarked that “it is fully possible for China to realize a doubling of the size of the national economy by 2035”. Assuming the doubling happens in real terms, this comes to around 4.7%y/y p.a. real GDP growth over the next 15 years (PDF)

Micron Leapfrogs to 176-Layer 3D NAND Flash Memory | EE Times – everyone else is on 128 layers

Japan gov’t may turn to YouTubers to promote ‘My Number’ ID cards – The Mainichi – To publicize the system, the government has inserted advertisements in newspapers and used digital signage to stream commercials at stations and in the streets, among other methods. However, it has not received as many applications as anticipated, and now places a big hope on the YouTubers’ power to transmit information. The choice is also apparently because labor costs are not as high as appointing nationally popular actors, celebrities and other public figures. Moreover, the Japanese government, by eradicating its image of stubborn bureaucracy and having people watch videos on YouTube without reserve, aspires to remove anxiety and concerns about possible personal information leaks that accompany the My Number system – surprised that Japanese influencers would be that cheap relative to their reach. More on marketing here

Resharing this as many people still don’t know about this old paper from Ogilvy on Facebook organic reach

Facebook Zero: Considering Life After the Demise of Organic Reach from Ogilvy Consulting

ICYMI | 万一你错过了| 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

Post author By admin
Post date November 15, 2020

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Mondelēz International, Inc. – Announcing Humaning: A New Approach to Marketing – Humaning is a unique, consumer-centric approach to marketing that creates real, human connections with purpose, moving Mondelēz International beyond cautious, data-driven tactics, and uncovering what unites us all. We are no longer marketing to consumers, but creating connections with humans – no I am not wiser than when I started reading this as to what humaning actually is. More marketing related posts here.

The Three Eras of 32-/64-Bit Embedded CPUs – EE Times Europe – Arm’s responses to the RISC-V phenomenon could have come straight out of the dominant player’s playbook, under the chapter heading “When you’re spooked.” First, it released marketing collateral attempting to generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about RISC-V, which merely served to help inform the industry of the existence of RISC-V (IBM’s FUD campaign about minicomputer vendors achieved much the same effect). Second, Arm waited to see if the RISC-V startups ran out of money. To Arm’s surprise, the emerging RISC-V vendors were beginning to win customers with low-end processor IP cores, as customers finally saw an alternative to Arm, at least at the low end. More venture capital (and corporate VC) investment flowed toward RISC-V. Companies like Western Digital heavily backed it. To make matters worse for Arm, Softbank seemed to demand that Arm raise prices for its low-end M-class processors. That apparent misstep drove further business away from Arm and toward RISC-V. Now, more Arm customers are reviewing the value their long-term supplier offers for the money.

Once a household name, Chinese maker of copycat Nintendo consoles driven to bankruptcy – bye bye Sabor

Introducing a total online advertising restriction for products high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) – GOV.UK

SoftBank in talks to sell Boston Dynamics to Korea’s Hyundai | Techinasia – SoftBank’s second major sale in just two months, following its divestment of UK-based chip designer Arm Holdings to computer hardware giant Nvidia in a US$40 billion deal. SoftBank had acquired Arm in 2016 for about US$31.4 billion in cash

Project MUSE – The Authoritarian Assault on Knowledge – Journal of Democracy – interesting stuff here on China’s influence on university campuses around the world

Beijing’s Erosion of Hong Kong’s Freedoms Has Been in the Works for Years – Pro Market