The 300 million dollar testimonial

This image was scanned from a fax sent to John by Sato Kuniko, a now retired Hakuhodo account executive. 　In it he says that John’s presentation skills were responsible for Hakuhodo winning what ultimately turned out to be 30 billion yen worth of media billings from Buena Vista International. Forgive me, I, too, was stunned.

Super Salesmen

The gentlemen you see here are featured in the 4/15/07 issue of Senden Kaigi devoted to account executives, the people who do the ad agency’s hardest jobs. Each is an expert in one of the areas indispensable for those aiming to succeed in this increasingly challenging field. Read on to see what they have to say.

1. New Business Super Eigyo
  UCC Coffee Marketing Bucho
  織方恵介　Orikata Keisuke

Q1. What is the best way to approach a new client?
A1. Treat those you are talking to as equals.

Bring your own point of view to everything you observe, why frankfurters are sold in two-pack sets, for example, or why a package has this particular form. Don’t just thoroughly research the client. Thoroughly understand your own company’s strengths, since these are what you have to sell. Be confident in the strengths you discover. Never be fawning or excessively humble.

Q2. How do you avoid being nervous when interacting with a client’s Advertising Division chief?
A2. Be powerful.

It all depends on how you think about it. Put yourself in the shoes of the client’s president for whom the Advertising Division is only one part of the company. Treat the conversation as a dialogue, recognizing that the client may have different opinions about your proposals or access to information that you don’t have. Think “sharing.”

2. Orientation/ Presentation Super Eigyo
DG&Ibex Founder
辻井良一　Tsujii Ryoichi

Q3. What should you pay most attention to when receiving an orientation?
A3. Don’t assume that the client is right.

Your goal at an orientation is to understand the issues confronting your client. My experience suggests that in many cases the client may be unaware of all of the issues at stake.  An account executive must be ready to help the client discover and address those issues. Critical points to keep in mind include the division to which the person giving the orientation belongs and the source of the budget. Someone from the advertising department may be more interested in image-building. Someone from a sales division may be more interested in sales promotion.

Q4. How do you avoid giving presentations that miss the mark?
A4. Think carefully about your company’s position.

To my mind, the account executive is the top planner and producer and must take good notes at the orientation. Without a clear understanding of what the client wants, presentations may go astray. If you feel that you lack experience and are likely to miss something, be sure that other members of your team attend the orientation. Later, in the final stages of preparing a presentation, consider your own company’s position from the client’s perspective. If you are seen as the likely choice, throw a fast ball. If you are not the likely choice, try throwing a curve, instead.

3. Teamwork Super Eigyo
McCann-Erickson Japan CEO
中澤純一　Nakazawa Junichi

Q5. How do you pull external and internal staff together to form an effective team?
A5. To move people, you must first earn their respect.

An account executive must be able to sort out relationships with all sorts of people, both inside and outside his company and bring them together to form a theme. Their respect is indispensable. He must also be closely attentive to trends, observing not only the client’s activities, but also social and consumer movements. One could say the same, of course, of all marketers and planners, but this ability is essential in the one who has to lead the team.

An account executive must be a conductor.

Like the members of orchestras, people who work in the communication industries are highly individual. The art lies in combining their strengths, so that 1+1 doesn’t equal 2; it equals 4 or 5. This ability is not restricted to those who have reached a certain age. Sincerity is the key.

Q6. How do you restore morale when relations between client and in-house staff have soured?
A6. Things you don’t like, even failures, are opportunities for growth.

When you lose your positive energy, it is easy to feel depressed. My experience teaches me that whenever this happens I have an opportunity to grow. However hateful the people or the job, I can, at least, promise myself that I will never act like this.  I can also tell myself that the sun will rise in the morning, tomorrow will be another day. There is no pleasure like work that goes well. I remember that as I move on to the next job.

4.  Troubleshooting Super Eigyo
kazepro Representative Director
戸練直木　Toneri Naoki
Q7. How should an account executive handle relationships with client and staff when troubles occur?
A7. Every problem should be an opportunity!

Our work involves people, so problems are unavoidable. Regard them as chances to demonstrate how you, yourself, can do your job right. So, if trouble occurs, be ready to take responsibility for it, even if it isn’t your own fault. It is your job to deal with the client, come what may. Even if the problem is due to a company unrelated to your own, it is the account executive’s job to take full responsibility, to apologize and restore good relations with the client. This stance will improve your standing with your suppliers as well as your clients.

Adopt a consultant’s perspective.

Consulting means constantly asking yourself what is best for the client’s business. Putting the client first and taking responsibility will win the trust you need for your own business to succeed.

5. Relationship-building Super Eigyo
Shingata Soken Account Planner
松田康利　Matsuda Yasutoshi

Q8. What do we need to do to be more than just order takers?
A8.　Charm and IQ. Both are essential.
Sales is seduction, so nothing is more important than combining charm and intelligence to create a comfortable mood. Charm alone will leave you just an order taker. IQ is also essential. Since it is natural, however, for the client to know more about the client’s business, the account executive should carefully study other industries and be able to offer success stories involving other firms.  It is also important to consider every issue from the client’s president’s perspective and carefully present ideas that you are confident will be good for the client’s business. Don’t simply take orders from the Advertising Division.
Note, too, while ad industry people are often believed to offer consumer insight, that alone isn’t enough. What clients most often find lacking in ad agency presentations is business insight. They do want to see that you understand their industry and their business and can offer unexpected insights here as well.

Q9. Are there times when an account executive thinks, “If only”?
A9. When you don’t understand, be modest and ask.

No matter how much you study, there are always things you don’t know. Don’t be bashful when this happens. Modestly ask your client about them. Look for surprises. Even if you don’t use them immediately, jot down ideas and have them ready to use, at a half-year branding review, for example. Pick up key concepts from successful campaigns across a wide spectrum of industries. Combining them you are sure to find good answers for your clients’ needs.

And the Grand Prix winner is...

Dentsu Kansai’s Takaaki Yamazaki, copywriter, creative director, planners and narrator for the series of TV commercials for Hot Pepper magazine that won the Tokyo Copywriters Club Grand Prix for 2006. These ads, the latest in a campaign that has been running for five years, combine straightforward promotional ad copy with images taken from apparently utterly unrelated movies. Yamazaki explains that when he was trying to come up with his first ideas for the campaign, he wasn’t getting anywhere. He had procrastinated until it was time for his annual medical checkup. Then, while sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, he found himself staring at a movie with the sound turned off playing on the TV set. He found himself saying “Sugoi! (amazing!) and realized, he doesn’t know why, that putting ordinary words in the mouths of actors in movie settings could turn them into effective copy.

Media, Media, Everywhere.

The first ever 29-station, whole JR Yamanote Line poster rally campaign with different posters at every station was the first of two media innovations noted in the October 2006 issue of Senden Kaigi.

Celebrating Release of Ayase Haruka CD

Ayase Haruka has starred in the dramas “Shouting About Love at the Center of the World”(世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ)  and “White Night Travels”(白夜行) and been featured in TV commercials for Ohtsuka Pharmaceuticals’ Poccari Sweat sports drink. To celebrate the release of her new CD “Intersection Days” (交差点days), 29 posters were created, one for each of the 29 stations on Tokyo’s JR Yamanote Line. Each poster featured a different image of Ayase and a line from the lyrics of the songs on the CD. According to a Victor Entertainment spokesman the use of the lyrics in 29 different posters was designed to stimulate imagination and attract fans.

Honda Stream Promotion

If you want to sell cars, what better place to advertise them than in a parking garage. That seems to have been the idea behind the creation of a 3D ad combining an actual car with images and copy painted on the wall beside it in Roppongi Hills,  Shibuya Parco, La Chic (Nagoya) and other parking garages in fashionable shopping areas.

From Low-Malt to No-Malt, Kirin Nodogoshi-nama

Classic Japanese beer is a strongly flavored Germanic brew. In the 1980s, it was challenged by lighter tasting but more alcoholic “dry” beers. Then came happoshu, low-malt “sparkling spirits” designed to evade the higher tax on beer. Now is the era of the “Other miscellaneous (2)” beer-like “third beers” that contain no malt at all. But how are they being marketed? The 2005-2006 MCEI Marketing Excellence Award goes to Kirin Nodogoshi-nama.

The Japanese beer industry is squeezed in a trap with three sides. Consumer tastes continue to shift from heavier tasting, more bitter beers to lighter, “more drinkable” beers. Taxes raise the cost of beer at a time when Japanese consumers are increasingly cost-conscious. And the elephant in the room is the fact that Japan’s shrinking and aging population simply drinks less beer. In their home market Japan’s brewers are forced to launch new products that attempt to redefine their markets. At the presentation that won the Marketing Communication Executives International (MCEI) Marketing Excellence Award for 2005-2006, Kirin sales promotion chief Oki Tadahiko explained how Kirin Beer attacked this problem with the launch of what is currently the best-selling “third beer” in Japan, Kirin Nodogoshi-nama.

Price-conscious Consumers

Research showed that price was a major consideration. The proportion of price-conscious Japanese women had risen from 35% to 61%, and Japanese women control the pursestrings of the working men who are heavy beer drinkers. Taste preferences were shifting, too. In a four-cell table with mild vs. sharp as one dimension and clean and flavorful as the other, the trend was clearly in the mild and clean direction (bad news for sharp and flavorful Kirin Lager).

Development of a no-malt third-category beer began in 2000. More than 160 experiments on 20 possible alternatives to malt were performed. Finally Kirin settled on soy protein. Meanwhile debate raged inside Kirin. Was creating a third category the right strategy? Wouldn’t the new product cannibalize existing brands, especially Kirin’s successful Tanrei happoshu brand? If competitors moved first, wouldn’t Kirin be stuck in a me-too position? But the critical question was still, would the new product be what consumers were looking for?

New Category Research

Research focused first on the issue of whether the new product would be mistaken for happoshu. Tanrei was launched with a message and packaging that emphasized its connection with Kirin. Its label featured the same Kirin, a mythical dragon-giraffe , as that on Kirin Beer labels. There was also the issue that 125 yen per 350ml can, the proposed price of the new product, was only 20 yen less than the 145 yen charged for happoshu. Attention turned to how to differentiate the product and offer consumers something truly new. The brand concept that emerged was “A beverage you want to drink a lot of with friends, without having to worry about it.” You’d like the taste and wouldn’t have to worry about the cost.

How to Make it Look and Taste Like Beer

A vital technological issue in producing a “third beer” product is achieving the right taste and color. Kirin’s solution, for which patents are pending, is browning, a process in which sugar is added to the fermented soy protein and then the mixture is heated, caramelizing the sugar and giving the beverage the color as well as the taste of beer

Designing the Brand

Instead of the mythical Kirin,  Nodogoshi-nama cans are stamped with a logo that appears to be a large red seal. This design is carried through in 6-packs and other packaging. At the end of the day, though, a critical factor in selling the product was the TV commercials in which a comedian plays the role of an earnest Kirin salesman who works all out to help his customers sell the product. He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere, always dressed in his yellow jacket and full of smiles and optimism when it comes to his product.

Down-home and Upbeat

This is a point that Oki stresses. Kirin’s edge in Japan is still its huge distribution network. To the audience he was speaking to, he didn’t have to belabor the fact that Kirin hadn’t been feeling very good about itself, ever since the disastrous 1980s when Kirin Lager, the brand that had truly been the king of beers in Japan, had been dethroned by Asahi Super Dry. The success of Tanrei had helped to repair its image, but there was still work to be done. Nodogoshi-nama would not only be tailored to the shifting tastes and growing price-consciousness of Japanese consumers, it would also become a symbol of a mood at once down-home and upbeat. The not-too-bright but comically cheerful salesman is a Japanese Everyman. He works hard and is always pleasant and helpful, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. The contrast with Asahi Super Dry’s hard-charging international journalists, photographers and businessmen is striking and seems somehow a better fit with the mood of Japan today.

But that’s only speculation. The fact is that Kirin Nodogoshi-nama is No.1 in its segment, and the segment is growing―a success by any business measure.

The material reported here is extracted from the MCEI Bulletin, No. 448, May 2006. More information on Japanese beer categories can be found by Wiki-ing Japanese beer and happoshu.  Images and additional information (Japanese only) can be found at the Kirin Nodogoshi-nama campaign site.

The world's biggest outdoor ad? Who got to see it?

This aerial photo shows what our local news called the world’s largest outdoor ad, which covered the whole of the roof of the Pacifico Yokohama conference center.

The advertiser was Dove, launching a new moisturizing cosmestics remover called Dover Lifting Moisturizer. The headline reads “No more hiding our skin.”

The Headline Caught My Eye

Where else in the world but Japan would you find an ad that boldly proclaims Underwear is Precision Machinery?

This Triumph International corporate ad appeared in the Sunday, May 28, morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun.