3 marketing lessons from Japan

I was lucky enough to travel to Japan for the second time recently, and as with all travel it offered fresh perspective on all sorts of areas, including marketing.

During my first trip to Japan, I both marvelled at the insight behind Purikura machines and was left disgusted about how that insight was being used.

This time, I noted countless examples of how businesses were marketing to their customers and how that insight could be harnessed by businesses and marketers here.

Here are three of those examples:

Know what (actually) drives your customers

In the all-too hip neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa, I ran into a Boba tea shop which knew well and truly why they were so popular with customers -- and it had very little to do with tea.

I noticed two girls leave the store with their boba tea in hand, and before taking a sip, set to creating perfectly curated Instagram posts about their boba tea.

Then (again, before even taking a sip) they sat down on the bench outside the store below.

The business had installed this set up with the express purpose of getting their customers to take kawaii (cute) photos of themselves to send to their friends and post on social.

They knew that the endorphin rush associated with their product only had a little bit to do with their product, and more about the validation their customers got when they posted their kawaii pics on socials.

So, they worked hard to facilitate that.

Customers may only use the bench once, but plenty more will make the journey to the store because of that bench.

Know what you’re about. Stick to that.

For a Mingus acolyte, Japan is a fantastic place to travel.

Its love-affair with jazz is well-worn ground, but what surprised me is the amount of places which are explicitly set up as small listening bars.

Basically, you order a drink and the owner spins records all night.

The music is pumped through a hi-fi system the most ardent audiophiles would be proud of, and the seats all face the front.

Play music. Listen to music. Serve drinks. That’s it.

Much like the finest of Japanese cuisine, its elegance is in its simplicity. 

It’s a stark contrast to the reams of marketing which seemingly change brand direction once a year chasing a shorter term bump, or the businesses who preach diversification without having a solid core business.

Know why your customers choose your product or service, and stick to that.

You can create a premium price in a common category (with the right marketing)

People who have been to Japan will tell you that the fruit there is awesome. Like, ridiculously awesome.

It’s why you can legitimately have one strawberry as a desert.  

But with this awesomeness comes a premium price point.

For example, the melon below costs the princely sum of $300.

So, how did this price point come to be?

It’s because fruit is often given as a gift in Japan, a practice which has been around since the 19th century or so.

That means they require the plumpest and reddest of strawberries and the biggest and juiciest of grapes so their family or bosses can enjoy not only the taste, but presentation.

To fulfil that demand, farmers needed to turn their approach from growing a lot of fruit to growing the best fruit -- but to support that, the pricing needed to change.

So, a premium market has essentially been created in what is, pretty much everywhere else in the world, a basic commodity market where price point plays a bigger role in decision making.