Chris played live at many Tokyo events for SYN Entertainment…this is for the eye glass company Alain Mikli..Watch this and several of the other performances through the same player…Simon LeBon of Duran Duran performs with Chris also.
This event was a great success for Alain Mikli.

There is a great example of trade agreements and real competition between countries. Australian rice imports to Japan.

Japan has accepted the quota for importing rice from Australia but instead of allowing the bulk of it to be sold in supermarkets Japan repeatedly uses this rice as aid to counties in need like North Korea.

They have followed the trade agreement to the letter but the spirit of the agreement has been breached. One could argue that North Korea benefits from the process but it stymies real competition.

Australian rice is actually the same strain. In fact in blind taste tests the very subtle palates of Japanese consumers consistently chose Australian rice as their preference over domestically grown rice.

When branded the Australian rice comes in dead last. The Japanese are extremely loyal to most Japanese products over foreign imports.

In most capitalistic countries people accept that marketing and communication managers are hired to present a compelling case for a product or service. The communication presented is therefore inherently viewed with a very high-level of cynicism. The marketing professionals that craft this communication come under great degree of scrutiny.

Because the ethics of most of these professionals is generally under attack, today’s clients often view the contribution of these professionals as less valuable than ever before

In addition to this high level of skepticism the media in Japan where I work is very strict about over-claiming in advertising. In Japan no comparative or superlative adjectives can be used. So in Japan no detergent washes whiter, all detergents wash white.

The media are also very cautious about what they consider unfair competitiveness: that is saying or implying anything disparaging about a competitor. The Japanese tend to believe this kind of communication is disrespectful and should be avoided…advertisers steer clear of this anyway convinced that it offends viewer sensibilities.

I think that the most fundamental difference in Japanese advertising is the intent of the communication. Let me illustrate that by showing what I believe is the logic of Western advertising-

Tell them why you are different
Tell them why you are the best
Then they will want to buy

Then they will become hooked on you because they can justify their purchase. In Japan the “logic” of the approach would be quite different…perhaps…Make friends with them

Prove you understand their feelings
Show that you are nice
Then they will want to buy
Then they will find out what’s good about you

This famous eye wear TVC is a great example…it says nothing about Yanno but the TVC certainly shows that Yanno understands the consumer.

This Japanese approach to marketing adds even more credence to client’s claims that communication alone cannot contribute to the success of a product or service. More fundamental dynamics are at work.than strong communication when a product or service is launched successfully.

After carefully analyzing market research to identify the market opportunities a company may have to develop a product, specific to the market with packaging, distribution, and price strategies appropriate to the market. All these tasks are often already completed before an advertising professional takes part in the process. Although the advertising professional can make suggestions for changes to these tasks we often lack credibility in these areas.

This year the Unesco World Heritage Music Festival will be held in China at ten different World Heritage sites.

The first will be in August during the Olympics. Unfortunately the artists are not sure they will attend as they are trying to show support for Tibet.

I applaud their sentiments however the money raised will go to disaster relief and specifically for the earthquake victims in China. I hope Unesco will be able to proceed with the concerts.

After the Global Earth Summit in Tokyo, Japan last November I guess i am more aware these days of ecological issues.

True of False: America’s paper bag consumption uses 14 million trees a year. The answer is: True

According to the Sierra Club and other environmental think-tanks, paper bags are just as harmful to the environment when you look at the overall impact behind their production and consumption – where the source material comes from, how energy-intensive they are to make; and how difficult they are to recycle or reuse.

One of the paper bag’s more obvious impacts is deforestation. While America’s consumption of plastic bags uses up 12 million barrels of oil a year, it’s consumption of paper bags fells 14 million trees a year.

It has even been suggested that paper bags cause more global warming than plastic bags, simply because they take up more space so need extra transportation, using up energy.

Others have said the reverse, that because of the energy used in the production process, plastic bags still remain the greatest scourge on the environment of the two.

Citibank’s announcement in Tokyo that it is closing 32 branches led me to begin thinking about how has the role of financial services firms changed over the past 5-10 years.

In just a short five to ten years the role of the financial services industry has changed dramatically. Of course increased deregulation has made it possible for firms to be more useful but the reality is that the firms had to change and evolve to become more useful and relevant to its customers.

Safety and security are still a priority but the bank as only a place to park your money and visit from time to time is no longer relevant to the lifestyles we are experiencing now.

Deregulation has certainly made it easier for the firms to offer more services but the real driver has been that these firms can earn more money by delivering more individualized and personal services than they ever could just holding a customers money.

Firms are looking at the “life” of a customer and realizing that during that life the consumer will experience many things and each will have a link to his or her financial needs.; school, first job, marriage, new baby, first home, cars, insurance…life.

These demands for services have so blurred the lines between, banks, insurance firms and brokerage firms that they now compete with each other for every service. Heck, I live in a country where the post office acts as a bank with ATMs and cards.

So many firms are experiencing mergers that the neighborhood banks and local brokerage firms almost do not exist today. This coupled with the globalization of the financial services industry and the use of the internet has accelerated the changes…my bank in Japan has changed names and increased ten times in size over a three year period.

Will write more on this new channel soon.
http://www.groovinhigh.tv/

For those of you who are soccer fans please visit my client’s site Goal.com…it is in 11 languages so I am sure no matter where you are you will find a version that has the teams you are interested in in the language that you feel comfortable with.

I launched a Japan version on a large portal site here in Tokyo called Excite.jp.

The growth has been tremendous and I think soccer’s popularity is still growing especially in the USA. Actually there are more active soccer players in the USA than any other country other than Indonesia…hard to believe but true!

Media experts estimate that there are 50 million people following soccer in the USA now with 18.7 million players with the player’s average age hovering around 16 years of age.

These players clearly represent the so-called “New Media Generation.” Forty Eight percent of the players are teen-aged girls who could be considered the most influential and active consumers in the country now.

As we are all on Xanga and are familiar with “tags” I thought it would be interesting to write about search engines. Two new technologies that impact a client’s media plan the most these days are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

SEO is the process of improving and placing a website in the top of the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. It increases the accessibility of a website and improves the amount of clients who see and visit it. Search engine optimization improves a website’s position in the search engines on the basis of identification by keywords and phrases that people use to search services and products.

“Last year advertisers spent $5.75 billion on SEM, a forty four percent increase over the previous year.” (www.zeroonezero.com, 2007) SEM is an online advertising strategy that aims to make a company’s website position higher within the search results of the major search engines so that more targeted visitors visit the website.

SEM services such as Pay Per Click search engine advertising or organic SEO have become major categories in online advertising spending in the past five years. “This year the spending on SEM will reach $7.19 billion and by 2010 we can expect spending to reach at least $11 billion.” (www.zeroonezero.com, 2007)

These new technologies to improve gaining targeted traffic to a product or services web site are essential for delivering strong results. Imagine a site being one of nearly 256,000,000 competing web pages on Yahoo Web Results for example. The average consumer may only consider the top ten at most.

Even if a site is considered the best site in the market if it is not ranked highly by SEO it could be deemed unimportant and not worthy of a look by potential users.

This was Robert Palmer’s last concert before he died…Robert was actually a very nice guy and always visited with us when he came to Tokyo…we miss him.

We put this on for a sponsored event for an eye wear maker Alain Mikli and VW…

Nick Wood of SYN Entertainment produced this whole show…it was a great event and generated great press for the eyewear firm…all the staff at the event wore frames from the maker. Even the VW on display had a giant pair of frames built for the bug!

Robert was in great form that night and really enjoyed the party style stage rather than concert atmosphere.

Thanks to Nick it was an evening I will never forget. Simon LeBon and Sneaker Pimps also performed…hope he edits the video for those as well.