Tag: Japan

Singapore – Marketing technology solutions provider AnyMind Group has recently acquired ENGAWA, a Japan-based marketing company that focuses  inbound and outbound marketing solutions for Japanese businesses and local governments in Japan to reach international audiences.

The recent acquisition is the fourth move of AnyMind Group to acquire a Japan-based business to further bolster its efforts in the direct-to-consumer base market expansion in Japan. Furthermore the acquisition will tap into ENGAWA’s expertise in merchandising and distribution, and network of over 700 manufacturers throughout Japan.

ENGAWA, which is a subsidiary of the SUNNY SIDE UP Group, also focuses in providing marketing and influencer marketing solutions, and helps Japanese manufacturers and businesses distribute their products internationally. Additionally, ENGAWA owns and operates Tokyo Weekender, an English language lifestyle print and digital publication in Japan.

“The lifestyle of consumers and the ways businesses reach their customers are changing dramatically, with digital becoming increasingly important. New digital solutions will be the key element for market recovery in the future. By providing AnyMind Group’s superior technology and offerings to local governments and regional clients together with Engawa’s strong marketing know-how, we will look to create a new infrastructure for businesses in Japan and the region,” said Takanobu Ushiyama, CEO and founder of ENGAWA.

AnyMind Group has previously made a joint venture with the SUNNY SIDE UP Group in July 2019. The joint venture, known as AnyUp, provided g marketers, public relations professionals and influencers in Japan with a combined offering of AnyMind Group’s influencer network, AnyCreator, and platform for influencer marketing, AnyTag (formerly known as CastingAsia), together with SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP’s public relations expertise.

“Consumers today expect businesses to have more digital touchpoints, whether it is interacting with a brand or buying products. As such, businesses need to quickly transform to fit the needs of modern consumers. The acquisition of ENGAWA takes us a step closer to creating the business infrastructure for next-generation businesses, ultimately enabling us to fulfil our mission of making every business borderless,” said Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group.

Malaysia – Japan is known for innovating the global brand Nestlé’s KitKat into a multitude of exciting flavors that transcend the classic and basic variants of chocolate, white, and dark chocolate. One of its flavors – Cheesecake – which also happens to be bakeable is available in Malaysia.

Released in 2015, Japan has showcased yet another form of ingenuity on this one, where the KitKat variant can be eaten as it is or popped into an oven for a better – carmelized – version of the wafer.

Image from @junkfoodonthego on Instagram

According to KL Foodie, instructions to bake the KitKat can be found at the back of the packaging. One Instagram user Huizhen Li, with the handle @huizhen0106, showed on the social media network the transformation.

She shared the wafer selection is “crispy and light” where the white chocolate still dominates the cheese flavor.

KL Foodie said to place the KitKat on a baking sheet and put in a toaster or oven for about two minutes, then immediately, place in a freezer to let chill for a bit.

For the past years, one of the most popular Japan-made KitKat flavors is the ‘matcha’ or green tea. The maker responsible is the ‘KitKat Chocolatory’, which is actually the brand’s store for premium flavors which has presence in different countries worldwide.

KitKat Chocolatory in Japan
KitKat Matcha flavor

The store in Japan has produced the most unexpected selections within KitKats such as Soy sauce, Cherry blossom, and Ginger ale. Similarly with the cheesecake flavor, the country has released varieties Blueberry cheesecake and Strawberry cheesecake, and a bakeable Custard.

The cheesecake flavor is said to be limited edition. It comes in a packet of 12 mini KitKats and can be ordered via Shopee.

Main feature image from Huizhen Li (@huizhen0106) on Instagram.

Bangkok, Thailand – Japanese automaker Nissan has announced three new changes in the senior management of the company’s presence in the ASEAN region, a part of their midterm plan streamlining operation, financial stability and profitability.

Isao Sekiguchi (left of banner picture) has been appointed as regional vice president for marketing and sales in ASEAN, where he will report to Yukio Ito, corporate vice president for marketing and sales in Japan-ASEAN and is effective starting December 1, 2020.

Prior to his position, he worked for Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corporation, and is responsible for managing automotive companies based in US, Germany, and Slovakia. He later joined Nissan in 2014 as managing director for Nissan North Africa and Egypt, and later on as president director for Nissan Motor Indonesia.

Yutaka Sanada (center of banner picture) is promoted as Nissan’s corporate vice president for corporate strategy and special projects, and will report to Hideaki Watanabe, senior vice president for corporate strategy, new mobility, corporate governance, corporate management, board of directors office. Sanada joined Nissan in 1999 and has held various positions concerning logistics, sales and marketing, production and supply chain management. More recently, he was Nissan’s regional senior vice president and head of Asia & Oceania (A&O) operations.

“Sanada has been instrumental in strengthening the Asia & Oceania region and in driving a focused strategy. He has created a strong, customer-focused organization that makes us well-positioned to tap into new opportunities. In his new role, Sanada’s deep understanding of the business will further support the execution of the Nissan NEXT transformation plan,” said Ashwani Gupta, chief operating officer at Nissan.

Former corporate vice president for Nissan Japan business Yukio Ito (right of banner picture) has been promoted as Nissan corporate vice president marketing and sales for the Japan-ASEAN region, and will report to Asako Hoshino, executive vice president for brand champion, global marketing and sales, global customer experience, MC chairperson for Nissan Japan-ASEAN.

Sanada and Ito’s appointments are effective by January 1, 2021.

The senior management shuffle is part of Nissan NEXT, the company’s corporate revamp, including new car models and market realignment to four key regions: Japan-ASEAN, China, Americas and AMIEO (Africa, Middle East, India, Europe & Oceania).

Singapore – More consumers in the Asia-Pacific are doing their holiday shopping on their mobile devices, a new survey from mobile advertising AdColony shows.

Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand have the highest share of consumers that prefer to make purchases on their smartphones, as the majority of the country respondents clocked 94%, 93% and 91% respectively. 

AdColony-Online-Shopping-Philippines
AdColony infographic of mobile shopping in the Philippines

Respondents from Thailand (88%), Malaysia (86%), and the Philippines (84%) stated they prefer to shop in-app rather than use a mobile browser. On average, APAC shoppers showed 73% majority of showing the same consumer behavior. 

Purchases related to seeing an advertisement online are also relevant to the majority of APAC consumers, as Indonesia (92%), Malaysia and the Philippines (89%), and Singapore (85%) showed majority of such behavior.

AdColony-Online-Shopping-Malaysia
AdColony infographic of mobile shopping in Malaysia

In terms of what matters most for consumers’ shopping experience on mobile devices, an average of 52% said that easy payment process matters, as evident by the majority of respondents from Thailand (60%), Indonesia (59%), the Philippines (55%) and Malaysia (54%).

Japan (50%), Australia (53%) and Indonesia (56%) said that gifting this holiday should be done via shipping the gift directly to the receiver, while Malaysia (58%) and Thailand (52%) said that they will do the exchange gifting after the gift shipment has arrived.

AdColony-Online-Shopping-Singapore
AdColony infographic of mobile shopping in Singapore

Meanwhile, online ordering, accompanied with concurrent home delivery still ranks as the top choice of shopping for today’s APAC consumers, garnering an average of 85% of all the respondents. Also, 55% of the respondents state that better deals are the prime reason why they shop online, evident by consumer behavior from Malaysia (70%), Singapore (62%) and Thailand (56%).

Hong Kong – Canada-headquartered customer experience management (CXM) and insights platform Alida has expanded its Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) team to build on its existing regional presence and propel further growth in the CXM industry.

Formerly named Vision Critical, Alida is a global platform that offers both CXM and extraction of insights and feedback. Its products offer brands a number of use cases such as customer journey, customer satisfaction and advocacy, marketing and advertising, and product and UX design across a broad range of industries.

The firm recently appointed its general manager for APJ, former CEO of IT firm NTT Steven Medeiros, and along with Medeiros’, its several appointments of senior industry leaders in the region support its expansion to drive new growth while making additional investments in its clients’ success and partner ecosystems. 

“We are seeing unprecedented demand from clients and partners seeking enterprise technology, industry expertise, and a high touch, localized delivery model. We will continue to invest in great people to better serve our clients and partners across Asia Pacific and Japan.” said Medeiros.

Phillip Walsh, former regional vice president for APJ at Texas-based computer software company Kony, joins the team as general manager for Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific. Walsh brings over 19 years of CRM sales experience, with leadership positions at Atomic Software, BMC Software, Pegasystems, and IBM Australia. In his role at Alida, Walsh will focus on formulating strategy and growing business in ANZ.

Jodarna Meade has been appointed as head of customer success for the APJ region. Meade brings over 20 years of experience and previously led Alida’s sales operations, partner ecosystems, and customer success management in North America recently relocating back to Asia Pacific region. Prior to joining Alida, Meade spent a decade leading marketing at Lendlease. 

Karen Lo joins the APJ team as head of marketing to further expand client and partner growth in the region. Lo’s decade of experience in leading corporate communications and marketing for Dimension Data and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, will strengthen Alida’s pipeline and revenue growth and expand brand presence across APJ.

Wingsan Lun, senior sales executive of APJ, joins the team to lead sales and growth for APJ. With more than 20 years of experience in Temenos, Adobe, and Salesforce.com, he brings deep expertise in digital marketing and customer experience. Lun will support the growth of Alida’s customer base in the region and support its clients to uncover the power of customer truth in their businesses.

Uma Jain, partner manager at APJ, brings over 18 years of experience in business development and execution of global go-to-market strategies for acquiring new clients and partners. Jain previously held senior management positions at Kore.ai, OutSystems, and Kony. She will support the growth of Alida’s global and partner ecosystem.

Jagan Sivanesan, the new principal solution engineer, has joined Alida to lead the regional APJ solution engineering team. Sivanesan brings over 16 years of engineering experience developing state-of-the-art software experiences, high-growth technology companies, such as Kony and Wipro Technologies.

“I’m thrilled to have assembled this powerhouse team of proven technology experts to drive our growth in APJ. Each leader brings unique expertise that is fundamental in propelling our business to the forefront of the CXM industry in Asia Pacific and Japan,” said Medeiros.

He added, “Their collective wealth of experience will drive our next phase of growth in the region. Our priority as a team is to know our customers and put them first.”

Manila, Philippines – “Designing the overall digital experience while creating magic in the details.”

The phrase, defining interaction design as a separate entity of user experience design, is a perfect summary of how new experiences can be developed out of ambiguity, as explained in one of UXPH Conference 2020’s lightning talks titled “Designers as Enablers of Change”.

Presented by Daisuke Yukita, one of global design firm IDEO Tokyo’s interaction designers, the talk centers on the importance of creating meaningful designs that speak to customer experience and accessibility. Furthermore, Yukita stresses the importance of bringing the stakeholders on board to further understand the design process and achieve change.

UXPH2020ConferenceSnapshots

“We should try as much as possible the stakeholders along the design process, and it’s not just the furnished parts, it’s also the messy parts. We need to learn to embrace that effort and time that it may take because it does lead to a bigger impact,” Yukita stated.

During the talk, he also narrates various instances that interaction design has led to a ‘golden age’ of small yet meaningful designs, from micro-features like Recycle Bin and right click, to more meaningful and interactive projects from ‘Remote High Five’ to creating a school from the ground-up.

While often met with ambiguous questions from clients on solving business problems, Yukita notes that most of them change from “I wish it was…” to “How it can be changed…”, all thanks to a diversity of effort.

“There are designers like interaction designers, communication designers, mechanical engineers, and business designers. It’s not just that, there are people from all sorts of backgrounds and careers, like physicians or musicians or food scientists. With these amazing people, we practice design thinking.”

Another key takeaway from the talk is that the design process is, and should be focused on the lens of the people.

“Always think in the lens of the people. When you create something new, you need to think of it from a business sense, which would be the viability; the technology lens, the feasibility, and the people lens, the desirability. You all make the key decisions with the people in the center of the design process.”

Daisuke Yukita, Interaction Designer at IDEO Tokyo

Yukita concludes his talk by adding that aside from taking stakeholders on board, designers must also provide rationale for future processes and create outputs that are distributive

MARKETECH APAC is an official media partner at the UXPH Conference 2020: Designers as Navigators of Change, which was held from November 14 to 15, 2020. 

London – The ongoing global pandemic has created varied consumer impacts and reactions within the consumer base within the Chinese and Japanese markets, recent statistics from consulting firm Ernst & Young show.

In their latest “EY Future Consumer Index,” the report showed contrasting behaviors on pandemic impact on consumer behavior and everyday life. Chinese consumers showed more optimism that the pandemic fear will fade off, as 46% of the respondents say the fear will only last about one to six months. On the other hand, Japanese consumers were less optimistic, with 66% of the respondents saying that the fear will last for about a year or more.

With a significant increase in consumers shifting to online shopping, Chinese consumers are very likely to show interest in online shopping, with appliances and technology-related items being the top shopping choice.

On the other hand, Japanese consumers’ behavior tends to lean more to a “normalization” perspective, which accounted for the top consumer trend in the country.

Andrew Cosgrove, EY global consumer knowledge leader, notes that such mixed consumer behavior means that the future of shopping means transitioning to online channels.

“This points to the risk of showrooming, with consumers going to stores to touch and feel the product for the experience but then making purchases online where products might be cheaper. Retailers and consumer product companies will need to ensure they have both seamless omnichannel experience and the stock and price point needed to make the sale,” Cosgrove stated.

Singapore – France-based ad-tech company Criteo has announced its third Japan-based data center based in the capital city of Tokyo, and aims to follow the rule on corporate responsibility by making its newest data center equipped to standards of green-based energy.

Upon migration, the Japan market will be the company’s largest data center within the APAC region. Being the largest market outside of the United States, the company aims to diversify its reach within the North Asia region, particularly in Japan and Korea.

Aside from being equipped with the company’s basic services for premium ad services and inventories, the newest data center’s facilities are based on using less power and less CO2 emissions. Features such as 25Gbps connection interfaces, faster and large servers are some of the new inclusions in the new green-based data center.

“Criteo is conscious of its environmental footprint and our IT infrastructure team has always had this in mind as we look at improving our data centers. By using leading technology combined with sustainable practices, our powerful data centers around the world can support up to 2.8 trillion bid requests per week, evaluate over 64 million campaigns per second, and accumulate 700 TB data per day,” said Diarmuid Gill, Criteo’s chief technology officer. 

In a statement, Megan Clarken, chief executive officer at Criteo stated that the company’s newest data center launch is in response also with the positive growth of the ad industry in Japan.

“Rapid increases have been noted for transactions of programmatic ads and Real-Time Bidding (RTB). We continue to diversify our solutions and invest in upgrading our infrastructure and R&D to provide better service and performance to our clients. As a green-energy based data center, it demonstrates our commitment to being a socially responsible company, caring for our environment and society,” Clarken stated.

Singapore – With a goal towards a larger ad market target, Singapore-based ad-tech company Adzymic has joined hands with branding and ad-tech firms in Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan to bring its full suite of dynamic creative solutions to advertisers. This comes after the company’s  expansion to Australia and India in 2019.

One of the company’s flagship advertisement solutions is the ‘Dynamic Creative Management Platform’ which functions as advertising transformation of physical to digital media, such as banners, carousel ads and social display ads, allowing advertisers to create ads without the need for coding experience. The company also offers a ‘Smart Tag’ technology, which enables advertisers to create personal ads through behavior tracking, machine learning algorithms, and updates.

For Hong Kong and Thailand, the company has officially tied up with Maadtech Global, a programming integrator solutions company, while also partnering with another Thai firm Spikebrand, a branding solutions company. Meanwhile for its Japan expansion, a collaboration has been forged with Atlas Associates, a local-based ad-tech startup focused on social networking site (SNS) management tools.

“Asia is expected to surpass North America as the biggest ad spender globally by 2021. 4 Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand are very exciting for us, both from a creative and growth perspective. They are known for their incredibly creative ads, and together with our partners’ local knowledge and network, we will deliver high impact campaigns with brands and agencies,” said Kenniess Wong, co-founder and executive director of Adzymic.

Adzymic, since its founding, has been involved with large brand partnerships, including DBS, Sony Pictures, Toyota and Esplanade Singapore.