ad:tech Tokyo Official Blog - アドテック東京オフィシャルブログ

The exhibition room this year was in line with the topics presented and discussed during the days of ad:tech Tokyo. As in previous years there were a range of solutions and products aligned with the need of proactive action that help run digital platforms.

Marketing in the digital world has become an incredible mesh of granular tasks that if not planed and run carefully can become an incredible time consuming venture.

This year we have seen many companies offering tools to help marketers do more in less time with better and more effective solutions that not only automate and schedule tasks, but also bring the data mix to live action.

Today and in Japan we are seeing many marketing automation and tracking tools that can deliver and track ads, deliver social updates, track logical and social responses and deliver ROI all in one stop. Needles to say, the issue of content management now across multi channels appeared to have been taken more seriously than ever with tools that control delivery of content of different nature to many devices while of course providing interaction with multi tracking services.

While the event sessions focused heavily on the present and future of the industry, the exhibitors present at the exhibition room did a very good job at showing solutions that are right for our present and will most definitely help us drive the future discussed.

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The day of engagement and gammification

On this 3^rd day of ad:tech Tokyo 2011 we explored customer relationships, story telling and engagement under a playful approach.

Early in the day we learned from Razorfish that we live in a world of change and that Marketing is everything we do to make a product unique. We are dealing with complicated and more granular channels of communication and interaction so, when in doubt we must “do.”

Take-aways from the early morning:

1. Change reality

2. Think like a product developer

3. Come up with big, but different ideas

4. Plan from idea down

5. Promote creative collaboration

6. Have more fun

7. Achieve more satisfaction

8. And more importantly, do something

Later on Microsoft told us not to be so fascinated with technology per se and to think more deeply about how to use technology with purpose. This opened the way for The Financial Times to make a clear demonstration of how to have purpose at the time of being creative and acquire, and more importantly retain, a large base of subscribers.

With HTML 5 and an innovative approach that lowers costs and maximizes value, The Financial Times showed a successful multichannel strategy that while playful is making its business thrive at a time and in a world where people have grown used to read the news for free.

At a local scale we heard from the Nikkei Newspaper with a similar model based on four steps to generate subscriptions and increase page value

1. Gather

2. Organize

3. Deliver

4. Inform

The afternoon took engagement very seriously and focused on how engagement and gammification connect. From very creative examples like Space Balloon by Galaxy to the now rationalized AR developments we learned about how conversion happens as a result of engagement which subsequently occurs as a result of a gammification process.

All things coming together, we then learned about how important it is to tell stories and integrate traditional with social media, promote gammification and collect big results.

Closing the day was the last keynote by Facebook’s Asia Pacific leader Erik Johnson who told us that we leave in a better world because it is connected and that a more connected world will bring upon us a better world. In this world, we have to do three things:

1) Share

2) Connect

3) Create communities

This was a great day and a great ad:tech. We learned immensely about the role of the social media and its relationship with CRM and taking things further today, we learned how engagement amplified by the concept of gammification is now and more than ever accelerating the advertising and digital communication industries.

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The day started with the traditional key note in which we learned two important things about local and international trends.

1) Social media is well established in the US while it is a
revolution in Japan

2) Mobile is well established in Japan while it is a
revolution in the US

These two trends set the tone of the day. Tone that was followed by most sessions conducted throughout the day.

We learned from adidas that engagement equals participation and that in today’s world we can’t afford to stop user participation when enough users are involved in a particular brand. We also learned that social engagement doesn’t have to be complicated and while time-demanding, keeping a certain degree of simplicity goes a long way when it comes to driving audiences.

Long content is no longer such the king it used to be, but length depends on context and relevancy. For some companies short videos work, but for companies like Heineken long videos are essential especially when about 9,000,000 people are interested in watching their stories before Heineken hits the TV set with a new commercial.

With a present and future that is about 360 (degree) exposure and 365 (day) frequency and while looking at revolutions and well established platforms depending on where we are, we must also look at how we globalize trends while being local. Part of succeeding in the communication industry in Japan has a lot to do with how we integrate global trends and export our well established practices.

On the particular topic of CRM, data collection and management and its subsequent socialization, we can safely say quite a lot. Data is something we have in Japan and while multichannel communication strategies can look at either communicating from data out or from media in, we are always talking about engaging audiences for the purpose of communicating over a long period of time and of course keeping them engaged (now and more than ever) with each other.

Both local and international social media players are looking at the time beyond this time with innovation that creates a direct connection with data. A connection made based on certain patterns of behaviors that serve the process of architecting information to then later serve the purpose of tracking and catering to refined behaviors.

The 2^nd day of ad:tech Tokyo 2011 has set the stage for a journey that starts with social media, continues across multi channels, entertains by choice (and for as long as a user wants), tracks, crafts and re-crafts behaviors and fine tunes carefully thought refined behaviors to then repeat the process all over again for further refinement. This day 2 at ad:tech Tokyo 2011 has told us a great deal about the maturity of the communication industry in Japan and where as marketers we are going…or should go if we want to make the most out of trends and revolutions.

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The overall tone an manner of ad:tech Tokyo 2011 was painted as originally anticipated, with a heavy focus on Social CRM. The afternoon and only session of the day focused heavily on what it takes to involve users and consumers socially and more importantly, how we are involving them in conversations these days.

From playful examples built around the birthday of Kit Kat to the latest social exchange platform soon to be released by Nestle and various examples of engagement and response provided by Co Tweet in the US, we learned how audience engagement functions these days.

The launch and maiden flight of the dreamliner 787 by ANA continued the afternoon bringing an interesting tone to things done and planned with social media from the ground up.

Finally the views of Family Mart, Sony and Starbucks rounded up the day with three important approaches to take away.

Family Mart involved in every possible expression of social media is driving audiences towards product development while creating emotional bonds that translate into foot traffic and sales.

Sony not so much engaging audiences in product development, but product experience tells us that they are able to bring brand and product experiences to the masses that ultimately try and buy their products due to cross-audience engagement by promoting certain standards that are shared and amplified by social participants.

Starbucks thinks of the social media as a core element of engagement amongst staff to create their own connection with their related audiences which consequently results in micro granular boosts of sales depending on what a particular Starbucks person likes.

The first day at ad;tech Tokyo tells us that many social experiences have been standardized with the maturity brought to the market and industry by the big players who have created a commonly denominated way of communicating on their platforms. Big takeaway today: it is all very playful, but still too early to call what good ROI measures and standards should be. For now we have to play and influence audiences, they definitely are driven to specific purposes and while ROI is being influenced by social activity, we have to wait longer to figure out or craft the investment-returning rules marketers will most definitely embrace for granted in a not-so-distant future.

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With only a couple of days to go till the start of ad:tech Tokyo 2011, I can't express my excitement in words. It is just going to be fantastic. We will spend almost three days talking about fascinating developments in the communication industry in Japan crafting multiple opinions with participants from all over the world.

One, if not the, most important topic bound to dominate the event is the fantastic growth in all forms of social media in the country with the consolidation of the big international names.

We now know what it takes for people to properly communicate utilizing the social media, but more importantly we are experiencing a revolution that is finally pulling all pieces together in the digital communication field. Search is not dead…it’s socialized. Gaming is not the same gaming…it’s socialized. Video is more than ever socialized and all sorts of content creation…well, they are socialized too. Even buying has been socialized.

Everything we do as we go about life today, and now more than ever, requires constant communication with other people via multi-channels of interaction that carry social content. We are now and without hesitation constantly developing further and deeper social ties at home, work and on the go.

All things considered, it is safe to say that ad:tech Tokyo will scrutinize all and everything happening in the local digital industry with a critical eye that is bound to generate more creative ways to communicate products and services, to make clients and agencies happier and more importantly to impact the growth of the local and perhaps regional economies.

Very looking forward to seeing you at the event this week!

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