BRAND NARRATIVE MARKETING
Brands are conversations within networks. We enter those networks and create
narratives about brands, specfically adapted to the Japanese market. Brand narrative marketing is the recreation of the narrative of a brand within
networks, the reconstruction of a brand’s original values, creating synergies from the European/Western values and a new
narrative that is created specifically for Japan. Our mission is to reconnect
brands with Japanese consumers, and getting them to understand the dynamics
behind what they see on shop-level.
The Japanese market is highly complex and for foreign brands with limited
presence in the market it is often difficult to discern. There seems to be two
worlds operating in the Japanese market. One is the market of Japanese clothing
and accessory brands with a ubiquitous presence that follows a seasonal logic,
supported heavily by magazine legitimization and usage of popular Japanese
models that create a feeling of closeness with the consumer. The second is the
world of Western import brands, legitimized by high fashion magazines such as
Vogue, Western models, and a reputation for being status symbols. All this is
integrated into a complicated structure of media and consumer word of mouth.
The amount of detail that a normal Japanese female consumer knows about brands,
about which styles are promoted at the moment in popular magazines, and about
what her own networks think about certain brands, might strike a foreign
observer as obscure. Yet understanding this complex dynamic of interaction
between consumers, their networks, brands, and magazines, is the key to
successfully operating in this market.
Until a few years ago, foreign luxury brands were selling with tremendous
success. Yet Japanese people took their brands, stripped them of most of their original
BRAND NARRATIVE AUDIT
Our brand audit provides insights into the potential of a brand, not only its
status quo. We carry your brand image and narrative to our networks for a test run.
LIVE ACCESS TO NETWORKS
The key is to acquire an intimate touch with the networks that make up the
Japanese market. We give brands insights through live network feedback.
MEDIA STRATEGY ANALYSIS
Brands are often not aware of the ubiquitous usage of styles for messaging and
their meaning in Japan. The important thing is to understand how this system
works, how foreign brands are combined with domestic styles, and how much of
their original brand image is stripped away and replaced by perceived images of
status and ownership groups.
LUXURY STRATEGY
Luxury marketing in Japan is about winning a complex social game. It is about
creating opportunities and access to gatekeepers, opinion leaders. Luxury
brands should direct themselves in achieving a sustained relationship, a
conversation, with the consumers within the market place.
HNWI MARKETING
Acquiring customers for luxury brands must be differentiated by wealth level and
the customer's marketing exclusivity, meaning the inclination of a consumer to
be not receptive for mass marketing environments and mass media. The higher the
wealth level, the less receptive the customer is to normal marketing channels.
interface. We immerse ourselves deep into this media jungle and selectively tap
the right resources to help create a consistent brand image.
Brands themselves have to show a deep interaction but not immersion. They are
visible within the market, biased and opinionated by definition. They make a
statement. Our company immerses itself in the networks, invisible and unbiased.
Fashion trends are notoriously difficult to predict. Where you can not predict you must take hold of the conversation and direct it.
This is what we mean by using narratives. Brands must cultivate strong
relationships with their most involved custormers. They supply you with
valuable information about what's happening in the market and provide the
fertile ground to build up your marketing ideas, campaigns, and strategies.
With that brands will have the power to move the market.
Changing a brand image in Japan is a process that includes understaning several
different layers of society that are connected by systems of social
gratification. First you have to understand the system of
magazines/models/consumers/legitimazation, then you have to understand the
networks targeted, and then you can start to manipulate the brand image.
UNDERSTANDING BRAND IMAGE FORMATION
Brands have social roles within networks in Japan and are constructed
differently from the way Western people do. We explain the underlying dynamics
in more detail.
