Japan Marketing News

Audi Japan opens sleek new showroom

About two years ago Audi Japan opened its first showroom in a spectacular glass structure, known as the Audi Forum (left), located just 2 minute's walk from Meiji Jingumae subway station in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. The Forum is not only pleasing to look at, it caused a bit of a stir, since auto dealers in Japan are not usually found in such beautiful buildings (click for enlarged view).

While all of Audi's showrooms are not quite so enticing, last week they opened another attractive location in the Toyosu area of Tokyo, which adjoins Tokyo Bay (below). It's hardly comparable to the Forum, but believe me, it's a lot better than the typical dealership in this town.

In Tokyo, every new tasteful building is welcome indeed; for a long time Japan lagged behind other countries in terms of delivering exciting, tasteful, modern and practical architecture for both commercial and residential uses. Thankfully, the latest generation of builders "gets it," and slowly but surely Japan's architectural landscape is improving. Tokyo has been blessed with some pretty spectacular buildings in the past few years (I'll show you a new addition to the Aoyama area next week), and it's been great to see local hotels revamping and modernizing like crazy too.

Toyota IQ wins Good Design Award

In 2007, Toyota introduced the IQ at the Frankfurt Autoshow. Last month, the car went on sale in Japan. Ten days ago, it won Japan's Good Design Award. Design-wise, it is one cool automobile. Toyota is positioning it as "a concept car that challenges conventional thinking of automotive hierarchies: small yet spacious, premium yet small." Even if you don't understand Japanese, there's still plenty to oooh and ahhh about on the brand's website here.

Nissan: a new angle to drive sales

Now this is marketing.

Nissan went and identified a consumer need, developed a ground-breaking means of addressing it, and then communicates the result in a compelling, easy-to-understand way that also leaves you intrigued by the product and feeling good about the company.

Nissan's "around view monitor"-equipped models use four built-in cameras to gather data that is combined in such a way that it gives drivers a virtual view of their vehicles from above.

Have trouble seeing the curb or worried about scraping another vehicle as you parallel park your van? No problem. Just fire up the AVM and breathe a sigh of relief as you glide right into that tight parking space.

Here's a rough translation of their TV commercial:

Now you can drive with a bird's-eye view.

[Introducing] the world's first "around view monitor."

Inventiveness that leads to driving excitement.

Try it out at your local Nissan dealer.

Shifting technology, Nissan.

If you're interested in AVM technology, Nissan features explanations in English on this website.

Japan fervent for Fit

According to a ranking put out by autobytel-japan.com, the Honda Fit is far and away the car consumers are most interested in buying these days. But it's not just consumers who are excited by the Fit, the car won a Good Design Award 2007, and was also chosen "Car of the Year" last November.

Nice design integration: Website + TV, Toyota Corolla Rumion

Cheery, finger-snapping fun here at the website for Toyota's Corolla Rumion. Click on the "enter" button to reach the "special website" and then hit the CM box to watch the brand's bouncy TV ads. Still can't get that Blues Brothers number out of my head. . .

New Mazda Demio among top five selling Japanese cars

The stylish new Mazda Demio, which was released on July 5th in Japan, is selling like crazy. According to statistics released by the Japan Car Dealers Association, the car ranked fifth in Japanese domestic sales last month. We'll have to see if sales remain brisk, but things are fairly rosy at the moment. Word is that the Demio website is getting 1.3 million hits a month—compare this with the average Mazda model—which gets just 100,000 or so. This car has struck a nerve.

According to the brand's website, the Demio was specifically conceived with young Japanese women in mind. This group is extremely important to Japanese car manufacturers, and not a few launch models that are targeted squarely at this profitable and influential demographic.

The Demio is inexpensive, fuel-efficient and easy-to-drive—all consumer pleasers in and of themselves—but the real appeal lies in its design (click above photo for a better view). On the one hand it's kind of cute. But at the same time, the special attention Demio's designers gave to the car's silhouette and surface angles makes it feel sophisticated and dynamic too. For style conscious consumers, it also doesn't hurt that the car comes in 11 different colors.

Japan 2006: overall ad spending slightly up, new media expenditures rise sharply

On February 20, Dentsu put out a news release (in Japanese) containing an array of statistics estimating advertising spending across industries and for various media types in Japan during 2006. It would take far too much space to reproduce all of the data, but here are a few highlights:

- Overall ad spending in Japan was slightly up 0.6% versus 2005. Breaking down the main categories, mass media expenditures dropped 2% and SP ad spend dropped 0.9%, while outlays for satellite media and Internet ads rose sharply with jumps of 11.7% and 29.3% respectively.

- Mass media vehicles saw the following decreases: TV (-1.2%), Radio (-1.9%), Magazines (-1.5%), Newspapers (-3.8%).

- In terms of industries, energy/materials and fashion/accessories registered the largest increases in ad spending versus the previous year (+12.8% and +10.4%). All of the following categories dropped to 95% or less compared to 2005: autos/parts, home products, retailing/distribution, finance/insurance, education/medical/religious, government.

In Japan, the overall trend of fluctuations in ad spending has generally followed changes in GDP over the past decade, with joint peaks and valleys and one slightly leading the other. In 2003 and 2004, ad spending slightly outpaced increases in GDP, while last year the positions were reversed.

Perhaps most interesting, spending on cell phone advertising increased a whopping 35% in Japan last year.

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