1st Post:
If you have a chance to go visit a bookstore back in Japan, take a look at a current hit seller book, “Social Mou Eenen” (my translation of the title is “Enough of Social Marketing”) by Fukuyuki Murakami, a relatively famous IT entreprenuer.
It will give you a very new look on the reality of social marketing. It is hilarious. Fun to read. And, of course, most of your questions about social marketing could be solved.
2nd Post:
T==
I hope you will enjoy the book some day.
You said that social media sites were very effective in Japan. I am not quite sure of it. It is said the coverage of the Japanese largest SNS, mixi, over all of the Japanese internet users is only about 20%. Other social media have the number far less than that. It is also interesting to find that those numbers are not drastically growing anymore. And the frequency of access by the users of these media (i.e. login frequency) is getting lower,
I am not saying that social media overall is insignificant. But it is also fair to say that the majority of people are hard to be influenced by social media in Japan. Probably the majority of people are even hard to reach by social media in Japan.
One of my friends is specialized in consultation of putting effective ads in the yellow pages (telephone directory book!). His clients’ businesses are really profitable without using any digital media. And he himself earns a lot.
Well, this is the reality of Japanese overall business environment that I see every day.