The countdown to the Tokyo 2020 Games begins today (proudly sponsored by Omega the official timekeeper) with a number of events taking place across Japan to celebrate the “One Year to Go” mark.

One of the major events today was the unveiling of the "sustainable" medals that will be awarded to the athletes during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The medals make history by being crafted from 100% recycled metals.

Between April 2017 and March 2019, the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Tokyo 2020) conducted the “Tokyo 2020 Medal Project”. The aim of the project was to collect small electronic devices such as used mobile phones from all over Japan to produce the medals.

Approximately 6.21 million devices were donated over the two year period to craft the 5,000 Olympic and Paralympic medals. The Tokyo 2020 Medal Project hit its metal collection target in July, 2019, generating 30.3kg of gold, 4,100kg of silver and 2,700kg of bronze.

Scopic works to help Japanese businesses grow globally, contact us to find out more.

As the end of 2018 quickly rolls around, it is now time to start proactively planning your 2019 marketing spend and activities. Guaranteeing marketing success in the year ahead will require you to reflect, focus and plan ahead.
 
Use these five simple steps to create a marketing plan to boost your business and brand in 2019.
 
1. Create a Marketing Schedule Calendar
Get a 2019 calendar and mark each day/week you want to launch marketing activities for your business. Consider days/weeks that are key sales periods, of course this will depend on your business and key markets. Remember, to make sure you firstly take the time to reflect on your 2018 marketing activities and identify what provided the best ROI.
 
2. Identify Marketing Deadlines
After you have identified your key dates for 2019 on your Marketing Schedule Calendar, count back four weeks and mark it as “Marketing Deadline”. This is when you should have your marketing activity finalized and ready to go. Too often important marketing activities are rushed and this greatly impacts on the creative process being compromised.
 
3. Make Strategy Time
For every day/week marked “Marketing Deadline” schedule at least two weeks before as “Strategy Time”. This is when you need to make time to review the overall marketing strategy to make sure it is inline with current objectives and will provide a real ROI.  Marketing KPIs you need to be measuring to better understand your ROI may include: website traffic and engagement, social media reach and engagement, marketing qualified leads (MQL), sales qualified leads (SQL), and of course sales growth relevant to the marketing activities.
 
4. Consider Production Time
Effective marketing involves creating, drafting, revising and delivering. Identifying creative partners and briefing them on your business takes time. Producing marketing materials, booking quality advertising space or media spots also takes time. By leaving this all too late will limit your potential ROI. This is why it is extremely important to focus and plan ahead for 2019.
 
5. Build Professional Relationships
Finally, now is a great time to start reviewing or building new relationships with designers, agencies and media outlets in preparation of launching your 2019 marketing activities. By reaching out now you will be able to start to develop relationships with key partners. Like effective marketing, creative business relationships take time to build.
 
Scopic works with you to plan ahead and maximize marketing returns, contact us to find out more.

People across the globe will be fixed to their screens this Sunday (U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis | 3:30pm | USA time) to watch if coach Bill Belichick and Tom Brady can grab the honors at the 2018 Super Bowl LII.

Like years past, it won't just be the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles competing, but also the biggest global brands.
 
The Super Bowl is one of the biggest days of the year for major brands and they only have seconds to hold viewer's attention. The average TVC production costs over $1 million+ and brands will pay $5 million+ to get a 30-second spot during the big game.
 
Top five TVC picks for Super Bowl LII.

I. M&M'S   |   Human

II. Amazon   |   Alexa Loses Her Voice

III. Doritos&Mountain Dew   |   Blaze vs. Ice

IV. Kia   |   Feel Something Again

V. Sprint   |   Evelyn

Nielsen a global leader in consumer measurement and information offers a look at the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sales trends for 2018.

Consumer habits continued to evolve with technology in 2017. Shoppers are buying smaller items online and seeking out healthier, fresher options. These behavioral shifts should serve as a good predictor of trends and opportunities in 2018 for FMCG businesses.
 
Watch the video: U.S. FMCG Trends to Watch in 2018
 
Scopic works with you to create more effective communications to grow your business globally, contact us to find out more.

You already know, to connect and engage with your audience on social media—it takes much more than just a few random minutes across the day—you must consistently produce relevant and targeted content.
 
Here are four key components of an effective social media strategy:

• Define your objective -- increase likes/followers, increase website traffic, promote products/services or create sales leads.
• Identify your audience -- sex, age, background, interests, location, preferred platform, preferred device (mobile or desktop) and social media habits.
• Plan your guidelines -- how many posts per day, what time, content type (text, image, video, audio, live), content length (300 word post, 15 second advertisement or 10 minute video blog) and importantly who will manage and monitor the platform/s. 
• Find your influencer -- an influencer will allow your business to communicate in a manner that is more relevant and targeted to your audience. The right influencer has already built an existing relationship through content that is liked and shared. This will allow your business to quickly connect with a wider audience. 

​For convenience—see below two social media strategy templates designed to help your business amplify its social media exposure—an editable template for social media strategy planning and an editable social media strategy calendar.

As business becomes more globally competitive, Japanese companies need to better align with local English-speaking markets in order to expand and grow in the future.
 
We work collaboratively with businesses to create effective branding, communications, marketing and sales solutions that positively impact on future growth at a global level through our Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) partner services.
 
Outsourcing certain business processes offers a number of advantages for Japanese businesses.

Cost Reduction: Outsourcing helps Japanese businesses control costs and increase profits. Business process outsourcing provides a comprehensive range of business services at reduced costs including lead generation, email marketing, telemarketing, inbound customer inquiries and order taking.
 
Experienced Professionals: Recruiting new English-speaking employees and training them in product knowledge and services requires a lot of time and money. Through utilizing the services of business process outsourcing, Japanese businesses have the ability to have their marketing and sales divisions communicate directly with global customers in English in real-time.
 
Core Business: Outsourcing increases the time that Japan-based management and employees can better focus on their key domestic responsibilities. Business process outsourcing offers a flexible and customized way to grow Japanese businesses across new English-speaking markets without having to neglect core Japanese customers.
 
As a global partner, business process outsourcing partners add reach to Japanese businesses on an international scale through the integration of branding, communications, marketing and sales solutions.

If you like what you see and are interested in finding out more, then connect with us via email and we’ll get back to you on the same business day.

Business Outsourcing Inquiry
global@scopiccommunication.com
Communications Inquiry
hello@scopiccommunication.com

Japanese Webpage 
www.scopiccommunication.com/japanese

We understand that as business becomes more globally competitive, Japanese companies need to better align with local English-speaking markets. We work collaboratively with businesses to create effective communications, marketing and sales solutions that positively impact on future growth at a global level.

As a global partner, we add reach to Japanese businesses on an international scale through the integration of our communications, marketing and sales solutions into their business.

Discover the benefits of international business outsourcing and get an idea of the communications, marketing and sales solutions we offer in our 2017 Business Process Outsourcing Overview.

The freshest campaign installment created by Dentsu titled "Crazy Makes the Future" evolves the sporting samurai that started with Japanese freestyle football champion Kotaro Tokuda playing ball during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. In 2016-2017 the campaign will go global with locations like Brazil, Japan, India, Indonesia and Singapore.

These modern day - 7 Samurai Stories – target a youthful, sporty, global demographic through a broader 120-second spot of extreme sports including skiing, surfing, pogo stick, BMX, skateboarding, football and slack-lining. Each samurai also have their own 30-second TVC spots with our favorite being the Skiing Samurai. Be interesting to see if and how Nissin share the Samurai Stories series across other media channels.

Basically, Snapchat offers users multiple communication tools: snaps, chats and stories.​​

Today, users can use the platform to share time-limited photos (or snaps) and videos. Fast growing in popularity with users and marketers are Snapchat Stories (linked short videos or snaps) launched in 2013. Stories are viewable for 24 hours, vanishing after 1 to 10 seconds (depending on your settings and if screenshots are taken). In 2015 Snapchat launched Lenses which saw user numbers boom. The lenses feature allows users to add real-time special effects and sounds via creative filters to both photos and video. Users can personalize these selfie snaps and then share them with friends or upload them to other social media platforms.

​To further increase the platform's diversity and revenue streams Snapchat launched Geofilters in 2016. Geofilters are location-based graphic overlays that users add over their snaps. Users have the option of creating personal or business (sponsored) filters. Geofilter pricing (starts at approx. ¥500) is based on location, geofence size (the geographical size the geofilter will be active in - from approx. 20,000 square feet up to 5,000,000 square feet) and length of time the filter is viewable.

​Checkout these Geofilter tips: www.snapchat.com/geofilters/tips

​Snapchat's users watch over 10 billion videos per day - more than a 350% increase in the last year. Due to the attention, reach and interactive experience the platform offers, big brands in the United States are starting to embrace Snapchat Ads as a communication tool to connect with targeted audiences. Over the coming years, advertising will continue to grow on Snapchat as the platform's audience starts to age up (fastest growing Snapchat user being over the age of 25). With a growing global base of over 100 million active users, marketers and brands are starting to take Snapchat fun - seriously! 

Snapchat's active user numbers are predicted to double over the coming years to 85.5 million by 2020 in just the United States, it may be time for Japanese brands to consider getting their geofilters on and start storytelling.  

Need help identifying social media platforms to increase customer engagement?

Scopic works with Japanese businesses to identify the best social media platforms to increase global customer engagement, contact us to find out more.

Simply, localization is the process of reworking business communications to align with another market and culture. The key objective of localization is to have a brand resonate with the local market’s audience.
 
The localization of Japanese brands will become a necessity for many businesses (based on the target demographic) as the population continues to age faster than any other country on the globe. With over 30% of Japanese aged over 65, weak consumer spending in the Japanese market is predicted to continue.
 
Why Japanese businesses should localize and go global?

• Over 55 percent of consumers stated that the ability to have product information in their own language is more important than price.
• Over 60 percent of multinational enterprises believe localization is important for achieving higher company revenues.
• Over 70 percent of multinational enterprises believe localization is important to achieve increased revenues from global operations.

 
Japanese to English translation of a print ad, digital campaign or company website is only one small part of a number of pieces that are involved in the successful localization of a brand.
 
To truly capture and then engage with a local audience Japanese brands must also consider the following important points:

• Evaluating the graphic design elements and images so that they better target the audience’s visual tastes
• Shaping the tagline and copy to better connect and engage with the local audience’s beliefs and expectations
• Adapting the design format and layout inline with local market standards and industry requirements

Remember, it is important not to strip away too much of the businesses brand identity during the localization process. Keeping your branding globally consistent will ensure international partners and clients develop a strong connection and relationship with your business. Japanese products/services are generally internationally associated with high standards in quality, so use this positive as a point of separation from the local brands in the marketplace.

Taking the time to research, plan and successfully execute the localization of a Japanese brand will positively impact on the business’s future growth.
 
Scopic works with Japanese businesses to localize for the global market, contact us to find out more.