PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

Greetings from Shinjuku, and the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Yes, it’s the Lost in Translation hotel, with the view of Mount Fuji from the gym on the 47th floor. Mike and I arrived last night, after nearly 24 hours of travel: 1 hour to airport, 2 hours waiting for flight, 6 hours to San Francisco, 2 hours of layover, 11 hours to Narita Airport (40 miles from downtown), 2 hours to Shinjuku, the district where the Park Hyatt is located.

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I am feverishly preparing for next week’s presentation to 50+ B2B marketers in Japan. Prep includes a little Pimsleur (I’m aiming for competency at least around “good morning” and “excuse me, do you speak Japanese.” Its funny, but it seems like half the lessons involve apologizing for lack of skills. I figure my lack of skill in the Japanese language will speak for itself), and a lot of sharpening an argument around integrated marketing. Planning integrated programs is what I spend most of my time doing for clients, but there is nothing like a presentation like this to force some fresh research and thinking.

Here is the point I’m coming to. A lot of the research points to a mismatch between the information sources B2B decision-makers value when making purchase decisions and the channels companies invest in to get their message across. The most glaring example is in online…something like 40% of B2B decision-makers rate online channels (search, and vendor Web sites rate particularly high) as their first or most influential information source. Only 8-10% of media budgets are being spent online. Hence the marketing arbitrage. If you can do a better job than the market at large at synchronizing your message with the media your audience values, you can exploit a marketing arbitrage opportunity. The most obvious arbitrage opportunity: rebalance your media mix before your competitors do. Less obvious is investing more in what I’ll call consideration media: trade or industry Web sites–or increasingly blogs–that your audiences already trust. More on this later.

After These Messages lets the community review and give feedback to advertisements. Decidedly focused on the cultural impact of advertising, it’s mostly relevant to B-to-C advertising. The intention of shared concern, dialog, and the exchange of ideas is, however, very relevant to the B-to-B space. After These Messages was created by Green Team and is a great example of how a company can seize an opportunity to be a thought leader or champion of innovative thinking. I like the way they’ve positioned the site:

ATM focuses on more than just creativity, we look at the effect our communications have on society and our culture. As facilitators, not judges, the creators of ATM have provided members with a few fundamental tools (view the video above) to help us do just that. The use of these tools earns users points, which are in turn redeemable for rewards.

People in advertising tend to be passionate about their profession and will have something to say about all the work featured on ATM. I’m eager to see how this site does and who gets involved with the conversation.

Mike O’Toole and I are busily preparing for our first trip to Japan to visit our Japanese/Chinese agency partner, Chugai. We are putting on a seminar with Chugai on Thursday October 12 at Akihabara UDX, an IT new business complex near the “Electronics Town” section of northeastern Tokyo.

The title for the seminar is “B-to-B Goes Global: New Trends in the US, Japan and China.” We’ll be making two presentations, and the VP of Business Development at Chugai, Hiro Mizoguchi, will be presenting a section of his own. Ours are: “Business-to-Business Branding: Best Practices for the American Market” and “From Banner Ads to Blogs: Integrated Marketing Trends in America.”

Our UK/European agency partner, Banner, will also be in attendance.

This is a great opportunity for us to gather together our latest thinking on BtoB branding and social media/Web 2.0, as well as to heighten PJA’s global profile. Chugai and PJA already have collaborated on a client engagement for Murata, a leading Japanese electronic components company, and had a few near-misses with three other client engagements. This seminar should get our foot more firmly in the door, however.

Now to the important tasks: finish our presentations, brush up on our in-car CD Japanese lessons, and purchase some nice gifts for our hosts!