marketing– tag –

Why are things going well with Milano Salone? I think one of the primal reasons must be the good environment in Milan in April. Comfortable weather, nice food, beautiful streetscapes, etc. Indeed, it's a trade show, and most people come there for business, but we're not always serious and don't focus only on our jobs. Entertainment is necessary even when we are at work.

Have you ever seen "jewelry ice?" It is completely different from drift ice, made of not sea water but fresh water, and so, it's highly transparent like a diamond. River water turns into ice on the surface at river mouth, and the ice pieces, before getting washed ashore, drift in the sea for a while, get rounded off, and are more brightly polished. According to Wikipedia, this natural phenomenon occurs only along the coast of a small town in Hokkaido even in all the wide world.

Do you know Theodore Levitt? He is a legendary marketer, well-known for his saying "Sell the hole, not the drill." He argued "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole." His point is that we marketers should focus not on products or services themselves but rather on the purposes people want to achieve by using the products or services.

Gacha, Japanese capsule toy vending machines come back in style! The biggest Japanese advertising agency brought about a revolution in the Gacha industry. They've started to install Gacha in some international airports in Japan. Their target customers are foreign tourists who have too much time and too many Japanese coins on their hands.

This theme would be a critical issue especially for the business suit industry. In Japan, the industry is in danger of extinction. As time passed, office clothing became more and more casual, and less and less people wore a business suit. I think the fundamental reason for the decline would be the fact that business suits are uncomfortable.

I know we have received a lot of benefit from innovation mostly made by courageous or reckless decision-makers, but sometimes I can't help feeling that the value of being the first penguin is overestimated because of its high-risk nature. Think about it for a second: Nobody knows if such innovations can make the world richer. I think it may be better to leave it to some weirdos like Elon Musk.

Academically, the value of things is composed of three factors: rarity, utility, and timeliness. Let's put aside timeliness here because things get too complex. First of all, diamonds are no longer so useful at least in industrial activities because we can artificially make them. Let's rule out utility. Next, what about rarity? Do you still believe diamonds are rare?

Do you know how many decisions you make in a day? Including trivial ones, like blowing your nose or reading this article, for example. It is said to be about 35,000. Do you believe we can make such many decisions logically and rationally? Of course, not. It's beyond our capacity. We make most (65%) of our daily decisions based on our emotions and biases.

The brand tag of Maison Margiela is just tacked only in the four corners of the tag, so that customers can remove it easily after purchase. The four tacking stitches can be seen from the outside. Ironically, most of the Japanese customers seem to leave the tag, and accordingly Maison Margiela is sometimes called "the four-point tag" in Japan.

Our life is already sufficiently efficient. Effectiveness or efficiency is no longer an important factor for our purchasing behaviors. Dyson had re-defined vacuum cleaners. We clean up not only for a clean and tidy life but also for catharsis we feel by seeing an action and effect.