Japan counts around 112 millions of mobile subscribers, of which 97% have 3G dataplan. The key factor for the uses of mobile Internet in Japan is the importance of the unlimited data plans in the market: around 50 millions Japanese subscribers pay for such a plan, and use mobile Internet in their everyday life.

Many differences with the European market explain also the surprising uses of mobile Internet in Japan: history, relationship between carriers and handset makers, importance of unlimited data plan, Japanese way of life.

One of the interesting points of the Japanese market, for European professionals, is the way

marketers use the mobile as a media.

For example, in 2007, the brand Cup Noodle, launched a very important campaign, called “Freedom Project”, proposing mobisodes made by the famous maga-ka Katsuhiro Otomo (movie maker of “Akira”). Major brands, like Coca-Cola and Mc Donald’s, massively invested in mobile marketing in Japan, up to the point they made the mobile phone their 1^st media to reach the young customers. Mc Donald’s is already massively using mobile couponing, in all its archipelago’s shops, and develop customized loyalty program, thanks to the mobile.

About the future trends for mobile business, we can already see some in Japan :

• Mobile social networking services (SNS have more traffic on mobile than on PC),
• video recognition on mobile (to create a link between TV and mobile),
• or Virtual assistant.

In late 2008, NTT DoCoMo has launched its virtual assistant service, called i-Concier. This little character appears on the screen and gives shopping advices to the user, information, couponing, etc. Something impressive is how NTT DoCoMo connected this service to more than 250 brands, retailers, and contents providers. This service is very successful, with almost 4 million subscribers 1 year after the launch. Philippe Le Fessant believes virtual assistant is a major step in the User Interface history, and Europe should try to move quickly to this new kind of mobile user interface.

If you missed the session, you will find below the entire presentation. You can also see it on SlideShare. For the pics,  it’s on Flick’r.

Dans les années 70 et 80, le Japon était LA superpuissance économique et technologique du moment. Les vingt plus grandes banques du globe était nipponnes. Le rouleau compresseur japonais s’imposait dans l’électronique et l’automobile…

Cette époque est révolue.

Certes, le Japon reste encore, à ce stade, la troisième puissance économique du monde. Mais le Pays du Soleil levant peine à se remettre de la crise financière qui l’a frappé au début des années 90. Depuis, la croissance stagne. La population vieillit. Et l’innovation « Made in Japan » ne fait plus mouche comme jadis.

Toyota symbole d’une forme de déroute nipponne…

Le constructeur automobile Toyota, idolâtré par des générations d’expert en machine pour son modèle de recherche de perfection et de flux tendu (dont le fameux Kaizen), est aujourd’hui emporté dans la tourmente. La confiance s’érode après la multiplication des rappels de modèles pour des pépins parfois inquiétants.

Notons que, par plusieurs facettes, le tassement économique nippon rappelle l’encrassement similaire du modèle économique de l’Union européenne.

« Le Japon n’est cependant pas mort en matière d’innovation, prévient Philippe Le Fessant. Il représente toujours 40% des dépôts de brevets tripartites (USA, Europe, Japon), contre 20% seulement aux Etats-Unis. Cela dit, c’est vrai que le modèle Toyota, pour prendre cet exemple, a fini par être tellement copié, que le groupe, à un moment, a perdu l’avance qu’il détenait en matière d’organisation ».

Les grandes entreprises ne parviennent plus à innover; Au Japon non plus, même si…

« Depuis quinze ans, en dehors de Apple, les grandes entreprises, comme les opérateurs télécoms, n’ont quasi rien inventé. Les avancées les plus significatives sont venues soit de startups, soit des utilisateurs eux-mêmes »

Ainsi, le SMS est devenu populaire grâce aux adolescents. Ce n’est pas du chef des opérateurs eux-mêmes. Les réseaux sociaux sont nés, eux, de l’initiative d’acteurs indépendants.

« Microsoft recrute les meilleurs doctorants du monde. Or, on ne peut pas dire qu’ils aient révolutionné l’informatique au cours des dernières décennies ».

Le Japon ne fait pas exception à ce problème d’innovation dans les grandes structures. L’Archipel reste néanmoins un laboratoire à ciel ouvert, poursuit le consultant. L’approche en matière d’innovation apparaît plus pragmatique.

« En Europe, on est très prudent, toujours. On procède à beaucoup d’études avant de lancer un nouveau service, observe Philippe Le Fessant. Et quand la décision tombe, le lancement se fait souvent en grandes pompes… »

En Asie, par contre (comme en Californie) la tendance consiste davantage à tester des tas de choses sur le marché, de voir et de retenir ce qui fonctionne.

Pionniers du réseau social sur mobile

« C’est ainsi que les Japonais ont inventé le réseau social sur mobile des années avant les autres pays, note le CEO d’Innovasia. Le téléchargement d’applications par les particuliers, qui fait aujourd’hui le succès gigantesque de l’iPhone et de son service App Store, est un concept en place depuis 2003, déjà, au Japon. Le problème du Japon, c’est qu’il ne parvient pas à adapter et exporter ses nouveaux modèles de services ou de consommation. Rappelons-nous de l’échec de l’i-Mode (internet mobile version nipponne, qui existe depuis près de 10 ans là-bas) en Europe ».

Les japonais n’en ont pas moins des années d’avance en matière de réseau social sur le mobile, avec des services tels que Mixi, Greed ou Mobage Town.

Ce dernier peut se targuer d’enregistrer sur sa plate-forme quasi tous les lycéens du Japon…

Entretien réalisé par Jean-Yves Huwart du think tank Entreprise Globale dans le cadre d’un Cleverwood Friday Session.

The main difference between digital and traditional media planning is that the traditional media planning focuses on pressure (frequency x coverage) while digital advertising intents to maximize efficiency (pressure, but also response). Basically, the high measurability of online advertising is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

In the second part of the session, we had a debate about the perceived weaknesses of online media and the reasons why some advertisers are still scared to invest (more) in digital communication.

If you missed the session, you will find below the entire presentation. You can also see it on SlideShare. For the pics,  it’s on Flick’r.

The session was animated by Saky Kourtidis, Trainee Business Consultant at Cleverwood and student in Business Engineering at ICHEC.

Saky Kourtidis (click for more pictures)

During the presentation we all had an interesting discussion about the impact that interactivity could have in future marketing practices.

New models will appear in this new era for Television. During many years, consumers were forced to waste their time watching linear advertisements that were imposed to them. With the new IDTV it remains to be seen if they will accept to play the game of interactivity with advertisers. Industry actors, their role in this new television landscape was also a source of passionate debate.

Saky Kourtidis explained his thesis work and exposed his vision on how advertisement budget will evolve in this new scenario. Despite the sometimes, and typical, disruptive atmosphere, he managed to answer rather complex questions asked by experienced consultants. “It was an amazing experience but also an exercise sensibly different from a presentation in front of my ICHEC class because I was in front of expert consultant that have been researching innovative solutions, pursuing knowledge in their core competences and looking for interactivity Saki said after the presentation.

video by Manuel Pueyo : www.oole.eu

You missed the session? watch it below:

There are more and more digital screens everywhere, in the streets, in restaurants, in cafe’s, in fitness, in cinema’s, in malls. Is it a natural evolution of Outdoor Communication or is it a new media?

Bertrand Prignon came to explain his point of view, his definition of what’s the Digital Signage, how it will affect our lives in the future and the world of advertising.

Regarding the outdoor advertising, Digital Signage gives for the first time the opportunity to enrich this kind of advertising with content.

During the session, we had an interesting discussion about companies who have been the first to use the Digital Signage and their Business Model (success and failures).

The challenge of the Digital Out of Home is the necessity to integrate
participative engagement with added value (relevant content, location based service, time based information and revelant advertising).

According to Bertrand, the equation to be resolved is to:

• find the good places
• choose an efficient CMS (Content Management Service),
• balance the right combination between info and service
• and combine it with the right advertising.

Although the current take-up of Digital Signage in Belgium is still at its beginning, everyone was clearly convinced that, as soon as a good business model will be found, it will take off rapidly.

Want to be the next one to be the speaker at a Cleverwood friday session? Let us know.

If you missed the session, you will find below the entire presentation. You can also see it on SlideShare. For the pics,  it’s on Facebook and Flick’r.

After the session, we opened the FAMOUS magnum of Champagne (thank you Marie!), a few other bottles, and some newTree chocolate (thank you Jérôme!) to thank everyone for the great collaboration in 2009 and wish the consultants an excellent holiday period. We posted a few pictures on flickR and Facebook.

When Web 1.0 was per definition a support, Web 2.0 became a media. The way information is produced, used relayed has changed and user now play an important role in this information chain. Content is no longer institutional but rather organic (social bookmarking, collective intelligence, folksonomy, crowdsourcing…).

During this session, Muriel explained us how users took the lead on the content, and even sometimes become the media as she demonstrated in some examples.

The session was very interactive and we all played around this equation. Muriel showed us very interesting examples where the user is the content (User = Content), the user is the media (User = Media), or even where the user content is the media (User Content = Media). The limit between those elements becomes sometimes blurry especially when the user do not really create content or information, but rather in many case relay existing information. If you browse through the slides, you will find interesting examples.

He explained that from broadcast television to online media, from gaming to radio, all media can be analysed through this Information Value Chain. This model allows understanding New (ways of using) Media successful strategies, recent repositioning and biggest failure. It enables to point out the reasons why some corporate strategies consist to take the largest possible place in the information value chain. After an hour of presentation, Fabian proposed the attendees to share ideas by making short “use cases” on the topic.

Google, Apple, Belgacom, IPM, Rossel, HTC, Microsoft… we de- and re-constructed their presence on the entire chain during the interactive part of the session.

Pictures are here and you can download the 1-pager summary here.

Friday Afternoon Sessions is definitely about knowledge sharing and collaboration.

The concept is that every consultant is welcome to share his knowledge or expertise during a short and informal session where interaction is the major keyword. We invite all members of the Consultants community plus a few externals who could be interested to discuss a given topic that must be linked to New (ways of using) Media.

A few examples? we had recently sessions to discuss

• webwriting : internet users don’t read, they scan. Ok, but how to make sure they’ll get your message?
• mobile marketing : exploring various business models
• are our politicians 2.0 minded?
• how to get the most out of social collaboration software : example with bluekiwi
• SCRUM : managing projects in an agile, fun way !
• Twitter : how can it be useful in your professional and private life?
• excel tips and tricks for advanced users
• IDTV : what’s there in the world, what’s next in Belgium?
• various Cleverwood missions debrief
• …

The “official” hashtag for the Friday Sessions is #fridaysession, everyone participating is always very much welcome to tweet and update their status !

Looking forward to sharing knowledge with you soon during a next Cleverwood Friday Session, all suggestions or submissions of topics are welcome, use our various online community (facebook, linkedin, Bluekiwi to post your ideas!) and contact us if you want to be part of it.

Geoffrey Laloux, E-Business Strategist & Project Manager at Synaptic came to to review and discuss the online presence of the various parties and politicians. The conclusion is definitely that even though there is a online presence for some of them, most of the time this is definitely not in a 2.0 format.

This was followed by a very interesting debate between the various consultants present at the Friday session.

If you missed the session, no problem: you’ll find the entire presentation as well as the pictures on Flickr.

For more information, I also invite you to read the article by Bernad Demonty “Twitter, le pays du gazouilli politique” and the analysis realized by LBi and recently published in Le Soir.