Hasta La Gadget!

This is the first column in a new biweekly series introducing newsletter content provided by our local research partners, INterRIDE Inc..

Mobile GPS apps

2010 saw several social media GPS apps join the bulging ranks of digital tools already out there for Japanese consumers. International names like Facebook’s Places — launched in Japan last September as its first market outside of the U.S. — and Foursquare were joined by the likes of local giant mixi also offering their own version of geo-fun. Mixi’s Check In was used 2 million times in its first month alone, indicating the strong potential for these services.

Japanese GPS services can currently be categorized as map-style apps (e.g. Navitime), “spot” or site-searching apps (Hot Pepper FooMoo), gaming apps (CoroPura), or the newer SNS apps (including Tou.ch).

The local growth isn’t surprising when set against the overall global advance of geo-services, predicted to continue expanding until 2014 and reach $134 billion. Advertising on GPS services was a mere $2 billion back in 2009 but is expected to increase to some $59 billion by 2014.

Last February saw another major release, RecoCheck by Recruit, which has information on over 4 million sites and integrates Twitter. It aims to be the number one service of its kind by March 2012. Yahoo!’s Loco, set for release in June, also promises to be the biggest in Japan and to push the market yet further.

However, as reported by SPiRE, GPS is still a minority interest for most consumers. In a survey of over ten thousand mobile phone users only 20% used the apps, of which the leader was the rather generic Google Map.

Lawson x GREE

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of its Ponta loyalty card, convenience store chain Lawson launched a campaign with mobile game platform GREE’s virtual reality shop, Omeseya-san. Users collected digital items in order to complete their Ponta mascot-themed Lawson uniform avatar. Omeseya-san’s one million members had to get five items (including digital representations of Lawson products) to claim their prize.

Liberal Democratic Party

While last year Japan’s politicians tried to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, the Opposition Liberal Democratic Party (or Jiminto) took a different approach. In February they became the first local party to open an official Facebook page. Within four days a 1,000 people had “liked” the page; this has since grown to over 3,000. Not a lot but in proportion to the numbers of Facebook users who are LDP supporters it might be a large number indeed!

In an age where Presidents are announcing their bids for re-election via their Facebook pages this might not seem a radical move, but considering the opacity and intransigence of local politics, and the stolid growth of Facebook here, it’s an interesting development.

Osaifu Keitai for Smart Phones

As smart phone sales continue to prove healthy there will be innovations to localize them, or adapt other technology to work with them. This is especially true of popular Japanese mobile actions like reading QR codes, infra-red data transfer, and e-money functionality via FeliCa chips (osaifu keitai).

Previously mophie announced plans to create an add-on casing to the iPhone so that it could work with FeliCa readers, and Softbank more recently began selling a cruder solution in the form of “e-money stickers” that could be placed on your handset to allow it to connect with an e-money system like Waon or Edy.

Now BUG (pronounced as an acronym, not an insect) has developed the Smart Sound Touch system, where stores uses readers at the POS to allow even non-FeliCa-integrated smart phones to be scanned and read, to launch apps or connect to coupon websites. This ultimately means that smart phones will be able to offer loyalty programs and e-money services. (The readers apparently also work with FeliCa-integrated handsets too.) All the SST hardware requires now is for service providers to develop apps for consumers to download.

Searching for a relaxing time over the upcoming Golden Week holidays? If you’re a man who likes to take care of his hair then look no further than Lion’s temporary Pro Tec Cafe in Roppongi Hills.

Following a similar pop-up in Ginza last summer, the Pro Tec Cafe is devoted to showcasing the Pro Tec “washing brush”. Just add shampoo and use the brush to tend to your hair and improve your scalp and follicles. It apparently helps wash and clean right down into the roots, as well as just feeling like a nice massage in the bath. It even promises to combat thinning hair, an issue I have a personal interest in!

Men’s personal care and hair products are big business in Japan and spending by male consumers rose by 3.6% in 2009, accompanied by a proliferation of new deodorant products and brands like Shiseido showing men how to make their hair look funky.

At the Pro Tec Cafe you can try out the brush and other products in the series (shampoos, sprays etc), as well as get advice from a hair stylist expert. If you turn up with your wife or loved one you can even enjoy the Pro Tec experience in true romantic style, with your partner applying the brush to your locks and giving you a loving head massage.

Japan has quite a tradition of this kind of “healthcare” service — there are already plenty of mimikaki ear-cleaning parlors out there for salarymen who want their canal needs tended to with a sort of maternal counseling dimension added on. Whatever cultural implications might be drawn from this slightly chauvinistic set-up, it certainly makes for an interesting tryvertising experiment, with consumers retaining more investment in the product for it being a mutual “couple” experience enjoyed together.

Aimed at men in their late twenties and thirties, the Pro Tec Cafe will be open for hair-washing sessions from April 29 to May 5 only.

Tokyo couldn’t make it over, but CScout NYC and our partners at Mandalah recently launched our new venture in Conscious Innovation.

With this in place, we’re not only in a great position to deliver trends and innovation services in Asia, Europe, and the U.S., but are now in key developing markets in Mexico and Brazil. We’re already working on projects with Japanese companies to gain insights from these markets for localization and marketing insights, and it’s a very exciting time. Please check us out and get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Those of us in Tokyo are not looking forward to the prospect of the typically humid local summer minus the air-conditioning. Energy-saving measures are so far averting any more rolling blackouts, but it’s going to be a different ballgame when the hot months come and offices and stores will have to restrict their usual methods of cooling everyone down.

UNQLO might just have the answer. Back in March 2010 it launched the Silky Dry and Sarafine range, the summer version of its bestselling Heat Tech series, designed to keep you cool and absorb moisture (=sweat). The “innerwear” collection for both men and women includes t-shirts, boxer briefs and leggings. Putting on more layers sounds like a bad idea in the summer but UNIQLO insists you won’t feel the extra clothes, since the fibers are so thin and comfortable.

The chain today opens in Ikebukuro station a special pop-up store dedicated to the range. For a limited two-month period commuters will be able to stock up on cooling clothes, and also knowing that UNIQLO is going to donate ¥100 to earthquake relief efforts with every sale.

The pop-up follows on from the brand’s success with Heat Tech stores in Tokyo last year, designed by UNIQLO collaborator favs Kashiwa Sato and Masamichi Katayama. The two shops in JR Shinjuku and Shinagawa hit their 200,000 items sales targets and, considering that Ikebukuro sees an average population of 55,000 commuters passing through daily, UNIQLO will surely replicate those achievements this sizzling summer.

Just in case you are too hot and dripping to extract the right coins from your wallet, you can even use your SUICA train pass e-money card to pay for your purchases at the pop-up store, much like other shops and kiosks located in Tokyo stations.

It’s going to be very interesting how consumers and retailers react to restrictions on electricity usage over the next few weeks. Already adverse effects of the looming energy shortfall include reports of sales for LED light bulbs jumping nearly three times and in particular convenience stores had, not surprisingly, a bumper month in March, an increase of 7.7% on last year.

Just in time for hanami party drink selections we stumbled upon this amazing Sapporo Beer commercial that came out last year created by Japanese advertising giant Dentsu’s Toronto branch.

Scrolling up through layer after layer of awesomeness the commercial definitely requires multiple viewings on a big screen to catch it all.

If it wasn’t good enough on its own the campaign was also combined with a cool interactive game still available to be played online, where players journey through the world created in the ad and find hidden scrolls.

While it wouldn’t work particularly well in Japan with its uber-japanese themes its still none the less a great piece of work that gets our thirst on at CScout Japan Towers. Cheers!