Internet advertising is becoming increasingly competitive due to the spread of smartphones. Among the competing SNS advertisements of various companies, “Manga advertisements” produced by Trend Pro Co., Ltd. are attracting a lot of attention.
The company’s business focuses on the production of advertising manga, videos, flyers, etc., and also handles corporate inner branding and consulting using manga.
Mr. Hiroyuki Okazaki (hereinafter referred to as Mr. Okazaki), Representative Director and President, who proposes that what is important for advertising is “emotional value”, Mr. Shun Nakajima (hereinafter referred to as Mr. Nakajima), leader of the Ad Manga production department, and Mr. Nakajima, leader of the public relations team. We spoke to Rena Kinumaki (hereinafter referred to as Ms. Kinumaki) about the strengths of manga advertising, trends during the coronavirus pandemic, and the future of manga advertising.
The point to promote in advertising measures is not “functional value” but “emotional value”
Mr. Okazaki: Our company proposes the use of manga in a variety of situations, mainly in advertisements such as videos and flyers, as well as in-house training and recruitment tools.
We believe that it is important for advertisements to convey “emotional value” rather than “functional value,” and we believe that our company’s signature manga advertisements are the most effective content for this purpose.
When I interview companies with marketing issues about their advertising measures, I often hear that the main point of PR is that they are focused on functional value.
For example, let’s say you created an advertisement for a product that says, “Salt reduction has been reduced from 7% to 5%.” For those familiar with salt reduction, the change from 7% to 5% is certainly impressive, but what about the average user? This can be said to be an advertisement that is difficult to convey the PR point.
By reducing the salt intake from 7% to 5%, you can think about how your life will change, such as “How will I change?” “How much will I become healthier?” “How much will my family be happier?” The challenge with advertising is that we have to link it all the way to “how things will get better.”
On the other hand, manga advertisements basically talk about “functions” but also tell a story, and if you use the product, “your life will be a little richer,” or “If you look at it in a larger sense, it will make your life better.” This makes it easier to convey that “it leads to happiness.” Because stories are created with emotion in mind, manga has an advantage over other media, and this can be said to be a strength in the future market.
Manga is the “social media ad you want to see the most.” More popular than live-action videos and images
Mr. Nakajima: This fall, we conducted a survey by age group on “how to use time during the coronavirus pandemic,” “viewing status of manga ads on SNS,” and “awareness survey regarding SNS advertising formats.” First, regarding how to use time during the coronavirus pandemic, men aged 15 to 40 spent the most time on YouTube, and men aged 40 to 65 spent the most time on TV. The results show that women aged 15 to 40 prefer Twitter and Instagram, and women aged 40 to 65 prefer television.
Looking at the “viewing status of manga advertisements on SNS”, it is noticeable that women between the ages of 15 and 40 have a high rate of viewing manga advertisements. This is likely due to the fact that women between the ages of 15 and 40 are more likely to use Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. The results confirm the compatibility between SNS and manga. Among people between the ages of 40 and 65, it can be said that the rate of SNS usage is low to begin with, which is also reflected in the manga ad viewing rate.
In the “Awareness Survey on SNS Advertising Forms,” manga ads were the number one advertisement that people most wanted to see, even among those who subscribed to fewer manga. It’s surprising that even people who don’t usually read manga want to see manga advertisements. Our analysis shows that the fun, familiarity, and entertainment quality of the content, which does not feel like an advertisement, are being evaluated. Advertisements that appeal to emotions and have a storyline seem to be considered more approachable even by people who are not normally exposed to manga.
The lack of growth in live-action video advertising may be due to reasons such as people not wanting to make noise while on the move, or people not having time to stare at people in their cars while commuting. The key points seem to be that it is easier and can be enjoyed while on the move. Furthermore, when narrowing down the search to people in their 40s and under, the results show that they prefer manga advertisements even more markedly. We will continue to conduct regular surveys and analyze this in more detail.
Mr. Kinumaki: It is also interesting to note that the reason why people want to see manga advertisements is because they empathize with the writer or author. I wonder if creators who are active on SNS, known as influencer manga artists, create a feeling of “sympathy” when they draw PR comics. This seems to be a reflection of my feelings of supporting the artists I follow on SNS.
Manga production as a marketing tool and how to use it online has changed due to the coronavirus pandemic
Mr. Okazaki: I think one of the challenges companies face when trying out various advertising strategies is the inability to differentiate themselves from others. Most companies have reached the point where they have decided that “the way we appeal to them is important,” and when they get to the stage where we have to think about “how to appeal to them” and “what should we do?” they say “manga is good.” Over the past three years, voices have been growing louder and louder, saying, “Isn’t manga really a thing?” There is an increasing number of people who want to create advertisements, web and SNS videos that are easy to measure, and they are often used as a marketing tool. For example, in an airline ticket sale campaign, we used an influencer manga artist to promote the campaign, and achieved the highest number of new members ever. We create original manga and games for manufacturers’ overseas products, and in the Philippines, our landing page has over 200,000 page views and our Facebook ad has over 100,000 likes. There are some cases that have become such a hot topic that they have received a .
Mr. Nakajima: In the past, we received many inquiries about paper media, mainly distribution at business meetings and events, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, we were forced to refrain from holding real events, so we started converting materials downloaded from the web into manga. The use of manga online, such as in the form of videos, is increasing.
Also, since face-to-face seminars are no longer possible, the number of webinars is increasing, and manga materials are now being used in these webinars. The goal is to provide easy-to-understand explanations using manga, but there are also other ways to increase the number of views by creating materials that don’t get boring, such as reducing the withdrawal rate of webinar viewers and playing videos that allow viewers to move the manga within the materials. Increasingly, we are hearing from customers who want to increase their number of inquiries and lead them to follow-up inquiries.
Mr. Okazaki: Also, something that has recently increased in the past year or so is the creation of inner branding by large companies for their employees. I think this may have been due to the large impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but it now accounts for about 20% of orders. They are refraining from hiring, so I can assume that they want the current employees to be successful and to do well. Up until now, it can be said that there has been a strong tendency to put employee training on inner branding on the back burner and tackle other issues first.
When it comes to creating inner branding, we listen to their issues and make proposals, or we hear from companies. Requests vary widely depending on the company, but recently there has been an increase in expectations for the company to be used as a “task tool”, such as “I want you to make the most of your individuality, but I also want you to move in the same direction in terms of the company’s vision and philosophy.” This is the situation.
Let’s say a company has a vision and values that say, “Everyone should make the most of their individuality.” What happens when a large company has thousands of employees and all of them try to utilize their individuality at the same time? There is a possibility that a sense of unity will not be created, and each person will not know where they are going. As a measure to improve this, we will use manga to create indicators such as what is the best course of action for the company to take when such an event occurs. Manga clearly shows what is best while making use of individual values. Manga can be used in a variety of ways to create materials that are easy for employees to understand, such as “how to conduct meetings” and “management philosophy.”
Efforts are progressing to provide consulting related to manga production.
Mr. Okazaki: Before I start producing manga, I make sure to listen carefully to questions about what kind of challenge I want to take on. The premise is that effective advertisements and materials cannot be created without a thorough understanding of the issues faced by the company. We are currently working to be able to be involved not only in producing manga output, but also in consulting to confirm the effects and effectiveness of the output.
For example, when a company wants to change the mindset within the company through inner branding measures, the problem is that until now, even when the president gave presentations and shared texts, “employees only looked at about 10%.” Suppose there was. Up until now, our proposal method has been to turn it into manga material and say, “50% of our employees will read it.” The increase from 10% to 50% is valuable in that it makes it easier for people to imagine it because it has a story, but in the future we will look deeper and find out how effective manga materials are. We are considering additional measures such as investigating whether it was effective or not.
Rather than just creating content using manga and having employees read it, I would like to make proposals that can answer the question, “Don’t you know how much you’ve achieved?” .
We also help companies that want to significantly increase their overseas sales over the next 10 years. The company was having trouble communicating with other countries, and the so-called Japanese culture and golden rules were difficult to accept overseas.
If it seems difficult to get employees to accept the material by simply reading it as a manga, we suggest that in addition to manga production, we investigate how the content can be accepted and why it is not accepted. is.
We are planning to understand where we are now and create data to determine what measures we can take over the next 10 years to improve results and what decisions we can make to make improvements.
We conduct surveys on how our employees feel after looking at the manga materials, and we also hold workshops to clarify to clients what and how the issues are and propose improvement measures. We plan to work on measures to “guide employee behavior from manga production.”
Furthermore, in the advertising field, if we can work together, such as by proposing collaborations between anime and companies to publishers that are trying to expand overseas using famous IP (intellectual property), we can achieve significant growth. That’s what I’m thinking.
Trend Pro Co., Ltd.
https://ad-manga.com/
summary
Trend Pro Co., Ltd. has been producing manga advertisements by accurately forecasting the market situation of advertising services. From now on, we are moving forward with efforts to provide consulting in conjunction with production. I think the idea of bringing great value to companies by utilizing manga is the reason why we have gained support from many companies. We will continue to pay attention to the company’s business development in the future.