[Part 2] Liddell has created a marketing platform that allows companies and individuals to co-create

LIDDELL advocates “personal-driven marketing” (marketing driven by personal influence), which utilizes the power of so-called influencers, who have a strong influence on specific genres, in corporate

marketing

activities and product development. . Why did you think that individual power is important in marketing?

In the second part, I would like to introduce the marketing

platform

created by Liddell for “co-creation between companies and individuals”, along with an interview with the company’s president, Koichi Fukuda.

Part 1:

[Part 1] Liddell’s careful strategy that drives “influencer marketing”

“Empathy” creates hit products

Marketing through influencers creates hit products. Fukuda has witnessed this since his days as a charismatic store clerk in the 2000s. Even though the main platform has changed from blogs to SNS, the basics remain the same.

Fukuda once coined the keyword “human sales.” In contrast to material consumption and experience consumption, this term refers to the fact that empathy between people through social networking sites (SNS) promotes consumption. In other words, if companies can create an environment where they can utilize the power of people to exert influence, it can become a new marketing tool.

However, when the use of influencers first began, people with SNS accounts with a large number of followers were gifted (a method of giving away products to try out products for free) or indirectly compensated. There was a time when extremely easy methods such as “let people do spontaneous advertising” were widespread.

Currently, the Stealth Marketing Prevention Act has been enacted, and certain restrictions have been placed on the sending of recommendation messages through gifting and indirect compensation payments, but there is still a deep-rooted dislike towards stealth marketing (stealth marketing). I haven’t been able to do it.

Under such circumstances, Fukuda was one of the first to develop Liddell’s services with the aim of eradicating stealth marketing. This is because the rampant use of stealth marketing greatly hinders the marketing power of influencers.

“Why are hit products created through influencers? It’s because of “sympathy.”The reason why they feel empathy is because influencers themselves love the genre from the bottom of their hearts, and it’s because they feel the same way.” They are very reliable because they try to convey their feelings.”

The majority of influencers are ordinary office workers or students, and many have no knowledge of the world of advertising and public relations. They often accept proposals from agencies that hold advertising projects at face value, lowering their own value by accepting projects that are easy to get paid for.

SPIRIT, an influencer-based advertising and promotion platform that Liddell first launched when it was founded, was devised to solve the various problems associated with using influencers. By limiting the number of registered influencers to 20,000 (initially, currently 35,000), we maintain the quality of registered influencers while providing services such as educational programs and information dissemination advice for influencers. was carried out thoroughly.

Almost all of the employees hired at the time were influencers in some genre who had the power to influence product purchases. Why shouldn’t you accept stealth marketing? By drawing on my own experience and providing careful advice on how influencers themselves would be affected by dealing with corporate projects, I was able to gain a relationship of trust with registered influencers. .

Developing systems that meet the needs of both companies and individuals

In addition to raising the awareness and quality of influencers, Fukuda has worked with companies interested in marketing strategies using influencers to create a framework for reliable business services.

For this reason, from the beginning, Ridel has created a web-based application that allows both companies and influencers to move forward with projects with a sense of satisfaction, rather than becoming an intermediary between customers and influencers. The system is built to allow for direct communication.

Image: LIDDELL President Koichi Fukuda — We are focusing on building a marketing ecosystem such as “SPIRIT” where over 35,000 influencers are active.

Companies manage advertising and promotion projects using the provided web-based tools, and post details such as the number of people they are recruiting and the content of their recruitment. The influencer app “SPIRIT” allows users to choose brands and projects that interest them from among these companies’ offers.

When a project actually matches, a detailed schedule of marketing measures will be displayed on SPIRIT, and posts on multiple SNS such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X can be managed through

API

. .

Rather than being monitored and managed by employees, the system can support the influencer’s actions, as well as automatically aggregate posting management and subsequent reactions. Companies can research the progress and results of marketing measures online.

Furthermore, depending on the results and reactions obtained, it is also possible to set up a place for smooth collaboration with members who participated in the marketing measures, and use it as a reference when planning the next time.

Fukuda says, “With marketing strategies that employ individual influencers, it is difficult for companies to oversee the post management of the influencers they have appointed, and the evaluation measurement is also ambiguous.Therefore, we created an environment where influencers can easily demonstrate their performance with easy-to-use post management tools. On the other hand, we provide the company with online reporting functions and community management with the influencers they have used, allowing them to numerically evaluate the results of their initiatives. Furthermore, we have made it possible to conduct post-implementation interviews.We not only provide this service tool, but also work side-by-side with our customers by consulting with the person in charge and helping them achieve even better results next time. We have built relationships of trust with these corporate customers and influencers by working alongside them and working together to improve each other.”

Within the corporate reporting system, a uniquely developed “empathy index” is defined. This index evaluates the attributes of influencers based on the content and results of their posts, such as “range of influence,” “easiness to be approved,” “easiness to be discovered,” “easiness to be referenced,” and “depth of impression.” Quantify the five. By making it possible to understand the characteristics of each individual rather than using common numbers such as the number of followers, it provides a guideline for selecting the correct influencer.

What is an app? We will explain the app in a way that anyone can understand!

From the “age of the individual” to the “age of the group”

In this way, Liddell deals with the theme of “empathy,” which is closely related to people’s emotions and sensibilities, but also prepares a tool set that is easy to understand for companies to handle as a system, and provides participating influencers with “personal feelings”. By providing services tailored to the needs of individuals, we have become an intermediary between companies and individuals.

Fukuda has been promoting the influencer business since the beginning of the “individual era,” but he is looking ahead to the next trend, saying, “Where there is a beginning, there is an end.” The “age of the individual” is coming to an end, and the “age of the group” is beginning.

“It’s actually difficult to do everything on your own. There are ups and downs,” says Fukuda. The way to overcome this is by leveraging the power of groups (fan communities).

For example, if there is a group of baseball fans, the individuals who gather there will exchange information with each other, and communication will be activated autonomously. The community is divided into “people who are interested in Major League Baseball” and “people who like the Giants,” and community leaders are created for each group. Because it’s a group, even if one person takes a break from activities for a while, someone else can follow them and maintain a certain level of vigor. “Although this is still an era of individuals, the role of the individual within the group is becoming more important. I express this as a shift from the personal to the individual.”

What is important here is a community service based on a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) that creates a fan community. The system, named “COMMUDA,” forms an autonomous community based on tokens that apply blockchain technology, and if necessary, integrates to form a fan community such as issuing NFT as a reward. It has become a platform.

Furthermore, in November 2023, the company developed KAL, a service that creates custom AI that incorporates discussions and opinions from influencers and other brand communities by custom learning OpenAI’s GPT.

By combining KAL with COMMUDA, you will be able to compile various information about your brand’s fan community. Collective intelligence learned from fan community utterances and action logs can be easily drawn out in an interactive format.

However, KAL is not limited to

influencer marketing

. KAL works with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Chatwork, and LINE, and can grow by learning on-demand from the conversations that take place there. In fact, Keio University is using KAL to collect information from all researchers, papers, laboratory web pages, etc., and is developing a system that automatically generates research summaries that convey the appeal of the research. .

Making the “invisible” “visible”

Fukuda’s starting point was to harness the power of influential individuals. It is difficult to incorporate them into an organization, and if you force them into an organization, you will rob them of their natural strength of empathy. While leveraging the individuality of individual workers, we will build a system that allows companies to take advantage of that individuality, and furthermore, turn the knowledge generated through this into AI.

As part of these efforts, Fukuda is considering collaboration as a service using multiple community AIs that combine the knowledge of community AIs with different attributes and generate new plans.

For example, they are combining custom AI born from a community of sports fans with AI from a community with deep knowledge of fashion to develop performance wear with new values.

When you look at Liddell’s efforts, they are textbook marketing. Liddell is trying to transform what was traditionally undertaken by companies in closed organizations into an open system in which individuals can participate and co-create.

Fukuda said, “Our thoughts have not changed since our founding.We want to make use of the individuality and influence that each person has.To that end, we will continue to work alongside company representatives and make proposals to achieve results. We will create an environment where all the Enthusiasts can work freely.” (Title omitted)

What is AI (artificial intelligence)? Easy-to-understand explanation of meanings and definitions