In the past few years, influencer marketing has taken off in the Japanese market. In 2023, it is estimated that JPY 74.1 billion (valued at USD 489.9 million) was spent on influencer marketing.
This number is expected to continue growing, with influencer marketing expenditures reaching approximately JPY 102 billion by 2025. Despite this, a lot of people, both in Japan and abroad do not really understand what influencer marketing is, nor how to utilize it effectively.
Through insight from a social media specialist at ShapeWin, this article discusses the fundamentals of influencer marketing, its rising significance in Japan and how businesses can effectively collaborate with influencers to reach their target audiences.
Additionally, it will discuss the challenges and pitfalls to avoid in influencer marketing to provide a comprehensive understanding of how to make influencer marketing work in Japan and beyond.
What is an influencer?
In its most basic form, influencers are people with a dedicated social media following and presence that can sway a target audience.
These can be anyone with a significant degree of popularity in a particular niche, from actors and singers to industry experts. What matters is that influencers have some form of authority over the target audience and affect the target audience’s actions.
While influencers can sometimes have a traditional media presence, most of their influencing is done through social media.
“Successful influencers tend to gather on social media sites with large audiences, such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok,”
says Chinami Koga, an influencer and social media expert at ShapeWin.
“These large social media sites give influencers a lot of power, and what they post can greatly impact their audience.”
In other words, influencers often cultivate a specific image or expertise that authentically resonates with their followers, and through their posts, videos and other methods can shape trends and inspire changes in the target audience.
Influencer marketing is when companies and brands collaborate with influencers to promote products, services, or campaigns to the influencer’s audience.
“Survey data shows that social media has a big influence on people when they are purchasing products,”
Koga continues.
“As a result, companies are slowly starting to focus on using influencers to promote their products.”
Influencer marketing can come in a variety of forms sponsored content, ad reads and product reviews. For companies and organizations, the goal of influencer marketing is to attach their brand with an individual who captivates the target audience’s interest.
By leveraging the influencer’s credibility and relationship with their followers, brands can achieve more authentic and engaging marketing communications.
In some sense, influencer marketing is the evolution of celebrity endorsements and commercials which feature celebrities. This is something that Japan has had since the late 1970s and early 1980s with the development of idol culture.
Idol culture refers to a culture in East Asia of using professionally trained multi-talented performers in a variety of different forms of entertainment media.
While primarily singers, these idols are also dancers, actors, and models all at once, trained by entertainment agencies to appeal to a wide audience. The usage of the term “idol” here is somewhat memetic – while the original word refers to statues or icons that were worshiped by groups of people, here they refer to these multi-talented performers, who aspire to be worshiped in the same way.
In this way idols are expected to act and perform perfectly – when entering the entertainment industry aspiring idols are expected to train for years before they “debut,” as either a solo act or as part of a group. Unlike the former usage of the word however, idols also expected to interact with their fans.
Let’s compare an idol group like South Korea’s BTS or Japan’s own AKB48 to North American artists such as Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes.
Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes will hold live performances, sign memorabilia and engage with social media, but their presence is relatively limited and have the ability to remain out of the public eye. By contrast, idols such as BTS and AKB48 will perform constantly and hold fan events to sign memorabilia and shake hands with their fans, and hold live-streams with their fans.
Furthermore, when interacting with fans they present themselves as paragons of perfection, responding politely and gracefully to any public interaction. All of this is to cultivate pseudo-personal relationships with their audience, often referred to as parasocial relationships.
In this way, idol culture in East Asia is a unique phenomenon and somewhat different from the way celebrities are treated in the West.
The culture of idols can be used to explain the culture of influencers in Japan. Like idols, influencers in Japan often operate on the principles of intense fan engagement and the cultivation of a parasocial relationship with their audience.
These influencers constantly post images, videos and host livestreams to ensure that this parasocial relationship is maintained. This results in a strong crossover between the two phenomena that is unique to Japan, where an influencer who posts indie music on social media may get a music contract with a major record label, and some celebrities have large online presences as influencers.
It also creates a loyal fanbase that not only actively follows and supports their content but also trusts their endorsements and recommendations.
In this way, endorsements from Japanese influencers are not so different from those from Japanese idols and other celebrities. The primary difference is in approach. Japanese celebrities tend to do sponsored commercials, promotions and collaborations that are distinctly separate from their primary forms of content, such as music or acting.
By contrast, Japanese influencers often have sponsored content blended into their primary content, with the former not looking markedly different from the other. This is a consequence of both medium and brand image.
As influencers do not have as large followings as celebrities, they are limited into the types of media that they have outreach. Moreover, having sponsored content that is similar to their primary content allows Japanese influencers to maintain a more relatable and grounded approach when compared to celebrities.
Collaborating with Japanese influencers can be difficult for some but it does not have to be.
The first aspect of collaboration that PR professionals and marketers should assess is if an influencer is a good match for their campaign or project.
In other words, does this influencer’s brand align well with the client’s brand and will their audience be interested in the client’s goods and services. For example, it would be unwise for a shoe company to partner with a food influencer, because the brand of the company and the influencer are not aligned with each other.
Admittedly, there are some scenarios where an unconventional approach may be appropriate, but these exceptions prove the rule.
“Even smaller companies and brands will select famous influencers if the situation is right,”
Koga explains.
“Rather than focusing on enterprise scale and the resources you have, it is better to focus on selecting the best influencer for your brand and project goals.”
Koga sheds light on this by discussing her work on the TimeFlik campaign, a strategy for a Korean SmartWatch company that was debuting in the Japanese market.
“TimeFlik had just started in Japan, and the company’s Instagram account did not have a lot of followers,”
she continues.
“Therefore, we decided to focus on influencers on Instagram that matched our project goals.”
When choosing to collaborate with influencers, it is also crucial to consider their potential outreach and follower count. In many cases, companies should pick influencers that have a large enough audience to ensure high visibility.
At the same time, an influencer with millions of followers will charge more for sponsorships and will deplete a company’s PR and marketing budget.
Koga argues that finding a good balance between the two is vital. She suggests collaborating with middle influencers, who have between 100 and 500 thousand followers and micro-influencers, who have less than 100 thousand followers.
Though their audiences are smaller, collaborating with middle influencers and micro-influencers enables a more targeted and effective marketing strategy, ensuring that the campaign connects with the intended demographic without overspending.
This approach not only optimizes resource allocation but also fosters partnerships that are sustainable and mutually beneficial for both the brand and the influencer.
For this campaign, Koga decided to select middle influencers whose target audience aimed at women in their 20s and 30s to be a part of the TimeFlik ambassador program. She also wanted to focus on experienced fashion influencers who had experience in the industry and could make quality sponsored content.
“When selecting influencers it is important to examine their account profile, shared stories, posts and comments from users,”
she explains.
“Quality content and thought leadership leads to better results and sales, so it is important to check account information and postings in detail, including past PR posts and user comments.
In Koga’s opinion, the key to ensuring a successful partnership between a company and its influencers is communication and understanding.
“Communication is an important part of any collaboration,”
she explains.
“At the start of a relationship, both sides are naturally hesitant, so it is important for companies to act responsibly and in a way that earns the trust of the influencer.”
Koga gives five tips for PR specialists and marketers to follow to facilitate healthy communication
When establishing communication with an influencer, PR specialists and marketers should keep track of the date and time they want to hear a response by.
Because many influencers operate without agents or managers, responses can be quite slow or sometimes non-existent.
Having key deadlines clearly communicated not only tells influencers when it is important to have a response, but helps companies know when to move along if an influencer is uninterested.
When communicating with an influencer, especially in a Japanese context, it is important to use respectful language. A unique aspect of the Japanese language is how levels of respect are built into the language.
Accordingly, communicating with Japanese influencers requires adopting a respectful tone, akin to how one would address clients or guests. Ensuring communication is courteous and considerate not only facilitates smoother negotiations but also establishes a foundation of mutual respect that is essential for successful collaborations in the Japanese market.
It is important to write clearly and with detail when communicating with influencers.
A key aspect of communicating is trust, especially when dealing with an influencer who may not be familiar with the brand. It is therefore important for PR specialists and marketers to summarize key project details to influencers in a way that easily explains what kind of company they are promoting and the details of the project.
This builds trust between both parties and helps ensure the influencer does not act in a way that damages the brand’s reputation.
It is important to respond to influencers in a timely manner. This is something that also helps build trust with an influencer and shows that their needs are being considered and met.
It is finally important for PR specialists and marketers to inquire about if the influencer has collaborations with any competitors to their client’s brand.
Not only might it be difficult to distinguish the client’s brand in a market saturated with similar messages, but it could also dilute the effectiveness of the collaboration and overall campaign strategy.
Thus, it is important to collaborate with influencers who do not have existing partnerships with competitor companies and brands.
Koga argues that if these five essential elements of communication are followed, it can build the foundation for not only the current project, but for future collaborations.
How ShapeWin can help you:
Because of how important respect is when communicating with Japanese influencers, it is important to have a PR and marketing agency that understands the Japanese market well.
ShapeWin’s success in this field illuminates the path forward, underscoring how collaborating with influencers can transform campaigns and cultivate a deeper connection with a Japanese audience.
ShapeWin can help its clients develop a social media strategy, create media lists for influencers, and contact them in a way that will elicit a response.
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