Monday, August 4, 2008

Not big in Japan

TechCrunch has an interesting article on the failure of American social networks (MySpace and Facebook) in Japan. According to the post, a lack of understanding about the Japanese market has kept these American imports from squashing the local brands.

Keep in mind that these same social networks are supposed to be the future of advertising. As I write this, consultants all over the world are preaching the religion of social network marketing to high-powered ad execs and clients. And yet, this “future” is being sold to the rest of the world with the same understanding as the guys who thought it would be a good idea to sell Chevy Novas in South America.

The era when we could take an American product and ram it down the rest of the world’s throat is over. For a marketing trend to succeed today, it has to be global. Not run it through the translator and stick an Asian girl in the background global. Truly global.

1 comment:

1Letterman said...

Well, if we can't ram it down the rest of the world's throat, we'll change.

But it simply won't be as much fun.