I'd like to report on our visit to "Sales Promotion World Summer 2017," held at Tokyo Big Sight from July 5 to 7.
We often receive invitations to trade shows like this, but rarely get around to actually going. Still, living in a regional city like Shizuoka, if you don't make an effort to attend events and seminars, the information gap only widens... So this time, on the final day, the 7th, I went along with our staff member Sakura.
Now, about this event called "Sales Promotion World" — to be precise, it was actually four events being held simultaneously. Specifically:
- Sales Promotion EXPO
- In-Store Promotion EXPO
- Sales Support EXPO
- Advertising EXPO
These were all being held together. So it covered digital marketing, which is what we do, as well as print media, signage (that is, digital signs), store design and more — a comprehensive look at promotional trends across all kinds of media.
and advertising
For some reason, the exhibitors kept swarming around me and me alone!!
The reason they swarmed me was the "name badge" hanging around my neck. At reception, the counters were divided by job type, and as the president of Merci — humble though the company may be — I naturally registered at the executives' counter. The badge they handed me had "Company Executive" printed on it in big letters. In other words, they were making a beeline for "the middle-aged guy with the executive badge." I ended up feeling like a duck walking around with a bunch of green onions on its back (laughs).
Watching all this, Sakura remarked, "Lucky you—I want to be a company president too!" Well then, grow fast and become Merci's president already!
Signage is amazing!
Personally, what impressed me most this time was signage — the technology behind signs has become incredible. Let me introduce two that I found especially interesting...
In-store LED signage that displays social media timelines in real time
If social media posts are displayed on storefront signage, you can push messages to passersby in real time, and comments from customers who've visited can be shown in real time as well — depending on how you use it, I think there's a lot of interesting potential. There are things you'd have to think about, like what happens if there's a negative post, but if you can handle that through your operating rules, the benefits seem substantial.
Straight out of Star Wars! Signage projected in 3D
"We've finally come this far!" — this was what surprised me the most. It looks flat in the photo, but it's displayed completely floating out from the wall (or at least it looks that way). And of course, there's no need to wear special glasses like with VR. On top of that, with signage such as an in-store map, you could press a button on the floating information panel (there's actually nothing there) and it would respond and switch the display.
I imagine this will spread rapidly and start appearing around town within the next few years, and it makes me very curious to see what kinds of applications will emerge.
Digital marketing booths centered on SFA
Our main purpose in coming all the way to Tokyo this time was, of course, to see where the trends in digital marketing stand. But to get straight to the point, on that front it was a bit of a letdown — there was nothing that personally surprised me. That said, it's not that technological progress has stalled; rather, I got the impression that it has become so advanced that it's now harder to convey its appeal at this kind of trade-show format.
There weren't that many company booths exhibiting internet advertising, and they didn't seem to draw many people either (though I enjoyed it well enough myself). I suppose it's just hard to make people go "Wow!" at first glance.
Instead, what many companies were exhibiting was SFA-related products.
So what is SFA? It stands for Sales Force Automation — in a word, "sales automation tools." SFA is built on customer management (also called CRM), the most important element in sales activity, and it's a handy tool for outputting the results of measures taken against your customer list in real time, or for planning new measures while monitoring progress.
(There are so many features that it's hard to sum up in a single phrase!)
Some representative SFA products include:
- Salesforce
- kintone
- Sansan
and others. All of these are cloud services that you can use by paying a monthly fee.
That said, I get the feeling that SFA isn't all that easy for a small business like ours to make use of at present...
The first reason is that it isn't cheap. Since it's a cloud service, the initial cost isn't that high, but running costs start from just under 10,000 yen a month. Converted to a yearly figure, that's at least close to 100,000 yen, and since it's meant to be used continuously, the thought of paying it forever is a bit of a burden.
The other reason is that unless you have a clear idea of how you want your own sales promotion flow to work, you won't see any benefit from introducing it.
In fact, even before Merci, I had wanted to introduce SFA for in-house sales promotion management, and I actually signed up for Sales Force and KINTONE and tried out trial versions. In the end, though, I judged that it wouldn't reach a level where we could expect real benefits, and gave up on the idea.
Even so, it's also true that our current customer list organization and sales promotion progress management are done in a fragmented way, which feels extremely wasteful. On top of that, I've seen many of Merci's clients that we visit in exactly the same situation.
In that sense, you could say this is a field with plenty of room for growth in the future.
That's what I found myself thinking.
Sorry for such a rambling report!
