Livecasting with そらのーちゃん from NZ to Japan 12/11/10

Local market knowledge is invaluable and there’s nothing quite like having a contact on the ground. For example, when Air New Zealand ran their kaigai-dada.net campaign with local celebrity and key influencer そらのちゃん (Sorano) livecasting her Air New Zealand experiences as part of a promotional campaign, I was puzzled why they used Twitter for the live comments stream and not Ameba.  After communication with Air New Zealand’s social media team and a little corroborating research, I found the answer:

• Ameba.jp is a platform primarily for blogs and cannot substitute Twitter. (They only started a micro-blogging service in May,2010.)
• Japanese users sent 360,653,206 tweets in November and are amongst the  Top 5 Twitter nations ranked by percentage of internet population. (source)

The campaign demonstrates how to leverage a combination of live-to-air broadcasting over the internet  and microblogging to engage with your audience and let them experience your product, your service and in AirNZ’s case, destination New Zealand.

You get a narrated tour of the comfortable interior, meet cabin crew fluent in japanese (of great significance considering most japanese people learned english in school – a compulsory part of the curriculum, however, they typically have not had much speaking practice.) There’s even an interview with CEO Rob Fyfe somewhere in the archives.  All of this goes a long way towards building trust and demonstrating the quality and comfort on offer.  Having lived in Kyoto for one year, I know that these are traits of great significance to the Japanese flyer. Critical to the success of this campaign is that it’s all raw and unedited.  It’s authentic.

There’s nothing like having feet on the ground.