Makoto Yamamoto
Director and Senior Executive Officer
General Manager
Advertising Department
Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd.
How do you see the marketing of brands changing in the next five to 10 years?
I believe that we need to look toward the future and continuously respond to the changing times regarding our brand marketing, in particular, our brand communication activities. In order to continue to be a company and brand that society chooses, we must constantly communicate our message. It of course goes without saying that our operation departments and product development departments must act in unison with our frontline sales departments in order to firmly establish our brand.
Our advertising activities can be divided into two areas: sales promotion aimed at increasing our business performance and brand communication aimed at spreading and establishing our brand. In terms of expenses, our sales promotion activities involve budgeting while closely watching forecasted results and the market situation (choices and focus areas). In contrast, our brand communication activities should be considered as an investment for the future and not be swayed by the current situation. For example, the children who grow up watching our current ads and so forth, in terms of recruitment, may choose to join Daiwa House Industry. In terms of business, they may add Daiwa House Industry to their list when they go to purchase a house. We are thus making an investment that can pay off in the future.
Something that we have given attention to until now and that I believe will remain important is to further advance sales promotion and brand communication as activities that complement each other, rather than carrying them out as separate objectives. That is to say, communication highlighting our product brands aimed at boosting sales will, at the same time, highlight the image of our corporate brand, and similarly, communication aimed at enhancing the image of corporate brand will enhance the business development as well.
What points can you share from your experiences that contribute in building a successful brand?
I see the company’s advertising department as having two major roles. The first role is to communicate with the outside. It is to familiarize people with the Daiwa House brand and to get customers to thoroughly recognize the types of principles and ideas of the company and our kinds of business and products via the appropriate media.
The second role is in-company communication and internal branding. Advertisements and other kinds of communication have the effect of posing employees across Japan with the question: “The Company is communicating this message. Are you proudly working with an awareness of this message?” For example, when an employee is told by his or her family, “I saw a television commercial for your company this morning,” he or she gets a renewed awareness of being an employee of Daiwa House, and this leads to pride in being an employee of the company.
The reason that I am particularly interested in internal branding comes from my experience as General Manager of the CS Promotion Department prior to becoming General Manager of the Advertising Department. When I was in charge of CS I heard opinions from various customers. I became strongly aware that most of the opinions and complaints that we were receiving were related to human error by our employees. The language and attitude of our employees, whether promises were kept, and other factors left a deep impression on the minds of customers in terms of their image of the company. In order for the Daiwa House brand to be chosen by society, it is very important to carry out not only education on manners, but also communication activities that will lead to further boosting the awareness and pride of employees and eliminating human error.
In this “age of responsibility” how do you see your customer changing? Things that are increasing for the Daiwa House brand are a “sense of trust” and a “feeling of being a major company.” The products that Daiwa House sells are houses, condos, commercial facilities, and so forth, which are not finished products, but “products to be built” upon receiving an order from a customer. Therefore, an extremely important factor for customers is a sense of trust in the employees that they come in contact with in the process of building products. Through brand communication, the Daiwa House brand needs to make its employees proud of the fact that they are supporting the brand, and through direct interaction with customers, the brand needs to boost the customers’ sense of trust. “A sense of trust in the brand” will likely be of increasing importance in the future as we carry out new business.
Is there a single touch point of your brand that you think will be more influential to your consumers in the next five years?
I believe that the Web will play an increasingly important role. Probably more and more of the population will get in the habit of looking at the Web. We would like to develop content so that customers will look at our website and want to go to our actual model rooms, exhibits, store facilities, and so forth.
We introduced a new area market mechanism on the Daiwa House website in April 2009. This mechanism differentiates the regions where customers who have accessed the website reside based on their IP address, and information on property in the region where the customer lives—from among approximately 80 areas where we have branches—is automatically selected and displayed on the top of the website (area targeting function). For persons who have accessed the website two or more times, we have also introduced a mechanism for displaying information that better matches customers after their first access so that they can more swiftly acquire the necessary and appropriate information (behavioral targeting function).
What advice do you have for marketers at other companies who are facing similar challenges that you face?
It is important to take a proactive approach to communication among relevant departments and people inside the company and to build advertisements and other messages. It is not good to get stuck and think only within the advertising department.
Specifically, it is important to get to know the frontline salespeople who interact with customers, have a good knowledge of the products, and obtain insights by talking with people in various positions inside the company. Unless there is sufficient understanding of the inside of the company, there will be many opinions that it is necessary to further increase sales promotion expenses ahead of investment in the brand. Unless there is sufficient communication with employees across Japan, there will be misunderstandings that activities for branding are something that the head office does on its own that incur large advertisement costs. It is necessary to thoroughly explain that investment in the brand is something that will help people at sales workplaces. An example is an experience I had when I was young. When introducing Daiwa House, rather than explaining the products at sales fronts, I would start by explaining the history and business content of the company. Now we have established our brand symbol “Endless Heart,” and as a result of brand communication centering on commercials, we are gradually starting to become established among customers as a brand that they “know or have heard of.” Thus it is probably easier to carry out sales than it was in the past.
BIOGRAPHY
Makoto Yamamoto joined Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd. in April 1976. After serving in posts including Nagasaki Branch Manager, he was appointed General Manager of the CS Promotion Department at the Head Office in April 2004. He launched a call center that is able to consolidate opinions from customers across the country, and was appointed General Manager of the Advertising Department in October 2005 in order to carry out the mission of improving the brand strength of Daiwa House Industry. He has been involved with numerous projects, including the planning of creative television commercials, and contributed to improving the company’s brand. He was appointed Director in June 2010.