Taking an offline strategy digital: a hybrid approach to bringing people into a shopping centre

Mirise Inc. runs sales promotion for shopping centres. Given the nature of that work, its main strategy is physical, inserted flyers and door-to-door distribution, and it began work with NowVillage in order to focus on building awareness digitally.

Here we asked Hiroki Fukuda, representative director, about the problem and the goal.

Moving a physical strategy to digital to get information to users

First, could you tell us where you are now and what the problem is?

Awareness strategy for shopping centres is still mostly analogue advertising. Honestly, how many doors you delivered to and how much effect it had is hard to make visible. To get information to users, we needed to make promotion digital.

It was also an area we wanted to enter as an industry, so we tried SEO on the website and ran search advertising, but the means became the end and we had not worked through what we were doing it for. To make visible whether we were really reaching users, the denominator of our revenue, we began working with NowVillage.

How did you come to meet NowVillage?

An acquaintance introduced me to Mr Imamura, NowVillage’s representative, saying here is someone strong in digital, leave it to him and you will be fine. When we actually talked over lunch I felt a strong philosophy and energy. I thought we might be able to do something new with this company.

A local influencer’s Twitter following reached about 3,000 in two and a half months

What exactly did you do to move promotion to digital?

We have been working together for about a year, and at first we prepared to move the analogue measures to digital. Turning what was done physically into digital plans takes real courage for our clients too. Gathering the evidence, proposing the plan and getting permission to go ahead was the preparation period.

After that, at the point of running it, we asked you to develop a local influencer. By publishing local information we wanted to test what information people in the area want, how they react and how they behave.

The Twitter work actually began in January 2021, and we gained around 3,000 followers in two and a half months. Gaining that many followers on Twitter in a short time is not easy, so the result exceeded our expectations.

Do you feel the effect on the shopping centres themselves?

Whether people who saw the Twitter account actually come and shop is still at the trial stage. We hope the effect will appear as we keep running it.

The strength of digital, I think, is being able to create the reason to come to the centre. Digital promotion sends information to the area where the centre is, builds awareness, and brings people in. From there our own physical promotion strategy gets them to buy. If we can do that, it becomes a hybrid approach.

We want to focus on risk management as well as promotion

After about a year of working together, has anything changed inside Mirise?

The biggest change is that our people have more occasions to use digital tools. Even in conversation internally, I feel rising interest in social media.

Is there anything from working with us that stayed with you?

I first met Mr Takayama, who handles our account, in what felt like a closed room, and at first I was a little worried about whether this would be all right. But once we actually worked together on management and consulting, he delivered results, set out the design properly, and did more than we expected. Finding out he is someone we can trust is perhaps the biggest surprise.

Thank you. The work will continue; what do you expect from NowVillage next?

We have only just stepped into the digital field. We can make plans, but we cannot picture what risks appear when we carry them out. Most of the companies we work with day to day are large, so we would like to focus on risk management together as well.

From your point of view, which companies would you recommend NowVillage to?

You act, and you act quickly. What is good about NowVillage is that you build faithfully to the plan you made. Even a company like ours, which has had little to do with digital and wants to start now, can feel safe. You also give proper feedback, so I imagine you would be valued by companies wanting to take new business into digital.

The industries we deal with also tend to value the old and turn conservative towards the new. But the wish to improve what we have is the same. If you keep respecting the client’s position and what they want to protect, and patiently make the case with evidence that something should change, I think we can keep working well together.