Topics Discussed and Key Points:

●      The Coke vs. Pepsi challenge 

●      How great brands figure out what matters to people and play to that

●      Why storytelling is fundamental when you are in business

●      The reason Dave chose the name BIBLIOSEXUAL for his company

●      Why it is important for a marketer to understand the mediums that matter to consumers 

●      The potential future homogenization of the Asia Pacific region

●      Japanese advertising and what flawed perceptions exist among international companies 

●      Why cultural context is so important for Japanese consumers

●      Cultural stereotyping and country stereotyping

Timestamps 

[03:09] Introduction to  Dave and what he does, as well as where he is located

[04:43] Dave’s background

[13:59] Why “BIBLIOSEXUAL”

[22:52] Dave's description of the Japanese consumer

[24:48] The reason behind Japan's usage of celebrities in advertising

[25:53] The misconception behind Japanese consumers' transference of identity

[29:32] Do we have to present a brand as technologically advanced when we go to Japan? 

Notable Quotes

“My one belief is that a marketer's main role is to understand what matters to people. It's not about understanding how they use your product. It's what matters to those people.”

“The term BIBLIOSEXUAL is something I've been playing around with for 20 years using in different presentations.”

“When you're in business in general, when you're in the marketing business, you know, storytelling is fundamental. And so, you want to have a chance to tell a story.”

“There are different mediums. Everybody has particular mediums that - for reasons we just can't figure out -  we are totally biased towards, we fall in love with, or we think ‘that's much, much better’. Right? And if you're a marketer, it's really important to understand which mediums really matter irrationally in many ways to people.”

“When I lived in Japan, we did projects where we did very successful campaigns and the only thing we changed was a single line on the back of the pack.”

“Japanese ads are more likely to use celebrities in ads than anywhere else in the world. It's the number one [celebrity] market in the world. And so, typically, you're twice as likely to use a celebrity ad in Japan as you are in the United States.”

“[Visual] context in Japanese culture is most important. So, if you can't see the background, you can't understand the person, you can't understand why they're saying it or how they're saying something.”