Dentsu and Facebook Japan have announced today a major deal to appoint Dentsu as the official sales and marketing support representative in Japan. As outlined in their press release, Dentsu will offer services to include effective fan page creation and maintenance, exclusive access to Facebook Premium Advertising, and offer strategies that will integrate Facebook ads into Dentu’s infamous mass media campaigns.
With recent coverage of Facebook in Japan in mass media and the expsoure from the Social Netowork, both the advertising agency world and marketing departments of major Japanese brands are in a state of anxiety and confusion on the best way to integrate Facebook as a part of their brand strategies. And while Facebook Japan lacks robust user numbers and growth (when compared to the explosive rise of Twitter in late 2009, early 2010), major agencies like Dentsu are no doubt scrambling to ride this next social media wave early. Smelling the social marketing opportunity, employees at Dentsu were regularly encouraged to use Facebook actively since late last year.
This deal will also offer Facebook Japan the unique opportunity to access Dentu’s long list of major Japanese clients and multi-million dollar campaign budgets. Facebook Premium Ads, which Dentsu will have a one year exlusive right to, will be pushed through media planning proposals to clients on par with print, OOH, and television.
While the past year of Facebook Japan’s operations has been focused on engineering and laying the foundation for future user growth, this deal will represent the first significant attempt for Facebook to capitalize on the massive domestic advertising expenditure of Japanese brands it has yet to capture.
Dominic K. Gallello
This is kind of ironic; as far as I know, FB has grown around the world with very little paid marketing whatsoever, but now it is relying on the tried-and-true tactics of Dentsu’s top-down trend creation machine.
Dentsu’s stock raises over 4% this morning
http://stocks.finance.yahoo.co.jp/stocks/detail/?code=4324.t
That sucks bigtime! Why in hell does Facebook not work with US companies here – the market is huge – don’t they grasp that since the end of the war Japanese companies have done little but seive off technologies and know how from American companies in Japan? Idiots.
I have to say that, as an American well aware of the hideous annual trade deficit we have with Japan, the appointment of Dentsu (which Karel van Wolferen famously claimed needed to be eradicated if Japan was ever to change – and I tend to concur) over an American company operating in Japan is a huge, huge disappointment. One cannot help but suspect the motivations behind this development. Facebook would be safer miles away from anything to do with Dentsu!! Typical American screw-up in Japan, though. Like Peets Coffee – probably the best in the US – teaming up with Heichinrou, a funky old Chinese restaurant, simply because they didn’t know any better. Facebook, shame on you.