Panasonic Corporation Consumer Marketing Japan Headquarters Digital Strategy Officer Minoru Kida

Evolving customer contact points through digital transformation

Minoru Kida, Digital Strategy Officer, Consumer Marketing Japan Headquarters, Panasonic Corporation

■ Profile

He joined Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (now Panasonic Corporation) as a new graduate in 1992.
After working in sales in the Hokkaido region and in the planning and development department of the network business, he has been working on reforming digital customer contact points since 2008 as the web master for domestic home appliance products.
He is currently in charge of creating cross-sectional systems within the organization, such as planning domestic digital marketing for B2C products. He is a consumer life advisor.

Kida works in a department at Panasonic, one of Japan's leading companies, that utilizes digital technology and data to pursue market dominance, not just in products and services but also with an eye toward transforming the company's business structure. We spoke to him about creating value through various media.

I am in charge of a website for home appliances, primarily for B2C customers. Advertising has been an important part of our company since its founding. Panasonic's founder, Konosuke Matsushita, once said, "If it doesn't get across, it doesn't exist." If a product can make the world more convenient, it is our duty to society to spread the word about it as quickly as possible. It is the foundation of our work.
Our product sites are large in scale, and several hundred people are involved, including those in charge of planning each site and those from the production company. In order to ensure that these hundreds of people share the same values ​​when creating the sites, we have introduced a new system and adopted a template approach. No matter which site you visit, you will basically get the same feel and experience. For example, the support information button is placed in the same position on all product sites, so that customers who are having trouble will notice it immediately. This standardization of "format" also leads to the appropriate discovery and generation of data.
Currently, analysis of customer behavior on the site is done on a page-by-page basis, but we are gradually breaking it down into more detailed sections, such as by breaking it down into individual elements within a page.

■The importance of digital and personalization
Looking at current customer contact with various media, the proportion of television usage is declining, while smartphone usage time is growing significantly, resulting in increased media contact time. However, there is a limit to the amount of advertising money that can be invested, so it is necessary to determine the importance of each project and allocate and design investment appropriately. Digital communication is at the core, but rather than going all digital, it is also important to design it in conjunction with real-world contact points. Today, we have shifted from the mass mass advertising of the past, and it is now important to make each individual customer feel that this information is just for them. It can be said that communication, including this type of personalization, is the area that is most in need of digital transformation.

■Improve the quality of our organization and provide maximum value to our customers
A good plan doesn't come from just a large amount of data and the latest systems. The key is a hypothesis. If today's temperature is 20 degrees, when you want to determine whether it's warm or cold, you compare it to other days, such as the previous day or an average year. The temperature number itself doesn't convey any meaningful indication of warmth or coldness. Similarly, to give meaning to data numbers, a comparison with something is necessary. A hypothesis is a comparison made from past facts or limited data. A hypothesis must be derived logically, not just on impulse. We provide training in digital marketing and data analysis to help our staff hone their data-based hypothesis-building skills, working to make it part of our organizational DNA. It's challenging to incorporate new ideas while leveraging and developing what already exists. Building something from scratch might be easier in some ways. I sometimes think, "If only the Panasonic website suddenly disappeared, I'd be able to redesign it in an ideal way!" (laughs). We maintain what we have and transition to new ones. And with that in mind, we continue to provide valuable information to our customers.

■The founder's management secret: "When it rains, use an umbrella"
Our founder expressed the idea that doing the obvious things in an obvious way is the foundation of management by saying, "When it rains, put up an umbrella." In the digital world, the number of things we have to do inevitably increases as technology evolves. We must continue to face these challenges and respond accordingly. We must continue to seek to understand our customers through constantly updated data. This is exactly what the idea of ​​"When it rains, put up an umbrella" is all over again. For us, digital transformation means responding to the evolution of digital technology and continually changing to suit the environment.

message
I hope you will value the importance of "seeing and touching the real thing." Even if you have to make an effort to choose high-quality clothing, stationery, watches, etc., it will help develop your eye and change your behavior. It is also important not to rely solely on the internet, but to visit events, exhibitions, or popular locations and experience things with your own five senses. The accumulation of such experiences will become your "pillar" of judgment when you enter society.
(Miyata Ayako, second-year student at Tsuda University)