Episode Two: Agile Marketing Around the Globe with Naoya Segawa and Nobuyoshi Adachi

00:00:07 John Cass 

Welcome to the deep dive in agile marketing with John Cass. I'm your host John Cass here in Boston, MA. Today I'll be interviewing Naoya Segawa, founder of Agile marketing dot JP and Nobuyoshi Adachi executive vice president of All’s & Company Inc., digital advertising agency in Japan. 

00:00:32 John Cass 

Today's podcast is a little different from my normal podcast. Today I'll be interviewing Naoya Segawa, founder of Agile marketing dot JP, and Nobuyoshi Executive Vice president of All’s & Company Inc., digital advertising agency in Japan. Today's podcast is a little different from my normal podcasts. 

No boy or she about his work as a marketer and using our agile the focus is on the state of agile marketing in Japan. I'll be asking questions in English and Natalia will ask those questions to Nobuyoshi in Japanese. Welcome Naoya and Nobuyoshi. 

00:02:42 Naoya Segawa 

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. 

00:02:45 John Cass 

Well, thanks for joining us. So, in preparing for this call, we talked a little about your journey to using agile marketing. I think we should start with that. Naoya. Let's start with you. What's your story with marketing and agile marketing? 

00:03:02 Naoya Segawa 

What does Marketing transfer information not lost in US. 

Now so I have more than 10 years of experience in the holistic marketing approach, both B2C and B2B in Japan, in the market. And I met Agile in 2013 when I worked at Marine Software. Since then, I learned about agile practically and theoretically. So I took several certifications. Professional Scrum master  I even wrote my master's thesis about agile and I've been trying to use agile in marketing as much as I can. 

And in July this year, I became ICP-MKG Authorized Instructor and Just started working as an instructor and also as a transformation coach for Japanese companies. 

00:04:58 John Cass 

And Nobuyoshi, what's your story with your agency and also marketing? 

00:05:06 Naoya Segawa 

Yeah, I understand. Not as a marketer today. 

Yes, I am an additional advertising agency in Japan. We have 32 employees now. Our service is just advertising operations and consulting and we support the introduction of Google marketing platform. And I met agile marketing when I read a book, hacking the marketing in 2018. 

Then I became interested in agile marketing because our clients wanted improvement poster and I was looking for better clothes. 

00:06:35 John Cass 

So Nobuyoshi, what's the structure of marketing in Japan? How do companies use marketing and managed marketing in Japan? Do many companies have marketing professionals? 

00:08:04 Nobuyoshi 

Japanese companies depend on agencies for their marketing. I think one of the reasons is Japan once had a product strength. Japanese manufacturing industry was strong after the World War 2, so marketing was not so important. 

And agencies to the business with one stop shopping concept. So Japanese agencies need to have many kinds of marketing capabilities for helping advertisers. 

That strengthens the dependence of advertisers on agencies. 

00:08:40 John Cass 

Can you tell me something about some of the companies who have adopted agile marketing in Japan? 

00:09:28 Nobuyoshi 

Almost no companies using agile marketing in Japan. We hear the word agile in software development, but not in marketing. 

When you search for agile marketing in Google, you don't get results in Japan. 

00:09:45 John Cass 

So what types of adoption have you seen if there have been any examples that you've seen, has it been Scrum, Kanban or hybrid? Or you know what have you? What have been using your agency? 

00:10:46 Naoya Segawa 

So we are afraid, but we have no idea because we can't really find any companies using agile marketing but notes company at notch companies they are using like a hybrid. They're using some of the other scrum practices like Sprint and also using Kanban. To make all the work visible to everyone. 

00:11:07 John Cass 

Excellent, excellent and Nobuyoshi how do clients react to your description of agile marketing when you introduce it? 

00:11:59 Nobuyoshi 

And their reaction is positive because they want to check and improve their disallowance faster. To talk directly. With a specialist, so I think they like. The cross functional team. 

00:12:15 John Cass 

And what Japanese organizations are supporting our job marketing, you know, are there any meet ups online websites or bloggers yet that you've seen probably question for both Naoya and Nobuyoshi? 

00:12:49 Nobuyoshi 

There may be no organization supporting other marketing in Japan. There are no bloggers either. Only now he has activities and when we search for other marketing. 

Blog posts are shown on the third position in Google, but I'm not an agile marketing specialist. That means there is no one who talks about Agile marketing. 

00:13:59 John Cass 

Great. So what do you think is the future for agile marketing in Japan, Naoya? 

00:14:09 Naoya Segawa 

Correct. Development. I think more companies will adopt Agile marketing, but I think this space. Each space is slower than overseas. 

I think one of the reasons is slow adoption of Agile software development. According to research, adoption of other software development in English speaking country is over 90%. But in Japan about 40%. 

I think the reason is Japanese are conservative and tend to avoid uncertainty, so I think it will take time to adapt other marketing in Japan. 

00:15:53 John Cass 

Great. Well, Nobuyoshi thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions about what the state of agile marketing is in Japan. And Naoya. Thanks so much for setting up the interview with Nobuyoshi and also doing some of the translations today as well. We really appreciate it. 

00:16:15 Naoya Segawa 

Yeah. Thank you. 

Very much. Thank you very much.