Why Nigerians Never Click Japanese Ads On Youtube

Do you often see things like this? This is Japanese ad on YouTube featuring a Japanese actor speaking Japanese, describing a Japanese product. This commercial showed up when a Nigerian indie-rock enthusiast based in Lagos wanted to listen to a song by Oasis, a defunct British rock band.

See something wrong with this picture?

I do not speak, read or understand Japanese, neither am I likely to ever click on the ad to find out more because since I do not understand or feel drawn to it, it does not interest me – it actually irritates me if anything. And so, as soon as the “You can skip this video in…” timer hits zero, I impatiently click on “skip this ad” and I continue on to my Oasis video.

It is this sort of error which ID Africa eradicates in its campaigns by not only customizing all campaigns to suit the intended audience, but by keeping careful control over and monitoring the reach and impact of the campaigns. The aim is to differentiate itself from the hundreds of digital marketing agencies, many of whom are really web advertisement firms that place hundreds of thousands of virtual billboards across the internet and hope some of them manage to have an impact – essentially a Hail Mary strategy such as in the above picture.

In our view, brute-force marketing strategies are outdated and not fit for purpose in today’s online market in Africa and beyond. We believe in social marketing, something which comes from our belief that the online world is very closely modeled after our physical world. In this physical world where the average human is exposed to about 247 advertisements every single day, most of our purchasing decisions are influenced by social factors. We spend our money on things because we saw people around us do the same or because people around us recommended them to us. The car on a billboard is just a big picture by the roadside until we see a friend or colleague driving that car – then it becomes a product we have noticed and hence a potential purchase.

The big secret is that the human mind very quickly learns to filter out most of the audiovisual content that only shouts “Buy me!” with no other message to the audience. In order to get the attention of people, the content must be interesting or unusual. Rather than simply telling a consumer to buy the latest MacBookAir because it has better USB plug-and-play than a Windows computer, the consumer should rather be told an interesting story involving a MacBook. The message is implicit rather than explicit.

 It must also be relatable – the Japanese guy in the YouTube advert is trying to sell something but unfortunately, since his target is not me, the campaign has wasted at least some of its resources on reaching people outside of the target audience.

At ID Africa, it is our belief that the online world is a mirror of the offline world. Translating offline marketing realities to the online world is our big triumph.

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About Unknown

BHM is Nigeria's leading Media and Public Relations Agency, using traditional and digital techniques to deliver best-possible results for clients and partners. Operating from Lagos in Nigeria and London in UK, BHM delivers the best possible results in a system that’s full of promises.