The Japanification of Social Media

Has social media turned Japanese?

No, not Hello Kitty and Geishas. Think bright lights and flashy objects. The kind that litter the streets and creep up the 6 story buildings of Shinjuku. But was it always like this? 

Of course not. 

Shinjuku as it is today started with a single, brightly lit sign, installed by a vendor with a gleam in his eye. We'll call him Hiroshi. Hiroshi surveyed the physical environment around his Origami shop and noticed  all the other shop signs were as equally dull and boring as his.

"What can I do to get more people noticing my shop?", Hiroshi thought to himself. All the shop signs on the street were black and white, and so similar that anyone walking down the street would have to stop to read each sign individually to know what each store was. Who has time for that?

"A-ha!" Hiroshi had an epiphany. "I'll make my sign flash". So Hiroshi installed some flashing white lights behind his sign. It stood out like a black sheep. You couldn't miss it. Among all the mundane, homogenous shop signs, Hiroshi's commanded attention.

In week 1 Hiroshi would open his shop early to let in customers who were lining up, eager to see what was inside. It was, after all, the standout shop in Shinjuku. Hiroshi's sales tripled that week and he installed crowd control barriers outside to keep the eager customers from crowding the entrance.

Life was good......until week 2 when Yumi installed her new sign across the road. 

Yumi's new sign not only flashed, it was pink. It was far more beautiful and engaging than Hiroshi's flashing white sign. In fact, it was the only sign that had any colour at all. Passers by would crowd Yumi's store and line up outside for a chance to see what the fuss is all about while Hiroshi looked on from across the road.

Yumi had a great week. Hiroshi saw his sales drop back down, almost to where they were before he installed the sign.

But Hiroshi, emboldened by the extra business he got the week before, didn't want to see his potential customers tempted by Yumi. After all, these people don't have unlimited funds, they must choose carefully where to spend their yen.

So Hiroshi did what any business owner would do. 

He made an even better sign in week 3. One that not only flashed, but flashed multiple colours. Red, green, yellow, blue, repeat. 

It was far more engaging than Yumi's pink only sign.

Hiroshi had reclaimed the sales that Yumi "stole" from him. Or so he thought.

By week 4 Yumi wasn't Hiroshi's only worry. Miwa, just two shops over from Hiroshi, was sick of Yumi and Hiroshi taking her customers and their limited disposable income.

So Miwa did what any business owner would do.

She made a better sign. This one was bigger, flashed faster and had more colours.

Miwa now had the busiest shop in Shinjuku.

.....until Shinzo got in on the action. His sign extended up the building and cost more than all the other signs combined.
Shinzo made his money back in the first week of his new sign going up. Life was good.

Until Steven (why not) decided his entire shop entrance should be lit up. Above and either side of the door were flashing colours. You couldn't miss it.

Steven became the King of Shinjuku sales.

......for 2 days.

Of course Hiroshi wouldn't accept this. He had a taste of the good life and wanted more. So he started playing pop music outside his shop, enticing people to cross the road and see what the fuss is all about.

This worked wonderfully and Hiroshi clawed back some of the sales he enjoyed from his first sign.

.....until the next day , when every other shop, having seen how Hiroshi's simple idea drove more foot traffic.

And so set off a chain of events that culminated in the overstimulation of consumers and the Japanification of attention. The desperate attempt to steal 3 seconds of someone's attention filled every available space from the ground to the top of every building in Shinjuku. There is no space left to fill.

Hiroshi lost his competitive advantage and is right back to where he started, except now he has a bigger electricity bill. He can't take the flashy displays down because everyone else has them. 

It's come full circle. Consumers are again having to read each sign individually if they want to know which shops to look in. 

If you hadn't guessed, Shinjuku is social media, and we are all store owners, just trying to get noticed by overstimulated consumers. 

This is the point we have reached in social media today. When the average consumer follows over 100 businesses, and every one of those businesses is fighting for just a few seconds of their attention. Is it any wonder they simply scroll on past most content with a level of cognitive effort barely higher than a coma?

In prehistoric times (~2010AD-2018AD), businesses on social media were just like Hiroshi when he installed the first flashing sign. Except instead of flashing lights and loud music,  beautiful photos and motivational quotes  were all that was needed to stand out in the crowd.

Nowadays, everyone has seen everything already. More than once. Just like Hiroshi's colourful flashing sign, it has become a necessity to have good content online. Without the sign, Hiroshi would not compete in Shinjuku. Without good content, a business will not compete online.

These days a business's social media profile has become a heuristic for consumers to quickly evaluate the brand. Nothing more, nothing less. We're lucky to get 10 seconds of their attention, so it must count.

But without good content, you're not competing in Shinjuku. You're in a side alley spending most of your time chasing away rats.

Try this. The next time you have spent 10 minutes scrolling through Instagram, stop and guess how many posts you think you saw from businesses. This will be organic posts from businesses you follow, plus ads and boosted posts from businesses you don't follow. Then, without closing or refreshing Instagram, scroll back up through the posts you saw until you get back to the top. Count how many business posts there were. 

You will be amazed at how many there actually were and how few you remembered. It is usually around the 10:1 ratio. The majority of the posts were simply never imprinted on your working memory. At best, the majority of the posts will be sitting in your fleeting associational memory, never adding to your experience and ready to be discarded by your efficient brain at any moment. 

So how would Hiroshi get customers to notice his store in a Shinjuku exploding with shiny objects, all trying to do the exact same thing? 

We'll explore one of the best ways to "steal" attention in the next post. 

Hint: incentives.