Questions we get
before we start.

No presence is fine, and it is a lot of what we do. For several of our clients we have built the Japan advertising setup from nothing, tracking and analytics included, before running a single campaign. For others the first engagement was a paid test designed purely to answer whether Japan was worth committing to at all.

What matters more than existing Japan traction is whether the product has already worked somewhere else. Once it has, we can work out which parts transfer and which parts have to be rebuilt for this market.

It works either way and both are common. Your global agency usually keeps brand and global campaigns while we take Japan execution. Or your in-house team keeps everything and we run paid media as the specialist layer.

We are not trying to replace anyone. We fit around what is already in place, because the thing we add is the part a global agency genuinely cannot do from outside the market.

Consumer brands doing around $1M or more globally, either entering Japan or already here and wanting to scale. Below that, the media budget usually is not enough to learn anything reliable in a reasonable timeframe, and we would rather say so early.

We work across consumer and lifestyle, e-commerce and D2C, beauty and wellness, travel and hospitality, SaaS and technology, and market research.

For most of what we do, no. Running paid campaigns and influencer partnerships to a Japanese audience does not require a local entity, and plenty of brands start exactly that way, testing the market properly before committing to any structure here.

It does depend on what you are trying to do and what you sell. Some platforms and marketplaces set their own requirements, and certain categories carry rules of their own. Working out what applies to you is part of the first two weeks, so you know what is actually needed before spending money setting anything up.

Tokyo. We are performance marketers, creative producers and creator specialists working across English and Japanese, with media partners brought in for what a specific project needs.

You talk to the people doing the work. There is no account manager relaying your questions to a team you never meet, which is also why iteration cycles are short.

The first two weeks are diagnosis. We go through your global creative, your Japanese site if you have one, whatever data sits in your ad accounts, and what your competitors are already spending on here. You get a written read on what transfers and what has to be rebuilt.

From there we set the platform mix and the test plan, build Japan-specific creative rather than translating your global assets, and get tracking in place before any spend starts. Campaigns are usually live within days of kickoff.

The rest of the quarter is iteration. Weekly creative testing against the plan, monthly reporting, budget moving toward what is earning it. By the end of 90 days you know which channels work for your category, what your acquisition cost actually looks like here, and what scaling would take.

Yes. Our fee and your media budget are separate, and the ad accounts and the spend stay in your name.

How much of our time you are paying for depends on what you actually need. Some brands want the whole system built and run. Others have an in-house team and just need paid media handled properly. We scope after the first conversation and put a proposal against your goals and stage rather than fitting everyone into the same retainer.

On cost, the comparison worth making is not us against one agency. Brands entering Japan usually end up paying a paid media agency, a creative agency, a social agency and an influencer agency at the same time, with overlapping fees and a lot of hours lost to coordinating between them. One team covering all four is normally the cheaper side of that comparison, not the more expensive one.