Mogic considers

Combining Branding and Marketing

Branding and marketing are two business terms that are often casually uttered.

Surprisingly, it is a peculiar thing whose definition and use cannot be explained well.

It is hard to convey because it is not something you can pick up or see, but Mogic explains it as follows.

Branding: showing what you want to show and not showing what you don't need to show

Marketing: something that is placed casually in the recipient's lead line.

A clear example of branding is a theme park, which is designed so that the apartments and other living spaces are not visible in order to preserve the world view.

Marketing is the gum next to the checkout counter at the supermarket. It's the part that you hold onto while waiting for the cashier and think, well, I'll buy it.

That said, the two are not relative and should be blended well.

In the case of a theme park, the marketing should use branding to create a world view, and the merchandise section should be located near the entrance and exit.

And since both terms are ongoing ing, we need to think about how to capture the "changing feeling over time".

A story about not finding what you want to do

In talking with many interns, I often encounter the problem of "I haven't found what I want to do in the future yet" or "There are too many things I want to do and I can't decide what I want to do.

I don't think there is any need to rush into anything, so I just commented that I hope it will be decided soon.

I was once asked about this by a well-known job-hunting instructor.

Then he said, "From my experience, 90% of people don't know what they want to do. That is normal," he said.

I felt like this situation was similar to something that, in retrospect, could be traced back to "people who want to start their own businesses".

I want to start a business but haven't found what I want to do," "There are too many businesses I want to do and I can't decide," "I want to start a business someday but I don't know when.

The bottom line is that it is quite difficult to pick something and choose to focus on it when there is a high degree of discretionary freedom.

If the only way out is to find a job, and if you have to choose between 10 different companies, it may be simpler.

If you only have three business models and the only way to start a business now is to start a business, it may be easier to make a decision.

If we assume that we are free to choose both timing and direction, the next moment we begin to struggle with the focus itself.

Therefore, if we dare to think that our life choices are limited, we may be able to naturally reduce the effort to focus.

Game-like UX

As I was going through the PS5 and Switch games, I remembered that the NES had two buttons.

It has a simple structure with a single cross key on the left and A and B buttons on the right.

The game screen is flat and the story is in one direction.

It's like a different era now, with 3D polygonal high-definition images that go without loading, open worlds, and online collaboration at our fingertips.

The NES was launched in 1983, the Super NES in 1990, and the PlayStation in 1994, so it was 40 to 25 years ago, depending on your perspective whether you think this was a while ago or a long time ago.

If we follow the same period in business, it seems like a blink of an eye, since it was around the time of the bubble economy that computers were introduced in offices and people began to be connected to the Internet, until today.

I didn't work during that period, though, and the reason it seems short is probably because I don't feel the change is as dramatic as the game.

The accelerated growth of semiconductors, exemplified by Moore's Law, has allowed us to express ourselves in the game in a variety of ways.

You can choose your gender, age, and clothing, and there are plenty of non-human settings to begin with.

Not only can you create a speech and atmosphere that matches your character, but you can also freely search for people who are like-minded.

I imagine that the company's operations will not change as quickly as games because they are not directly subject to Moore's Law, but I imagine that the UX (user experience) will be like a game.

It is the same in that you work alone or collaborate with someone else, and games are more advanced in terms of motivation.

However, I am not sure that everyone will need the complex controller controls of a console, but rather will rely on the fun and continuity that the game has to offer from time to time.

Inventing the New

I understand how things get old over time.

T-shirts are fading, water heaters are malfunctioning and no longer working, printer toner is grazing.

Unlike objects, however, it is difficult to determine whether our ideas themselves are old or new.

Whether the idea is old-fashioned or not will depend on what you base it on subjectively.

Here we measure antiquity only in terms of "effectiveness".

Let's take learning English conversation as an example that is easy for working people to understand.

Until more than a decade ago, there were only a few ways to learn to speak English.

Learning from books, listening to CDs or the radio, attending classes, watching DVDs, or making friends who speak English?

Today, with the spread of technology, there are more options than ever before, including Youtube, foreign news sites, Netflix and other video services, online English conversation services, pronunciation assessment apps, automatic translation of online meetings, and more.

If the same person were to invest the same amount of time in learning, he or she would learn more "effectively" from a combination of current options than a decade ago.

In this respect, there is now room to think about English conversation learning in a new way.

Things seem to be continuously connected from newness to oldness, but in the way of thinking, I feel that newness itself must be invented.