Tokidoki is a cult Italian brand that many mistake for being Japanese. It has that has really used a succession of very cool brand partnerships to elevate the brand and tap into the passion of their fans through social media.

Tokidoki is inspired by Japanese culture and has only been around since 2005 having been created by the Italian artiste Simone Legno. Tokidoki actually means “sometimes” or “from time to time”  in Japanese.

The designs focus on the bright, edgy, cute, witty and eye catching which helps in attracting a series of global brand partners that are at the centre of their marketing strategy. The objective is to cost effectively market a cool brand using other brand’s values, communications channels and customer bases with very little money being spent by Tokidoki.

Read More »

After sitting around together for too long perhaps bemoaning that their love of Manga comics and general geekery had prevented them from getting girlfriends some Japanese students from the University of Tsukuba have found a solution and developed the “girlfriend coat”.

It is a coat that keeps you company and gives you the feeling that there’s always someone there for you. It hugs you and talks to you and says things to you that a real girlfriend would say such as “you said you’d call”, “I’m sorry! I’m late!” and that “really doesn’t suit you”.  Read More »

With more than 400 million tweets sent each day and growing fast, its top 10 users, led by Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, have more than 275 million followers alone.

It has worked itself so seamlessly into our lives that now no major event seems to take place without there being some kind of Twitter element, from celebrity break-ups to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the budget.

With talk of an IPO in 2014 and a valuation in the $9-$11bn (£5-7bn) ballpark, it is starting to generate the revenues that at the start people never thought the microblogging service could make and is on course to generate more than $800m (£527m) in 2014. Read More »

As every digital marketer knows, there’s a lot more to social media strategy than Facebook and Twitter… especially if you’re going global. Cultural differences throughout the world have created different social media consumption preferences based on local nuances. Traditional marketing incorporates awareness of cultural sensitivity when dealing with different audiences and it’s naive to think the social sphere is any different.

China is well known for having unique channels in the form of Sina-Weibo, RenRen and Qzone and brands targeting the Chinese market will (hopefully) already have these covered. But China is not the only country with its individual social media quirks: Read More »

When will brands ever learn? Do people not use the internet and read stuff? When it comes to social media we are now at a point when we have a fat pile of case files detailing how various brands have failed at social media, but this does not apparently stop other brands copying these mistakes over and over again.

This time around it is the turn of American Apparel. It has had the bright idea of rolling out a “Hurricane Sandy Sale” ad and as you might guess has sparked something of a Twitter backlash and ensured its brand will forever be linked with the words “social media fail”.

Earlier this year it was KFC Thailand doing its best to fail on social media. While the country was watching tsunami warnings and fearing the worst the fast food firm posted a message on its official Faceook page suggesting it was some time for tasty chicken as they watched the drama unfold. Read More »

Digitally, Japan is now more ‘socially’ integrated than ever. Now is the best time for western brands to promote themselves in the same way they do for other nations. Here are 5 reasons why. Read More »

According to a study from research firm Semiocast while the US is still easily first place on Twitter in terms of accounts, with around 107.7 million in total, Brazil is now the second biggest nation on the microblogging service.

There are now 33.3 million Brazilians with Twitter accounts, which is enough to push it passed Japan on 29.9 million. Read More »

A new sporting Twitter record was set on Sunday as reaction to 80-yard overtime touchdown pass by the Denver Broncos quarterback, Tim Tebow, hit 9,420 tweets per second.

The touchdown, which was scored in overtime, by the Denver Broncos player, led his team to victory and an upset against the Pittsburgh Steelers — although it failed to displace Japan in the number one spot. Read More »

A new study from ComScore says that social media use in Japan lags far behind the rest of the world, which is blamed in part on its slow adoption rates of Twitter and Facebook despite high levels of internet penetration.

Japan is also the only country in the world where Twitter has a higher number of monthly unique visitors than Facebook, which helps make  Japanese the second-most-used language on Twitter.

Read More »

Twitter has just put out the December edition of Twitter Stories, which highlights ten remarkable and often moving moments of 2011 that played out in part on Twitter.

There is the story of Shohaib Athar, better known to millions as @ReallyVirtual, who live tweeted the moment when Osama bin Laden was found and killed. While many of us know the that story, and how we shared it on Twitter, there are other tales that are less well known such as that of the former Puerto Rican homeless man Daniel Morales, @putodanny, who found hope and his daughter who he had not seen for 11 years. Read More »