Analysis of an NTT DoCoMo Television Advertisement

Sam Falk, Jun Ke, Eisuke Maekawa,
Mitsuhiro Tagami, Christopher Tan

15.814, Marketing Management

March 16, 2001

Introduction and Background

We have chosen to analyze a 15 second television advertisement for NTT DoCoMo’s mobile telephone service. A quick-time file containing the advertisement can be found at http://www.mit.edu/~tagami/docomocm.htm. This advertisement is one of three similar 15-second spots currently running on Japanese television, and we will analyze the ad in the context of the three spot campaign.

NTT DoCoMo is by far the market leader in the Japanese mobile telephony market, owning well over 50% of the market. In fact, the Japanese anti-trust authorities have considered investigating NTT DoCoMo as a monopoly.

Goals

We’ve identified five different goals of this fifteen second television spot, although all but the last one are related to expanding the non-telephony uses of mobile telephones. These goals are listed below in priority order. Our detailed analysis of the ad will return to this list in discussing the specific features of the ad in each of its four sections. The goals:

1. To position DoCoMo phones as much more than a mere telephony devices. The commercial presents DoCoMo phones as visual, connected, information appliances. It is interesting to note that there is no use of the device as a standard phone in this ad or in either of the other ads in the campaign. Of course, DoCoMo charges for bandwidth use. As users take advantage of non-telephony functions more often, they use more bandwidth, and incur higher charges. Thus, this goal can be seen as a revenue generation goal.

2. To introduce the name “i-Appli” and develop the i-Appli name as a brand exclusively available from NTT DoCoMo. Since its introduction of the 501 series phone, DoCoMo has been pushing the mobile communication frontier forward. Now with 503 series, they’ve just started promoting their new i-Appli service, so brand recognition is one of the important goals.

3. To demonstrate the i-Appli technology, specifically showcasing i-Appli’s sound, color, and connectivity.

4. To help non-telephony wireless use “cross the chasm” by introducing specific features attractive to “early majority” customers. Each ad in the series demonstrates a different feature (games, stock alerts, and content rich wake up calls)

5. To position DoCoMo and i-Appli as “hip” brands used by young, attractive, trendy people.

Targets

Potential Customers.

Based on the potential anti-trust issues mentioned above, we don’t believe that increasing market share was a primary goal for this advertisement. Also, the director’s decision not to immediately identify the product as a DoCoMo mobile telephone (see section one of our detailed breakdown) supports our view. Nevertheless, the ad contains nothing specifically excluding potential customers (for example, a special add-on product offering), so we believe the ad’s creators viewed potential customers as a secondary and worthy target. In viewing this ad, potential customers would certainly see the flashy, nifty services offered by DoCoMo, so they could be induced to switch from their current mobile telephone service or to finally decide to get a mobile phone if they don’t already have one.

Existing Customers

Since potential customers are not the main target of this commercial, who is? We believe that current DoCoMo customers were at the forefront of the ad creators’ minds as they developed this campaign. Each of the ads in the three part series focuses on a specific, non-telephony feature of a DoCoMo telephone. This ad demonstrates a wake-up call feature, and we don’t believe that many potential customers would be swayed by that single feature. Existing customers, likely with their phones on their hips as they view the ad, however, might be induced to upgrade to the new phones and the new service, perhaps for an add-on charge. In addition, it is in DoCoMo’s interest to educate its entire customer base about all available DoCoMo features, even if each customer uses only a few special features. Customers who understand the full value available in the DoCoMo product are less likely to defect based on a competitor’s feature-rich advertisements.

Detailed Analysis

We divided the ad up into four sections. In each section, we’ll provide translations for the audio and graphics and link the content of the ad back to the targets and goals we described above.

Section One

Section one of the commercial is the first five seconds, starting with a close up of the DoCoMo phone’s screen in “sleep” mode. As the camera zooms out from the screen, the display changes to the blue and white graphic display shown to the left. The Japanese text above the snowman graphic says, “Good Morning” in white and “Wake Up Weather “ in yellow. The text below the snow man reads, “Today's weather in Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo is.....”

This section focuses on the first, third, and fourth goals we identified, positioning DoCoMo phones as visual information devices, demonstrating new technology, and crossing the chasm. It introduces the color, sound, and location-specific information technology available on the new DoCoMo mobile phones and demonstrates the wake-up call feature. In addition, since it is not made clear in this opening section that mobile telephones are the product being advertised, this section supports are view that existing customers are the primary target of this commercial.

Section Two

Section two lasts seven seconds and introduces the “supporting actress” of the ad. (The DoCoMo phone must be considered the “star” of the commercial!) Her name is “a i”, which has same verbal sound of “i” as in i-Mode and i-Appli. This section focuses on goals one, two, four, and five from our list.

The voice-over during this section says, "i-Appli compatible, 503 debut," the Japanese text under the English i-Appli characters says “weather forecast for your wake-up call,” and the text over the phones says “new window for i-Mode, i-Appli compatible.”

The most important feature of this section is the linking of the i-Appli name with the technology demonstrated in section one of the ad. This section also begins the ad’s efforts to demonstrate that young, attractive people use i-Appli phones, but never talk into them, interestingly enough, and introduces the new model phones customers can buy to use the new technology. The text explaining the first five seconds of the ad, “weather forecast for your wake-up call,” reinforces and explains the technology demonstration from section one. Lastly, Japanese text describing the telephones as a new window reinforces the message that these telephones are meant as visual, not audio devices.

Section Three

The third section of the ad lasts two seconds, and reinforces the first and fifth goals we identified. It features the main characters from all three commercials in the campaign, each using the DoCoMo i-Appli-enabled phone according to his or her preferences. This integrates the features from all three ads into one device, pointing out that the functionality demonstrated in all three ads is available in one powerful i-Appli telephone. Of course, the three people are young, attractive, and well-dressed, further enhancing the “hip” image the campaign presents.

Section Four

Section four closes the ad and lasts only one second. The Japanese text on the screen says, “towards the mobile frontier.” This section closes all DoCoMo ads, delivering a strong message about DoCoMo’s corporate identity as an industry leader in the wireless industry. It comes with a voice-over of simply “DoCoMo,” which impresses to the viewers that it was a DoCoMo ad showing DoCoMo products.

Suggested Improvements

Generally, we believe this ad is quite good. We do have several improvement ideas, although we’re not sure they could be implemented without lengthening the ad to thirty seconds and therefore changing the overall character of the ad. Our improvements:

· Make it obvious that the telephone is playing the music at the start of the ad. Several of us were confused when we saw the ad for the first time, not realizing that the telephone was providing the sound.

· Show it snowing outside, so it’s obvious the phone has figured this out and reported it.

· Demonstrate 2-way communication – have the young woman waking up use her mobile phone to send an e-mail to her friends saying, “Let’s go skiing!”

· Demonstrate how personalizable the features are so people understand the power and flexibility of the i-Appli phones. For example, the ad could show Ai (the young woman in the ad) setting her preferences (wake up time, type of graphics, and wake-up melody) on the previous night.

· Have the young woman smile when she sees the phone’s message. This would create the impression that DoCoMo i-Appli phones create happiness.

Conclusion

This advertisement clearly reflects DoCoMo’s dominant position (almost 60% as of Feb. 2001) in Japan’s mobile telephony market. DoCoMo enjoys a huge network externality because they charge less to connect their users with other DoCoMo users than they charge to connect to competitors’ phones. Therefore, in the telephony market, DoCoMo no longer needs to advertise directly against its competition. For example, we know that two years ago when DoCoMo had “only” a 40-50% market share, there were many DoCoMo advertisements emphasizing price competition for voice communication.

If voice communication is the current S-curve, DoCoMo clearly cares about the next S-Curve, which is mobile Internet usage. DoCoMo clearly wants to make sure its dominance in wireless voice communications transitions directly into dominance in wireless data communications, i.e. mobile Internet use. Crucially, the network externality DoCoMo employs to ensure its dominance in the voice market is not available in the information service market. Therefore, DoCoMo, through this ad and others in the campaign, is trying to lead its customers to mobile Internet usage. So far, DoCoMo has succeeded in the mobile Internet market (also with a 60% market share as of Feb. 2001, and half of all mobile phones in Japan are Internet ready.) DoCoMo correctly recognized its existing customer base as a valuable complementary asset in the battle for wireless Internet revenue. We believe they will keep focusing on mobile Internet usage until they notice the next S-curve, when the cycle will begin again.