My New Fave mAd Story: Girlswalker which gets 45% redemption rate on mobile ads!

Yep, lets talk Girlswalker, the coolest youth mobile magazine from that coolest country for the youth: Japan. (Kawaii, as the Japanese might say..) And I have loved Girlswalker ever since I first learned about it from my dear friend and Japan mobile guru, Lars Cosh-Ishii a few years ago, but now I have received a recent update from another of my dear friends, our Alan Moore who lectured at Oxford University last month and gave us an update on Girlswalker.

So what is it? Girlswalker is a teen youth girls fashion magazine, on mobile phones. Its premise - they follow and report on what the coolest Tokyo teen girls are doing and wearing. Tokyo is a fashion hub and Tokyo girls are known as global fashion trend-setters. And there are all those other 100 million Japanese who are not living in Tokyo, and all the teen girls out of those, who don't get to visit the fashion districts of Tokyo to see what is the coolest thing to wear and to do. So enter Girlswalker. Every Japanese teen has a mobile phone. As Japan was the country to invent the mobile internet and the first country to launch 3G and all Japanese phones have already been migrated to 3G (yes, Japan has shut down its 2G networks already, the first country to do so), all Japanese girls have a pocket device capable of accessing a mobile internet magazine, with color pictures, video clips, and stories from the Tokyo youth scene.

So far so good. The concept was actually to see what Tokyo girls wear, and to show that to the rest of Japanese teen girls, so they can be just as cool as the Tokyo girls. And this mobile magazine took off with a bang. They became so popular, that now they run twice yearly fashion shows in huge venues, where they do not feature supermodels walking on the catwalks, the 'models' are just like all pictures and videos in Girlswalker - they are the real teenager girls from Tokyo. And that too is a Japan style technology masterpiece - they sell fashion items in real time, as the girl walks on the catwalk, you just point your cameraphone at the model, and take a picture, and then buy the fashion item on the spot, in your size and to your colors etc.. Awesome! Magical. But this blog is not about the live fashion shows. I want to just celebrate the youth mobile magazine.

I think anyone reading this, can see the parallel, this concept should work just as well in France as Paris Girls, or in the USA as Manhattan Girls or in Brazil as the Paulista Girls etc.. Right? But now the awesome bit. Alan told Oxford University that the redemption rates of the advertisements on Girlswalker, are averaging.... (drumroll).... 45% !!!!   Yes. Averaging 45% redemption rate. We celebrated previously here the awesome award-winning BMW engagement marketing campaign that had a 30% conversion rate to its mobile coupons. That was one campaign. This is regular, consistent, sustained mobile ad redemption rate that is 50% better! At 45% redemption rate for fashion ads (!!) what fashion brand would NOT want to advertise on Girlswalker? I do not know how they monetize the ads, but if I was in charge, I would simply auction off the ad space, and take what the market can sustain. These mobile magazine ads in Japan must be far more valuable than prime time TV ads on the highest rated TV shows...

This is the future of magazines and the future of advertisements. And obviously I am featuring Girlswalker in all my seminars and workshops from now on, as the pinnacle of how to do opt-in, personally relevant and targeted ads in mobile, so good, that the audience thinks of the ads not as advertising, but as desirable content. Bravo!

Now, you print media barons out there, who does the first clones of this? (Remember, you don't want to do this as an app for a smartphone. Do it as a WAP youth magazine that works on all phones, and then do a web variant on dot Mobi principles ie optimized for mobile internet. Dont bother with an app for this segment) I want to hear how you do in your markets. This idea truly deserves to spread. Shanghai Girl? Toronto Teen? Moscow Chic?..

Comments

[Henry Sinn]

Hey Tomi,

One segment of the community and one vertical of interest.

Wow!

Imagine if we took it to the next level as part of 'Yellow'....

Henry

[MK]

Hi Tomi,

So how are the mags actually distributed? Via MMS or WAP?

[Plastic Cards]

What Girlswalker illumines can be implemented favourably and in a similar format in many countries.

[Aage_Reerslev]

Fantastic - something to show the New Yorker - Ay!

[Joey1058]

The problem in America is that industries are walled and fragmented. They can't get beyond the concept of the internet as "the web". Which of course only displays on PCs. And PCs here are going from desktops to handhelds. Unless cheaper feature phones can display gaudy, in- your-face graphics (a concept standardized by old fashioned print media), they will want no part of it.

[Lars]

Hi Tomi..

Thanks - as always - for the hat-tip.. GW has always been a fav. 8-)

The Tokyo Girls Collection fashion shows are a total blast and they have always done very well on the ad side considering 'sweetheart' focus market segment.. no surprise they get astounding CTR's.

Not sure if you knew that Xavel was on-lead when DoCoMo launched the DCMX payment platform, we did a Viewpoint on that back in 2006:
http://wirelesswatch.jp/2006/09/15/docomo-mobile-credit-everything-you-know-about-3g-is-useless/

Cheers,

Lars

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The Tokyo Girls Collection fashion shows are a total blast and they have always done very well on the ad side considering 'sweetheart' focus market segment.. no surprise they get astounding CTR's.

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