Chikirin, is it really okay to reveal this much!? 'Develop Your Market Sense'

You can almost hear that cry echoing inside and outside the company, really.
The tagline "Become someone who knows what will sell next" is no empty promise.

This time, we're featuring Chikirin's book, "Develop Your Market Sense: 5 Ways to Become Someone Who Knows 'What Will Sell Next?'" (Diamond Inc.).

Market sense is the ability to discover value

What comes to mind when you hear the term "market sense"?
It might be that innate business sense that can turn a small shop into a global brand, or the kind of intuition that makes someone a millionaire overnight through stock trading.
It seems to carry a strong image of innate talent.

Chikirin states in this book:
Market sense is a capability that complements logical thinking, and it is something that can be learned and developed.
In today's rapidly changing, unpredictable world, what we need now is the ability to discern "essential value" – to answer questions like "What should I learn?" and "What should I sell?" That, she says, is market sense.

Orders are flooding in from all over the country! Iwata Bookstore in Hokkaido's market sense

Well, even so, it still sounds kind of difficult.
So, let me share one example.
It's Iwata Bookstore, a small town bookstore in Sunagawa City, Hokkaido.
The new service this bookstore launched was: "We'll select and send you books worth 10,000 yen that suit you."

Books are tricky—there are too many titles, their value varies wildly, and finding the perfect one is tough. This bookstore, with its excellent market sense, turned "selecting books for you" into its product, rather than just "selling books."
This kind of sense is different from knowledge or experience.

While some bookstores lament, "Even good books don't sell. The publishing industry's future looks bleak," Iwata Bookstore believes, "If we shift the bookstore's value from the books themselves to our discernment and recommendation skills, there is opportunity." Just one difference in "market sense" – the ability to spot latent value – can lead to such vastly different outcomes.

Essential Skill for Advertisers? Solving Problems Using Incentive Systems

For example, when older people buy expensive wigs costing tens of thousands of yen, they value not the wig itself, but the "wigs that won't be noticed."
Another example: Among all high school club activities, Koshien baseball stands out as a massive market because people find value in "the unfairness of losing despite fighting with everything you've got, due to the whims of luck" and "the story of young people trying to overcome lower skill levels (compared to pros) with sheer determination and grit."

To hone this market sense, this book introduces five methods:

① Develop pricing capabilities
② Understand incentive systems
③ Learn how to gain market recognition
④ Grasp the relationship between failure and success
⑤ Immerse yourself in high-market environments

Personally, what inspired me most was point ②: "Understand incentive systems." This is precisely the approach often seen in international advertising awards.
Here's an example from the book:

Dwango, which had many engineers who struggled with mornings, introduced a system to encourage earlier arrivals. Employees who participated in the morning company exercise received a free lunch box. The idea of "creating a system that motivates employees to want to come in early" is brilliant, isn't it?
...Doesn't this idea look familiar in advertising campaigns?

Since many citizens don't use trash cans, create trash cans with features that make people want to use them.
Since many people ignore traffic signals, create signals so entertaining they can't be ignored.
The methodology of "changing the motivation system before changing behavior" is actually something you can apply to your work immediately.

When you have a problem, you should first consider whether you can solve it by leveraging human incentive systems. If you do, people will happily step up to solve the problem. (P178)

If you don't change, you'll be replaced.

Hmm, hmm, oh, I see.
Reading along smoothly like that, you come to the title of the final chapter:
Honestly, I screamed inside.
Concise, quiet, yet carrying an indescribable pressure—these words.
"Those who refuse to change will be replaced."

Oh, how terrifying.
There are no exceptions.
Markets, things, services, and people...

I'd almost forgotten how Chikirin-san meticulously includes phrases like "master" or "become someone who understands"—where "I" is the subject—in her titles. Just as I was feeling pleased, my senses sharpened by the examples she introduced, this chapter hits. Got me good, right in the gut.

What will become of the advertising world?
What should the creators working there be like?
What about me?
This is definitely the kind of book that makes you start thinking as you read it.