How far can "advertising" truly deliver on "selling"?

"The publishing industry is in a slump, and books aren't selling. Come up with ideas to boost book sales."

If you were given that assignment, what solutions would you come up with?
This time, we'll look at a book that might offer hints: Atsushi Ishihara's "How to Create the 'Selling Mechanism' of the Future: Where I, a Former SP, Visited the Frontlines Where Makers, Sellers, and Buyers Connect" (Graphic-sha).

This book explores how "advertising" can address the critical challenge of "selling products" faced by every company. It clarifies this through case studies and interviews with people in various roles involved in "selling products."

Learning "How to Create a System That Sells" from the "Bookstore Award"

Now, let's revisit the question posed at the beginning: "Selling books in a publishing slump."
Traditionally, the approach has been to center on a key message like "Let's read books!" and deploy it through celebrities, mass media, in-store promotions, and web content.

This book tackles that challenge from a different angle, examining the "Bookstore Award"—which has built a truly sustainable "sales mechanism"—and unravels the keys to its success. When the goal is "selling," we tend to focus solely on how to approach the "consumer" directly in front of us. But in today's world, overflowing with information and products, that alone won't sell things.

The case of the Bookstore Award explains very clearly that the crucial key to creating a "system that sells" going forward is not just understanding the consumer, but also recognizing the existence of the various players involved before the consumer picks up the product in-store and makes a purchase. It's about being able to envision a scenario that understands their circumstances, motivations, and feelings, and involves them.

"Spherical Thinking" and "Polyhedral Thinking"

Recently, I've been consciously applying this approach in my own planning and strategy work. I meticulously map out in advance how a product or promotion will become a topic of conversation in society – how it will be discussed online, what headlines it will get in articles across different media, how it will be curated and featured, and in what scenarios and contexts it will be shared among friends.

Whereas previously, planning started with "how to PR this promotion," now the reverse is happening—planning starts from the PR perspective.

This very concept is discussed in this book as two distinct approaches: "Spherical Thinking" and "Polyhedral Thinking."

Spherical thinking focuses inward, converging messages into a single point—essentially "advertising thinking." Polyhedral thinking radiates outward, spreading multiple communications—this is "PR thinking." (P.53)

The Secret Behind the Hit "Ninja High School Girl"

One of author Ishihara's representative works is the viral video "Ninja High School Girl." I first learned of this video through an article circulating on social media, and it became a hugely talked-about piece.

I once had the chance to hear Mr. Ishihara discuss the success of "Ninja High School Girl," and I truly believe its hit status stemmed precisely from the meticulously designed scenario based on this "spherical concept" and "polyhedral concept."

They anticipated how the video would be covered and discussed across different media angles, built in viral elements, and distilled it all into the powerful (yet inherently funny) one-liner "Ninja High School Girl."

Of course, predicting whether content will go viral involves many unpredictable factors, and I could never promise something like, "We'll create a video guaranteed to get 1 million YouTube views without advertising!" However, by employing both "spherical thinking" and "polyhedral thinking" in content creation, I believe we can increase the probability of a hit.

This book generously shares various "mechanisms for selling" (seriously, is it okay to reveal this much? lol).

Understanding these "sales mechanisms" and putting them into practice made me strongly feel the potential for "advertising" to move people and deliver on selling products.