Dentsu Digital Inc.began offering "Tribe Driven Marketing," an integrated framework to advance social media marketing, starting in September 2022. By analyzing based on "tribes"—groups of SNS users categorized by interests and preferences—it helps solve various challenges required in social media marketing and achieve KPIs.
We interviewed Hatsu Yoshida of Dentsu Digital Inc. about its significance and implementation cases. Part 1 covers the background of its development and the role Tribe Driven Marketing fulfills.
Social Media Marketing Centered on "Tribes" – Groups Sharing Common Interests and Preferences
Q. First, what kind of marketing framework is Tribe Driven Marketing?
Yoshida: A tribe refers to a group sharing common interests and lifestyles. By analyzing social media data, we can identify diverse tribes. Segmenting tribes based on interests like "entertainment," "camping," or "parenting," or preferences for specific services/products, helps companies grow brand fans and informs product/service development. It's not just about extracting a "tribe of entertainment lovers." By combining multiple interests and preferences—like "entertainment-loving housewives" or "entertainment lovers who love Company A's products"—we can output and analyze highly segmented, custom tribes.
While " social listening "—the practice of collecting and analyzing social media posts—has existed for some time, Tribe Driven Marketing represents a significant advancement of this methodology.
Q. Could you explain the background that led to the development of Tribe Driven Marketing?
Yoshida: While advancing social media marketing, we sensed growing demand for sophisticated customer profiling and precise targeting methods. Social media holds diverse data on user interests—which accounts they follow, what they post, and their engagement patterns. We realized capturing this data from a tribe-centric perspective could empower marketing.
Furthermore, beyond the typical PDCA cycle of ad delivery and immediate results, we recognized social media's unique ability to track customer trends over the medium to long term. Combining this with the ability to analyze data by tribe, we believed it would enable the consideration and implementation of optimal strategies for each tribe. This drove our service development.
Q. What significance did you personally see in developing Tribe Driven Marketing?
Yoshida: Until now, the core value of social listening has been "interpreting user discourse." We often received requests from client companies asking us to propose insights and next steps derived from listening to customers' raw voices.
During this analysis process, I realized that beyond just the context of user statements, the information SNS data holds about "who is posting" holds even greater value. On SNS, users spontaneously share what they like and what interests them. Therefore, by focusing more on "who is posting," we should be able to gain a deeper understanding of our most important customers. This became the foundation for the birth of Tribe Driven Marketing.
A Marketing Framework to Accelerate SNS Data Utilization
Q. What was the reaction from client companies and the surrounding response?
Yoshida: The first project to incorporate the Tribe Driven Marketing concept was in the entertainment industry. We discovered a clear proportional relationship between content sales and the volume of social media discourse in this sector. This meant that increasing the number of social media posts was crucial for boosting sales. However, simply focusing on increasing post volume as a strategy obviously wouldn't lead to good results. The ideal approach was to get our target audience (the tribe) to genuinely engage and react, creating buzz that genuinely heightened their interest and enthusiasm.
The question of "how to become a topic of conversation" was traditionally the domain of planners' experience and collective wisdom. However, we can now specifically analyze all conversation volume, its positive/negative sentiment, and main context at the tribe level directly from social media data. Our approach, which prioritizes deepening our understanding of the client as the first step, enhances the quality of our strategy proposals. This new methodology has been well-received by client companies.
Subsequently, we began receiving numerous inquiries for detailed tribe analysis even outside entertainment-related projects. Since this analysis reveals insights previously unseen, we feel it is permeating projects across various industries.
Dentsu Digital Inc. Hajime Yoshida
Q. I imagine many companies are currently struggling with SNS marketing. What specific challenges do the client companies you handle most often face?
Yoshida: Many client companies are already managing their SNS but want to take it a step further from what they've done so far. We receive various inquiries such as: "Is our current SNS approach truly effective?", "What kind of users are engaging with us on SNS now?", "Is the impact of digital advertising weakening?", and "Are we failing to grow our fan base?" We also get requests like "We want to leverage this for new product development." Whether for advertising or deepening customer understanding, we believe Tribe Driven Marketing is a framework that can address this broad range of needs – helping companies engage more deeply with and utilize SNS.
Tribe Driven Marketing goes beyond extracting and analyzing SNS data. By centering on "tribes," it enables the optimal approach to your target audience. It's not just about narrowing down targets and delivering the best ads; it's already being utilized across a wide range of areas, including fan marketing and product development. In the second part of this interview, we delve deeper into practical use cases and explore the true value of Tribe Driven Marketing as a marketing tool.
Joined a major specialized agency in 2009 and joined Nexedge Dentsu Digital Inc. (now Dentsu Digital Inc.) in 2014. Responsible for SEO and owned media, providing consulting for various large-scale major sites (e-commerce, human resources, insurance, real estate, etc.). Subsequently, participated in the social media domain, primarily engaged in social listening and strategy design, supporting data-driven problem solving. Developed Tribe Driven Marketing. Speaking engagements: AdTech Tokyo (2017).
