"Tribe Driven Marketing" is a marketing approach centered on "tribes" – groups of social media users sharing common interests and lifestyles. It addresses corporate needs like "enhancing social media management" and "boosting digital ad effectiveness," while also expanding into fan acquisition for companies and brands, product development, and more.
Capturing social media conversations to evaluate long-term advertising effectiveness
Q. What kinds of client requests does Tribe Driven Marketing address? Could you share some use cases?
Yoshida: We received a request from electronics manufacturer Company A: "We want to spread awareness of our products among Generation Z." Analyzing data from Gen Z users discussing Company A's products on social media revealed that the products were valued more for their experiential benefits—such as "making idol fandom activities easier" or "enhancing the enjoyment of digital comics"—than for their functional features.
Conversely, examining the tribe of users loyal to competitor B's products revealed a tendency to discuss features like "high image quality." This meant that while highlighting features was effective for B's products, Company A's products should emphasize the experiential value: "How does owning this device change daily life?" We then developed and proposed a plan centered on how diverse Gen Z tribes could experience this value by owning Company A's products. In this way, we believe Tribe Driven Marketing enables deep exploration of target audience needs.
Hajime Yoshida, Dentsu Digital Inc.
Q. Hearing your explanation, I clearly understand that Tribe Driven Marketing is not a targeting tool but a marketing framework. It involves grasping what target customers like and seek, then formulating marketing strategies accordingly. Furthermore, as mentioned in the first part, if the condition arises where there's a certain correlation between SNS mentions and sales, intermediate metrics can also be established using SNS. I sense this could become one of the future marketing foundations. What are your thoughts?
Yoshida: That's correct. Traditional social media marketing has often lacked clear ROI for companies. For example, running ads on social media might not immediately translate to sales. However, if those ads increase social media mentions and grow your fan base, it can be considered effective in the long term. Tribe Driven Marketing provides a benchmark for this kind of evaluation. Its unique feature is the ability to monitor, analyze, and report from various perspectives: how much conversation volume increased, how many new users were among them, and whether the target audience was reached.
Next-Generation PDCA Enabled by Tribe Driven Marketing
Q. You mentioned Tribe Driven Marketing enables next-generation PDCA. Could you elaborate on this point?
Yoshida: Beyond viewing users through tribes of interest, Tribe Driven Marketing scores the relationship value between users and the company, even categorizing loyalty levels. Each user has a distinct status—whether they learned about the service through ads, reacted to company posts, shared someone's post, participated in a campaign, actually tried the service, or are a regular user—and their relationship depth (understanding/favorability) with the company varies. This allows PDCA to be executed based on these user attributes (tribe × loyalty).
For example, a company managing social media accounts prioritized building better relationships with users over simply increasing followers. They analyzed how users reacted to the company on social media and categorized users into several loyalty tiers: from "potential fans" who might become fans in the future, to "core fans" who spontaneously make positive comments.
Examining responses to each initiative by loyalty tier revealed different tribes responded differently. While communication valued by core fans who regularly engage remains crucial, understanding the differences in what resonates with potential fans enabled the company to design communication strategies tailored to each loyalty tier. This led to a multi-layered approach, considering different creative advertising tactics for each group. In this way, they are updating their PDCA cycle using the tribe axis.
Q. Are there products that particularly suit Tribe Driven Marketing?
Yoshida: Products with large user bases where social media buzz directly impacts sales, especially B2C offerings, are particularly well-suited. Entertainment content, convenience store items, and fast food products are clear examples.
On the other hand, even for new markets or niche products, I believe you can always find a core tribe somewhere.
Q. Can you share a specific example where you proposed marketing strategies using Tribe Driven Marketing for a niche product?
Yoshida: For one project, we received an orientation to promote insect control products to golf enthusiasts and young festival-goers. However, we questioned whether those were truly the right target groups. We collected data on people discussing insect-related problems on social media. Among them, the most prominent tribes were insect and wildflower photographers, parents raising children, and news enthusiasts. In other words, people who frequently venture into grassy areas to photograph insects and thus worry about insect bites, parents alerting others to protect children from insect bites, and individuals interested in such information.
This doesn't negate the initially assumed target audience. However, we concluded that unless the product gains attention from those currently showing strong interest in the topic, awareness would be difficult to spread. Therefore, we proposed these groups as short-term target tribes.
In this way, regardless of the client company's product or service, we provide a comprehensive proposal: identifying specific target audiences, devising communication strategies, and executing targeted advertising.
Q. Finally, we'd like to ask about the potential of utilizing SNS data. Could you share your vision and outlook for social media marketing through Tribe Driven Marketing?
Yoshida: We still see significant potential in marketing support using data across various SNS platforms. While each platform has distinct characteristics and trends change daily, we are expanding our capabilities to maximize the use of SNS data.
Above all, our goal is to become the No. 1 in customer-centric marketing. By applying the Tribe Driven Marketing concept, we aim to engage as deeply as possible with the actual consumers beyond our client companies through SNS. This approach enhances the quality of marketing initiatives and contributes to achieving our clients' business objectives.
As cookie regulations advance, the importance of social media marketing—deepening customer understanding through SNS data—grows as a new marketing approach. Tribe Driven Marketing, which analyzes SNS users by tribe to delve into their interests and needs, can be seen as a customer-centric marketing framework. It increases the resolution of target customers and enhances the effectiveness of initiatives.
The information published at this time is as follows.
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).
