Five years later I’m still asking myself the same questions.
Well, last time I checked I wasn’t a fortuneteller or the proud owner of a magical crystal ball that peered into the future. The only thing I can tell you for sure — based in my current experience in Japan — is that MMA and kickboxing are still misunderstood and sometimes confused with each other. And while traditional K-1 events are still the king of the hill, other promotions, still struggling with the fragmented MMA market in Japan, are little by little becoming part of the everyday routine for most Japanese’s citizen thanks to the marketing machine.
I take my hat off to K-1 for being the proud owner of the best marketing office among all Japanese fight promotions. Like any foreign resident in Japan — and probably anyone out there who likes to read about Japan — it’s not news that Japan is a consumer-based culture and pretty much everything the “superstars” use and sponsor is followed by the younger masses.
To be more specific, let’s pretend that I’m rich and love to go out on shopping sprees. Let’s start with MP3 players. Who doesn’t find a MP3 player one of most useful tools when you want to go out with your favorite songs?
Well, I do. So I came upon this popular electronics store with branches all over Japan named “Yodobashi” just to find an intimidating Norifumi Yamamoto (Pictures) poster advertising MP3 players for the company IRIVER.
What if I kept walking around the same store and checked out the CASIO G-Shock brand of watches? Now there are Genki Sudo (Pictures) and Caol Uno (Pictures) on posters promoting the G-shock brand.
What about sports? Who likes Adidas or Nike? Nike Japan currently uses Caol Uno (Pictures) and Yoshihiro Akiyama (Pictures) in a gallery of Japanese athletes to promote their new line of fitness/training clothes. Meanwhile Adidas uses Hideo Tokoro (Pictures) and Musashi to promote their respective Spring/Summer clothing lines.
What about jeans? Everyone wears them because they are so comfortable and practical. So now you too could dress like Genki Sudo (Pictures) with EDWIN Jeans or be as gangsta as “Kid” Yamamoto with your brand new pair of DICKIES.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when we talk about how mainstream MMA and K-1/HERO’s fighters has become in Japan.
Talking about PRIDE, sadly, I can’t provide any good examples of fighters, or more specifically PRIDE Bushido fighters, being used in large advertising campaigns in Japan. To this day I’ve tried to figure out the PRIDE marketing department and why they don’t use their local talent more often to promote the PRIDE Bushido series.
There is a big difference between the K-1 and PRIDE markets, considering K-1 is built around their TV broadcast and couldn’t care less if one person showed up to the live events as long as they pull 20% TV rating. PRIDE is more of a house show that doesn’t rely on same-day TV broadcasts, but instead depends more on fans coming to watch live shows.
Obviously you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize there is something wrong when a promotion that heavily depends on house names to bring fans out can’t figure out how to promote their local talent.
Still more amazing is the fact that Bushido’s main ace, Takanori Gomi (Pictures), was literally wasted since joining the promotion back in 2004, despite putting together an amazing 10-0 run before the shocking moment when Brazilian’s Marcos Aurelio hit the brakes on Gomi’s bandwagon and stopped the Japanese fighter at Bushido 10.
On his personal blog Gomi announced his desire to face Aurelio as soon as possible, likely in Bushido 11, just to get over with the fact that he lost the first time. But from a marketing point of view the magical time when Gomi appeared unstoppable in Bushido has passed.
So it’s time to rebuild him again.
Recently I had the shocking surprise of seeing Gomi announced as a special guest for the upcoming MTV Japan music awards, but this is only a sporadic case of the Japanese star being promoted outside local MMA magazines. We can all argue about how Gomi is not a marketable fighter in the same mold as “Kid” or Genki, but I guess the bigger question here is why doesn’t PRIDE try to promote Gomi like a superstar outside of hardcore Japanese MMA fans?
Yamamoto’s bad boy look appeals to girls and boys alike, especially with the current flow of Hip-Hop and Reggae music in Japan. Sudo just wrote a book titled “The Theory of Happiness” and also hosts his own variety and music show for a local video music channel, similar to MTV. Hideo Tokoro (Pictures) is promoted like “The HERO’s Cinderella Man” with K-1 playing video of his life as janitor/MMA fighter. Finally we have Caol Uno (Pictures) the fashion guru, who has his own clothing store in Yokohama.
Their Bushido counterparts like Gomi, Hayato Sakurai (Pictures), Ryo Chonan (Pictures), Ikuhisa Minowa (Pictures) and Tatsuya Kawajiri (Pictures) get basically zero attention from the mainstream media because no one bothers in promote them.