Entertainment in real places such as music and sports has been struggling with the new coronavirus. Under such circumstances, “Kawasaki Brave Thunders” of the professional basketball league “Japan Professional Basketball League” (hereinafter referred to as “B League”) maintains a strong attracting customers. The club, which DeNA took over the management right from Toshiba in 2018, had an average number of visitors per game in 7th place in the B league before the succession, but it is the third year of the succession despite the influence of the spread of the new coronavirus infection. I climbed to 1st place.
Behind the steady acquisition of fans by Kawasaki Brave Thunders is the strengthening of SNS (exchange sites) and digital marketing. The number of YouTube channel subscribers of the team is the first in the B league and the J league of soccer, and the number of followers of TikTok is the second in the Japanese professional sports club after the Yomiuri Giants. Both are over 100,000.
The spearhead was Naoto Fujikake, General Manager of Business Strategy Marketing Department at Kawasaki Brave Thunders. We asked Mr. Fujikake, who was originally involved in the development and operation of games for smartphones at DeNA, why he jumped into the real world of entertainment that felt like a different field, and how he achieved an increase in the number of visitors.
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Kawasaki Brave Thunders Business Strategy Marketing Department Manager Naoto Fujikake (Photo Yoshiaki Nakamura)“I want to work responsibly,” he told DeNA.However, he was frustrated in the first year of joining the company.
It is said that the sales scale of B League clubs is about 1/10 of professional baseball and 1/5 of J League, but the number of YouTube channel subscribers and TikTok followers of Kawasaki Brave Thunders is comparable to them. On the contrary, it boasts a higher number. In particular, the number of YouTube subscribers, which was about 4,000 two years ago, has surpassed 100,000, which is more than 25 times higher, and is attracting attention.
Mr. Fujikake, who was in charge of building SNS strategies and marketing using data in general, and led to growth, became involved in the launch of the basketball business after engaging in the game business at DeNA. However, his journey to the present has never been smooth.
“Actually, I experienced a big setback in my first year at the company. One of the major reasons I decided to join DeNA was the corporate culture of being able to proceed with the project at my own discretion even if the year of joining the company was short. As I hoped, I was assigned to a department that develops new mobile games, but I couldn’t proceed with the project I was in charge of for the first time, and I failed before the release and lost tens of millions of yen. “
The assigned department is under the general manager who looks at the whole, and each employee works as a person in charge to develop a new game in collaboration with the development company. Mr. Fujikake was in a state where he didn’t know right or left, but he decided to challenge the development by himself.
“It was an environment that I asked for, but it was difficult because I had never been involved in game development as a job. Where to set the target, what is the core value of this product, etc., all decisions for one year Because I was in a situation where I had to do it myself. “
