CATERING TO THE HEARTS AND BODIES OF EACH AND EVERY CUSTOMER
Wacoal, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary, has renewed its corporate message to “Be more beautiful”. Having grown up with the philosophy that “women can express their beauty with pride as a sign of peace”, consumer values have become more diverse, and the “beauty” that people seek has changed to “individuality”. The message is that the company will continue to provide beauty that caters to the hearts and bodies of each and every customer.
The company has continued to work on video content. There are many cases where we want to convey information to users through video. For example, how to put on and wash underwear. In fact, “Basic knowledge of underwear” has become a popular piece of content. In addition to this, there are videos that are played in stores as promotional videos for each product, as well as TV commercials.
Kawakatsu Kazumi of the Public Relations and Advertising Department, Web and CRM Planning Section, General Planning Office, recalls, “From 2009, we started uploading these video contents to YouTube. We decided to upload all the videos we wanted to embed on our website to YouTube and embed them on our own site using tags.” “At the time, the information systems department had pointed out that uploading video files to our own server would put a strain on it, so we evaluated the fact that we could use it for free without putting a strain on our own server.”
ISSUES WITH AUTHORITY MANAGEMENT AND DEADLINE MANAGEMENT AROSE
I was able to create this system by myself, without spending much time, and at no cost. If this system is used within the company, it should lead to cost reductions.
Kazumi Kawakatsu
Public Relations and Advertising Department, Corporate Planning Office, Wacoal CorporationThere was another major problem: the rights to use the models’ likenesses. It is common practice to sign a limited-term contract with the models appearing in video content. If the video is accidentally left online after the contract has expired, not only will additional fees be incurred, but the relationship of trust will be damaged. It is not enough to leave the management of this to the person in charge and then “forget about it”.
What makes the issue of deadline management even more complicated is the decentralized decision-making process in content production. Kawakatsu’s team is in charge of managing the company’s overall brand as the Public Relations and Advertising Department, but the promotional video content is created by the brand manager. The brand is also in charge of the contracts with the models. It was difficult to keep track of all the content within the company and manage the deadlines for each piece.
However, installing a server for video content within the company would be costly and the management burden would be heavy, while YouTube is free to use. Despite the challenges, the number of videos continued to grow. However, they were reaching their limits in terms of management. If they used YouTube for content that they wanted to strongly promote their brand with, there were times when the issue arose that another video would be displayed after playback. It was at this time that Mr. Kawakatsu learned about Brightcove. Mr. Kawakatsu says, “I heard a lecture on a case study from the same apparel industry, and I felt that it was a solution that could solve the same issues that we were facing.”
AUTOMATIC PAGE GENERATION WITH BRIGHTCOVE GALLERY
If you store videos on Brightcove Video Cloud, you can accurately manage deadlines and serve different content to different devices. Of course, you can also set permissions for the production company and other related parties, and give them their own individual IDs and passwords. For videos you want to be widely viewed, you can continue to use YouTube, but for managing that, you can use Brightcove Social. And there was also the existence of Brightcove Gallery, which makes it easy for anyone to create landing pages.
“Even when we uploaded to YouTube, we would still have to ask an external web production company to create the landing page. If you set up a template in Brightcove Gallery, anyone can quickly create a simple page” (Kawakatsu)
The decision to introduce the system was made at the end of 2017. First, the Public Relations and Advertising Department took the lead in using various functions, including Brightcove Video Cloud, and is currently working on a project to pave the way for company-wide use. The expiration date for videos can be viewed on the Brightcove Video Cloud screen, so if the expiration date has not been entered for a piece of content, the person in charge can be prompted to enter it. It is now possible to set permissions for each ID, so the production company has only upload permissions, while the in-house staff have editing permissions.
“I tried creating a landing page myself as a test case using Brightcove Gallery. It was a simple page that I generated by copying and editing a template, but if I had to outsource it, it would have cost a certain amount. I was able to generate it myself in a short time and at no cost. If this system is used within the company, it should lead to cost reductions.” (Kawakatsu)
Since it is possible to store videos that you want to keep private within the company, they have also uploaded videos for internal use, such as training videos for sales staff, to Brightcove Video Cloud. This has enabled them to store videos on a secure cloud, so they can now share the latest information quickly with sales staff in stores.
They are also currently testing video ad viewing analytics. They have been able to obtain viewing data for their corporate brand ads targeting women who are working away from home, which they have been promoting on social networking sites. Kawakatsu says, “This year is the stage for setting up the infrastructure. We are promoting awareness within the company. In the near future, for example, we would like to work with the e-commerce department to set up a system that links content to purchases.”
