ANA-Beyond Tokyo

ANA - BEYOND TOKYO

Japanese airline ANA is quickly acquiring a track record for working with and pioneering experimental technology. In the last issue for example our cover story was the ANA ‘Avatar’ programme.

This both involves the airline developing avatar technology that will allow you to “teleport” yourself to anywhere in the world (via a robotic skeleton), as well as funding a $10 million prize for teams of developers to do the same.

ANA’s latest initiative, Beyond Tokyo, seems to fit very much into this emerging technology theme.

Beyond Tokyo is a collaboration between virtual reality company, The Soap Collective and The World Innovation Lab to a virtual reality experience.

The VR experience is centered around the Tokyo neighborhood of Shibuya, and includes 360 videos, audio narration, photos, and interactive storytelling. According to the landing page: “Experience the hustle and bustle of the famous Shibuya Crossing, a visit to an izakaya restaurant where locals unwind, “fishing” in Shibuya, the renowned fashion culture in Harajuku, the importance of spirituality in daily lives, the story of Japan’s most loyal dog “Hachiko”, and even some quirky urban legends of the area.”

Beyond Tokyo is not something the average consumer will be able to access. This is because it works via the HTC owned Virtual Reality headset system ‘Vive.’ Vive is HTC’s answer to Oculus Rift, and it gets good reviews in the tech press.

For example, TechRadar gave it a 5/5 rating and said it delivers the best VR experience. However at the same time, it called Vive ‘pricey’ - it currently retails for $499 in the US, on top of which you need to buy a subscription for content (there is a free trial).

In Q3 2017 (so before Christmas), HTC had sold 160,000 Vive units, compared to 490k Playstation VR headsets and 210k Oculus Rift headsets which were shipped during the same period.

As a result, ANA seems to be taking a punt on a new piece of technology that has yet to get mass consumer adoption. Some commentators seem to think it will, computing company Nvida has predicted that sales will jump to 50 million by 2021 (with the caveat that Nvida has a vested interest in talking up this particular technology).

Meanwhile, Zach Osumi, ANA’s Project Director believes that virtual reality has enormous potential for travel brands, and could encourage people to fly more: “I believe that the core value of VR is not to replace the real world, but to create a whole new world and experience. Some foresee a day when technology gets so advanced that no one will go travel. It could happen. But I strongly believe that once we could stimulate intellectual curiosity about a place, and help people make an emotional connection with the place, THAT will inspire people to travel more.”

Time will tell if ANA’s investment has paid off. If VR headsets do become mainstream, them the airline will have a head start in creating content for these platforms. Other airlines have worked with VR, albeit through Google Cardboard. For example, last year KLM produced a ‘flight upgrader’ (which seeks to persuade passengers of LCCs to fly KLM).

WE ARE JAPAN While Beyond Tokyo might be experimental, another ANA initiative, We are Japan, is much more accessible as it runs on Tumblr.

ANA is one of the few airlines to currently make use of the micro-blogging platform, despite it having 400+ million blog accounts.

Using Tumblr has a number of benefits beyond the size of the community. It works well as a kind of visual scrapbook, and of course aviation is inherently visual.

Tumblr can also be a good place to test out content that might not immediately fit on your main website, including using it for campaign specific landing pages. “We are Japan” is aimed specifically at European visitors to Japan.

The Tumblr site opens with a corporate video promoting the fact that there are seven daily flights from Europe to Japan with ANA and that it’s Japan’s only five star airline (according to Skytrax).

It’s then split into seven categories, with each looking at a different area of Japan - eat, drink, see, stay, do, discover and go. Like ANA’s other online content initiatives (many of which we’ve written about in previous issues), both the imagery and copy are high quality, with the Tumblr site managing to impart useful information about Japan without the posts seeming too commercial.

While a lot of travel microsites tend to gather dust after launch, or are only updated infrequently, ANA appears to have a good content funnel for ‘We are Japan.’ In April 2018, for example, there were 13 posts on the Tumblr site, covering everything from staying at Japan’s most serene Buddhist retreats to the top five “Kawaii” Instagramers.

JOURNEY BY DESIGN

Finally, ANA is once again working with social media influencers in the Asia-Pacific region and bringing them to Japan.

A first group of YouTube and Instagram influencers went to Japan in September, as part of a ‘Journey by Design’ campaign. This second group comes from Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. While in Japan they will create content for their local markets to promote it as a destination.

ANA is just one of a number of airlines, which uses influencers, something that we’re very much in favour of at SimpliFlying and at Visible (our new visual content arm).

Even so-called “micro influencers” often have a reach that rivals that of a regional newspaper or radio station and they can bring a fresh and unique perspective onto your brand (or in this case destination).

KEY TAKE-AWAY

Most new campaigns and initiatives (not only in airlines but in any commercial organisation) are assessed by the likely ROI.

When it comes to ‘Beyond Tokyo’ there isn’t likely to be much of an ROI, at least not at first.

Accessing it involves buying a $500 headset and subscribing to a content package. As a result, our guess is that there will several thousand downloads - if that.

But our guess is also that this isn’t the point of ANA’s investment in Beyond Tokyo. Rather this seems to be an investment in a piece of new technology which may or may not take off. If VR headsets do become more mass market, then there’s enormous potential for the travel industry and ANA will have got in early.