ANA - We Are Japan

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ANA - We Are Japan

Japanese Airline ANA has featured prominently in previous years of AMM for its excellent destination marketing campaigns.

In September 2017, the airline was on the cover of the magazine for the “Is Japan Cool” initiative.

The website, which is still live, takes different elements of Japanese culture from Ramen to Cosplay, and highlights them for global audiences, encouraging them to travel to the country itself - naturally on ANA.

Then in March 2018, we featured ANA again for the “Experience Class” campaign, fronted by musician Steve Aoki. The campaign aimed to explore Japan and Japanese culture in a “unique, authentic way”, and included curated playlists from Steve Aoki on Spotify. Finally, in May 2018, we wrote a piece about “We Are Japan”, a constantly updated destination guide to Japan, hosted on Tumblr.

When we met with ANA in London later that year, we were told that the site was being maintained by the European marketing team, with the content being produced by guest bloggers.

Fast forward more than four years, and We Are Japan is still very much up and running.

Not only that, but in June 2022, it had a complete revamp.. It now sits on a standalone site.

That site has much higher production values than the original Tumblr blog. It is also now in French and German, as well as English, implying that the main audience remains European visitors to Japan.

It’s more interactive, allowing you to create your own itineraries, and you can browse different experiences grouped under ‘craft’, ‘nature’, ‘food’ and ‘wellness.’

Creating your own itinerary involves going through an interactive map, and looking at short destination videos. You star the destination videos you like, and once you’ve starred three (you can select up to 20), you get a personalised video itinerary - a kind of video tour.

Needless to say, this makes for a much richer experience than a text based, list type itinerary.

Finally, creating an itinerary (which isn’t dependent on you having booked tickets with ANA), will see you being entered into a competition to win return business flights to Japan. Uma Thurman videos

The new website is being promoted via a series of videos featuring actress Uma Thurman, who has starred in a lot of films set in Japan, for example the ‘Kill Bill’ movies, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

In the video, Thurman discusses her relationship to Japan and the number of times she has been (she has lost count), and talks about what makes going to Japan special for her.

The Uma Thurman link is being promoted on social media via paid for posts (I had a sponsored tweet on my feed), and on Facebook.

ANA is also posting different experience videos on Facebook to draw visitors back to the site.

Key takeaways

We liked the old We Are Japan campaign, we love the new one even more and there are many reasons why we’ve featured it again.

First of all, ANA’s campaigns have longevity, they are allowed to work over time. This one has been running for over four years, but with the switch to a new website, it is also being constantly refreshed.

Secondly, it’s a rich and interactive experience, as seen through the personalised video itinerary you are given.

It is obviously timely, as Japan is starting to open up again post the pandemic.

Since June 10th, tourists are allowed to enter from ‘blue list’ countries provided they are sponsored and registered on the Entrants, Returnees Follow-up System (ERFS) by an approved Japanese travel agency.

Obviously, this will be the first step in a loosening of entry requirements.

Then the Uma Thurman connection works. It’s more than just a case of ‘pay a celebrity some money to say nice things’, she has a clear affinity with the country.

The only thing missing from our point of view, and one that travellers will increasingly be looking for, is a section on sustainable tourism, something that up and coming destinations like Saudi Arabia are really focusing on.

Other than that though, ANA has delivered another best in class example of destination marketing.