Octopus Across the World: Japan

As soon as Octopus Vitality determined to broaden to Asia, Japan was its first alternative, and in Tokyo fuel we discovered a associate with an analogous imaginative and prescient for renewable vitality growth available in the market. Now we’re taking up the unbelievable problem of serving to Japan transition to renewable vitality by bringing tremendous customer-focused, sensible vitality to Japanese houses. We’re laser specializing in photo voltaic and EV growth, and with the newest rollout of our EV tariff in Japan, a greener day is on the horizon.

The Japan workplace has virtually 100 individuals, filling out the cosy place a lot they’ll be shifting into a much bigger workplace this yr. Yohko is the Head of Advertising and marketing at our workplace in Tokyo.

At Octopus Japan, Yohko oversees and manages every facet of the Advertising and marketing division – talking on to prospects, creating digital advertising, webpages and blogs, electronic mail campaigns and rather more. The Japan workplace remains to be in its infancy, and far of her everyday includes shaping our unbelievable buyer expertise.

Yohko was born and bred in Hokkaido, the 2nd greatest metropolis in Japan within the northern space of Japan. She has had an interesting profession journey, beginning at Japanese promoting companies and shifting on to spend nearly all of her profession working within the videogame business, beginning at American firm Digital Arts (EA) and ending up on the Japanese Ps.

Though it isn’t simply the engineers that make the video games as particular as they’re: ‘It’s all about teamwork. From the engineers to the coders and writers – they’re all essential to the ultimate product’. Yohko labored on world-famous video games like FIFA and Battlestar as a product supervisor and marketer.

The Japanese market has been a renegade within the videogame business, and Yohko was proper within the mixture of it. She spent a variety of time fascinated with longevity, and budgeting to ensure the following massive sport might be made. Lengthy-term imaginative and prescient like that helped deliver us unbelievable video games like The Final of Us.

In 2020, Covid hit and amidst the chaos and uncertainty, Yohko felt she needed to make a change.

The Japanese vitality market is kind of completely different to European markets. Presently, the adoption of inexperienced vitality may be very low, and many of the market depends on fossil fuels (over 70%).

Simply because the Japanese vitality market is exclusive, the Japanese vitality client is simply too. ‘Japanese tradition actually values hospitality, effectivity and following the foundations. This implies our customer support needs to be impeccable, always. Japanese individuals are additionally typically fairly conservative and conventional, so it’s essential that we’re a model that folks belief.’

The design staff initially created a Japanese particular web site with a lighter, extra animated and vibrant theme. Apparently, ultimately primarily based on suggestions from our prospects they determined to simplify it again to the unique. ‘The unique Octopus branding is common and even works effectively with prospects right here in Japan.’

The market and buyer expectations are always altering and we’ve to have the ability to adapt. ‘Relating to Japan, we can’t communicate to the previous as we’re setting the inexperienced vitality pattern and positioning ourselves as leaders. And we are actually residing within the age the place you can not do conventional advertising as its ineffective and feels outdated. What it’s important to do as an alternative is turn out to be a people-watcher.

Presently, Yohko is engaged on simplifying our Octopus dashboard. In Japan, the overwhelming majority of individuals use an App referred to as ‘Line’ which lets you name, textual content and rather more. Yohko’s staff is at the moment engaged on methods to combine the Octopus app with Line. The function comes with challenges in a perpetually altering panorama. ‘The perfect and most tough factor about my job is to be snug in chaos. There are all the time so many issues taking place, on the identical time.’ Good advertising requires straddling a variety of completely different layers of the enterprise. Typically it’s high-level technique, different instances it’s inventive writing or buyer companies.

‘I all the time attempt to remind myself that I’m not the one one, and that it’s okay to make errors. I’m all the time studying and unlearning however that’s the uncommon privilege of working in a start-up. We’re doing this all by ourselves, all arms on deck and it’s nice!’

Very similar to the opposite OE places of work, the OE Japan workplace has one purpose; what’s one of the best factor for our prospects. The last word questions it all the time comes all the way down to are ‘what does this imply for our prospects and the way is that this serving to our prospects’.

Advertising and marketing specialist, Miyoshi tells me what it’s like working with the staff in a enterprise that’s increasing each day: ‘It’s a reasonably attention-grabbing surroundings with a mixture of individuals from Tokyo Gasoline, a big conventional Japanese firm, Octopus, a UK start-up firm, and new recruits (each overseas and Japanese). It would seem to be a bizarre mixture, nevertheless it naturally creates a comfy surroundings.’

‘We positively have one of the best snacks’. Yohko tells me laughing. The Japan workplace might be a lot quieter than the UK or US places of work. Everybody quietly and calmly goes about their work, sometimes punctuated by their CEO Hajime’s hilariously loud snigger. Identical to Greg, Hajime can typically be discovered strolling or sitting in the course of the workplace, chatting to individuals or randomly becoming a member of their video calls.

‘He doesn’t hold himself separate, he is part of the staff and he has this nice excessive pitched snigger that makes everybody within the workplace smile. I often ask him what’s so humorous and it all the time makes me giggle’.

They’re specializing in rising quick and creating a brilliant easy sign-up course of, so we can assist many extra Japanese houses get cheaper greener vitality. ‘We need to make it as straightforward as attainable for patrons to affix us, and to handle their month-to-month payments and funds’.