1. Tell us about your background and journey.
I've been in Japan for a really long time. I started my career actually looking to be an academic but quickly realized that there wasn't much opportunity for someone who had a Ph.D. in deviant youth psychology. So, I entered Japan's oldest PR agency when I had a random chance to do so.
After launching Spotify into the Japanese market, I realized I needed to make a public persona for myself. This was the birth of my travel personal brand. Originally, I thought I'd just be a GaryVee style persona for Japan but this quickly changed to travel in an attempt to show and not tell.
2. What inspired you to pursue digital marketing?
I realized I'd never been able to do PR myself due to not being 100% native in Japanese and not able to cold call media. To compensate, I started learning digital and then just fell in love with tweaking and optimizing.
3. What fascinates you about Japan?
What's not to love? No, seriously! What's not to love about this amazing country. It has endless opportunities for exploration. Everything works well and smoothly. Everywhere you go is squeaky clean. I honestly don't know why anyone would want to live somewhere else.
4. How can one build a successful career in digital marketing?
Be a practitioner. So many people in this industry have no dirt underneath their fingernails. As a result, they really aren't up to date with the current algorithms and best practices.
For example, if you didn't closely follow the iOS 14 changes, you might not know that conversion event data is slowly getting back to Ad Manager. As a result, you might deep a campaign to be "bad" and turn it off only to later see it had a 4.0 ROAS once all the numbers came in.
5. Who do you admire the most and why?
I admire a number of people for different things but there's not really one person who I can answer as "I admire this guy" or something. It's a hard question for me to answer and not really something I think about in the way that you're asking.
6. What tips and advice would you give to people pursuing digital marketing?
Niche down at first. There are soo many things that fall under the umbrella of "digital marketing" that you're not really offering much unless you have a specialty. Focus on being an SEM expert, Facebook ad pro, or influencer marketing master. That way, you can offer something more unique.
7. Which is your favorite book and why?
Depends on the genre but in the context of marketing, I'd say Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday. This book taught me how the economics of internetwork in terms of both attention and finances.
Donny is one of the leading digital marketing specialists in Japan. He started his career in marketing first as a PR consultant where he oversaw the market entry of many multinational corporations such as Spotify and Tinder. Thereafter, he went on to master all forms of online advertising as a means of supplementing his existing PR skillset.
In addition to his role as a digital marketer, Donny also is one of Japan’s leading travel influencers. Looking for a way to get more time in the proverbial trenches, he launched a set of social media channels as a way of keeping up with the nonstop changes. As a result of his content creation, he now has an intuitive understanding of the algorithms that power digital platforms.
Donny is both bi-lingual and bi-cultural. During his formative years, he spent a significant amount of time living in the Japanese countryside. Thanks to this unique experience, he is able to straddle both sides of the international business equation and provide comprehensive advice to those on either side.
.jpeg)
){kind=link}
0 Comments