All Nippon Airways Announces Daily Flights to LA from Haneda Airport

I had just blogged about what a kick butt company All Nippon Airways (ANA) is and then, two days later, they send me some information by e-mail asking me to promote their new service to Los Angeles from Haneda airport. (Besides other flights to America, Europe and Canada - check their webpage!)

See? I told you that this was a world class operation. They even keep up on the Internet chatter about their company and ask me to write about their service. That's the sign of an aggressive company that's going places in this new economy.

I'm flattered that they would check my blog and I'm flattered that they would send me information and ask me to write about it... OK, I will write about it.

Starting October 31 All Nippon Airways is proud to announce direct daily service to Los Angeles (LAX) from Tokyo's very convenient Haneda airport - just thirty minutes from downtown Tokyo! No more having to waste 3 or 4 hours getting to Narita! A person could work their regular day, have a late, relaxing dinner, then pop off to Haneda for a relaxing night trip to LA. What could be easier?

The flights depart from Haneda at 0:05 (5 minutes past midnight) and arrive in LA at 17:55 (5:55 pm the previous calendar day).

From Los Angeles, the flights depart at 0:55 (55 minutes past midnight) and arrive back in Haneda at 5:00 (5:00 am the following day).

For more information, see the ANA website:

ANA webpage in English: http://www.ana.co.jp/asw/index.jsp?type=de

10月31日からの羽田からロサンゼルスのフライトですが、

　羽田　0：05発　⇒　ロサンゼルス　17：55（前日）

　ロサンゼルス　0：55発　⇒　羽田　5：00着（翌日）

　です。

　

　また成田　17：05発　⇒　ロサンゼルス　10：45着

　　　ロサンゼルス　12：35発　⇒　16：25着（翌日）

　の便と合わせて成田・羽田トータルで2便になります。

ホームページ：http://www.ana.co.jp
国内線予約：0570-029-222  国際線予約：0570-029-333

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Keywords: Mike Rogers, All Nippon Airways, ANA, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Los Angeles, Haneda, Narita, Marketing Japan

Japan's Top 3 Companies for 2010

I have spent the last year going around to many companies and meeting the staff and management to discuss new ways to promote, do marketing and PR. I have seen the very inside of these companies and gotten "into the heads" of many to see what kind of people they are. It has been a great and fun learning experience and a real eye-opener. If only they would write what I have learned in a company prospectus, then investors could learn much before risking their money investing in stock in a particular company.

Or maybe most companies don't want to write this as they fail miserably. Today I will write about three that are excellent.

As a voracious reader and a devout follower of the principles laid out in business classics such as James Collin's "Built to Last" and "Good to Great" as well as Malcolm Gladwell's classic, "Blink," I have come to be able learn much about a company merely by walking into their offices and talking to their receptionists and observing the esprit du corps. Within 15 minutes of meeting the staff I can tell if this is a company that I wish to work with or not.

Being able to "read" how well a company is managed and how well they are doing is not a special talent. I think anyone can do it. You definitely can too.

Think about this: Whenever you go to any organization, how clean is it? Is there dust on the picture frames or window sills? Are the facilities old? Are the toilets dirty? What are the staff like? Are they wide-awake and attentive? Do the staff go the extra mile when attending to your needs? Do the staff make you feel like you are important?

Does the organization have a buzz of activity akin to that of a healthy beehive?

If they do, then you can bet that these traits are the signs of a healthy company.

Ten or fifteen years ago there were many companies in Tokyo that shared these traits. Today, unfortunately, I can only mention three that I know of that do; and those three are Apple Japan; Google Japan; and, All Nippon Airways.

It will not surprise the reader that I mention Apple and Google. Those two companies are Triple AAA plus rankings in everything they do. They capture the imagination of people and create dreams. The esprit du corps at their offices is superb.

It might surprise some that I do not mention Yahoo Japan or Softbank. Yahoo offices are starting to get the feeling of a run-down company; the reception services are B rank. While Softbank has a great HQ, some of the carpets in the meeting rooms are tattered (bad Feng Shui) and many of their outside shops are pig pens. The Softbank shop near my home in a upper-crust shopping district in Futagotamagawa is looking run down.

In today's list, though, is a company that few in the west know of, but I predict will be world famous in 5 - 10 years, if things keep going the way they are, and that company is All Nippon Airways.

All Nippon Airways is known as ANA here and was, until recently, Japan's number two airlines. Today it is number one and the reasons why are easy to see. The ANA offices are run with extreme care and the guards and receptionists are incredibly professional, courteous and kind. They go the extra mile in their duties. When you enter their offices, they make you feel wanted and respected.

The offices of ANA are immaculate and they are buzzing with activity. Throw on top of that the attitude of the staff and you have a company that is headed for greatness.

Sometimes I go to companies and meet the staff and they are arrogant and seemingly conceited. They act as if they are royalty and I am some sort of servant to them. Of course I am not their servant... But what this shows me is a problem with company culture and company morale and how they treat other people. If they treat me bad, it is probably pretty easy to guess that they do the same to other people. This is stupid and a good way to get people to do half-asssed work for you.

Instead of me preaching to you how bad this sort of thing is and how damaging it is to a companies profitability, let me tell you the story of Teddy Roosevelt.

As a child and young man, Teddy Roosevelt was a conceited, spoiled rich-kid. He ordered everyone to do his bidding and had few friends. He alienated everyone yet he had great ambitions. As I understand it, at age 22, his grandfather pulled him away and had the talk that would change Teddy Roosevelt's life. His grandfather told him, "Be humble and become a servant to everyone and then people will do anything for you and follow you anywhere." Teddy Roosevelt would later go on to become the 26th president of the United States.

It is this unwavering dedication to client, customer, and co-worker happiness and satisfaction that sets apart the really great companies from the companies that do well, but not great in the long run.

It doesn't surprise that I rank Google and Apple as top, but it probably greatly surprises that I rank ANA in the top 3 too. Go to ANA offices or fly their planes and you will see for yourself.

ANA is world class and, like I stated, one of Japan's Top 3 companies for 2010! Look for great things coming out of this company in the next decade. Here is a company that has captured the imaginations of young Japanese people and society-at-large.

ANA is an airlines company but it also sells dreams. Buy them, they are top class!

PS: If you are thinking abut investing or working with a Tokyo-based Japanese or a foreign company with an office in Tokyo and want my opinion (for what it is worth) or what the average man on the street thinks, let me know by e-mail:  mike (dot) rogers (at mark) universal-vision (dot) jp 


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Keywords:
All Nippon Airways, ANA, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Teddy Roosevelt, Google, Mike Rogers, Apple, Malcolm Gladwell, Good to Great, Built to Last, James Collins, Blink, Marketing Japan

ANA to Launch budget Airlines!

Great News! Japan's best airlines (no, it's not Japan Airlines)... Japan's best airlines, All Nippon Airways will launch a LCC (Low Cost Carrier).

Japan's ANA to launch budget carrier

TOKYO — Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) is to launch a low-cost carrier that will operate both international and domestic short-haul routes from the second half of 2011, the company said Thursday.

ANA said it had signed an agreement with Hong Kong-based private equity firm First Eastern Investment Group to establish "the first Japanese low-cost airline", adding that it would operate independently from ANA.

The new company will be established by the end of this year, ANA said, with the aim of flying both international and domestic short-haul routes out of Kansai International Airport, Osaka by 2011.

"Regardless of the intense competition in the air transportation industry, we anticipate an increase in passenger traffic demand in East Asia," said Shinichiro Ito, president and chief executive of ANA.

The carrier "came to the conclusion that a low cost carrier would be the right approach to compete effectively in this market" he said.

The airline said the new company will be 66.7 percent owned by Japanese investors, with ANA holding a 39 percent stake.

First Eastern will hold the remaining 33.3 percent stake, the maximum foreign ownership currently allowed in Japan.

From Google AFP

Women's Only Explosion! (Uh, don't say "explosion" when talking about airplanes!)

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

I guess there must be a lot of perverts and gropers in Japan. I mean perverts  and weirdoes who grab women in crowded areas like the inside of packed trains. That's why now we have cars on trains that are for women only.

I think just about everyone has heard of "Women's Only" cars in Japan on trains that run in the mornings. Right?

Long ago, I produced a very early morning radio show in Japan for many years and I never rode in the early trains (work on that program began at 5 in the morning. There were no trains, so we always took taxis). When that show was taken off the air, I did get a chance to ride the early trains. I didn't know anything about the "Women's Only" cars and didn't pay any attention to the signs on the trains...

I sure paid attention to the glares that the ladies gave me though when I stood at the entrance to the "Women's Only" car the first time. Finally, one women walked up to me and pointed out that the line I was standing in was for "Women's Only" cars... "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't know!"

She probably told me because she thought (correctly) that I was just a dumb gaijin who couldn't read Japanese (or English as the signs plainly say "Women's Only" in both languages).

Well, now in Japan, this "Women's Only" deal has been taken one step further. This morning I stumbled upon this short news release from Feb. 2010 stating that All Nippon Airways - Japan's #2 carrier - is now introducing women-only lavatories!

It says:

"ANA introduces women-only toilets

All Nippon Airways is introducing women-only lavatories on its international routes in response to “numerous requests for this service”. The Japanese carrier joins Korean Air as the only other commerical airline to offer such a service."

Well, I guess this couldn't be in response to being groped in those tiny airplane lavatories... You don't have enough room inside those to change your mind! But I will guess that this is in response to guys being slobs and not washing their hands nor closing the toilet seat cover when they are done...

Warning! Women are also guilty of this too! Proper manners for the toilet seat is to close both the seat and the lid upon finishing. Many women complain that guys do not lower the seat when they are done but those same women are often guilty of not properly closing the lid too!

Airplane 4! Adventures of .com Domain with .jp Sub-Folder Fools in Japan.....

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

I am often simply astounded by the foolishness of companies from the west that come to Japan and think that they can control what is going on here from 6,000 miles away.

As is well-known, "Japan is a different animal altogether." What I'm talking about is how many companies have .com domains that they use for Japan and add a /jp subfolder.

I could give you a litany of examples of foolish companies that do so, there's hundreds of them in Japan. Why do they do this? It defies theory, logic, simple math and common sense... (It also completely ignores what other companies are doing and doing so well as is shown by a simple comparison of competitors on a Google search).

I wonder if the supposed "experts" on the Internet running these .com domains back in the States or Europe bother to read what Google has on their blog everyday. It seems that they don't. You'd think that they'd keep up with the latest information, but, alas, I guess not.

I found this mistake in execution the other day on a very famous airlines web site in Japan and pointed it out to their Japanese staff, who, in a flabbergasted fashion, threw their arms in the air, shrugged their shoulders and said, "We know. But HQ won't even discuss changing it."

Well, I see a problem on two sides here. One, is an HQ that is not keeping up on current information and may have a control-freak problem and the second is a Japanese staff who do not have the desire and drive to succeed enough to study up on the problem and the balls to stand up and explain such a vitally important problem to the HQ. (But, to cut the Japanese staff some slack, perhaps this is a problem of company culture). How could anyone, if they understood the problem, not be able to explain to HQ why a .jp or .co.jp site is critical to success in Japan is beyond me. It is so very simple.

I mean, seriously, whatever side you look at it from, what's the point of having boots on the ground in a local area of they do not, or cannot, report faithfully the facts on the ground to HQ?

I've heard this same sort of thing before from other airlines, "Oh, HQ absolutely won't do it...." But when we took the time to explain it to the in-charge here in Japan, and they expressed an intense interest in understanding why, once they understood then they had the guts to demand an audience with HQ...

Guess what? Those companies do have domestic domains now.

Just two of the big names include:

* Virgin Airlines (no surprise there for aggressive and smart marketing)

* Air New Zealand (ditto - painting naked ladies!? See the video that wowed over 5 million people here.)

(Also let me put in a plug here for my favorite European destination, Croatia, too)

* Croatian Government Tourism (www.croatia.jp)

Why have these organizations jumped in front of the pack to setup .co.jp or .jp domains before the rest of the foreign companies and organizations? It's just plain smart business.

How an HQ in 2010 could be so dense and protective of their jobs that they actually damage the company profitability, by being so obstinate, is a crime in my mind. The only explanation can be that they don't understand the problem.

Make no mistake about what we are talking about here. We are not talking about company politics or protecting someone's position; what we are talking about here is the absolute bottom line. We are talking about company profits. How in the world someone could be so obstinate and closed minded that they would not hear out rational argument on a subject (especially a subject that changes and evolves as fast as the Internet) is no less than incompetency or gross dereliction of duty.

Let me put on my corporate hat here and say that employees need to sacrifice and go the extra step for the good of the company. Sitting on their duff and shrugging their shoulders is not getting the job done. The Japanese staff are definitely smart enough and should be aggressively compiling irrefutable data to build their case.

You'd also think that these airlines companies that all lost huge amounts of money last year would be actively seeking out more and better ways to better their service and increase passengers while increasing profit per passenger. Especially since online bookings very profitable for an airlines... These airline's  online booking business in Japan must be hurting from these poor setups.

I wrote the basic theory about this concept about .com versus .jp here. It is written so simply that I suppose even the people at airlines HQ's can understand it.

Now, I will explain mathematically why a .com/jp (or even a www.jp.airline.com site) is not effective. A .com/jp site is not effective because .com/jp is a subdomain. It is not given priority in any search. There is a good reason for it.

This is very simple math, so please pay attention airlines folks. There won't be a test after this article, but it could save your job because if you are here and do not demand this to be fixed (or, if you are in the USA and are dim enough to insist that your .com domain with a sub-folder or sub-domain is sufficient for world-wide use... Get ready for a job change, because someone is going to come along soon and bump you out of a job.) This is not just theory or wishes anymore, this is simple grade-school mathematics.

It's called persistence and striving for excellence.

But back to the problem...Google search engine, for example, uses an algorithm for search. (The new Google algorithm system is coming online in Japan in a few months. Read about the US version here. When that new system comes to Japan, companies operating in Japan had better be ready.)

If a .com is the domain, then on a Google search it gets 100% priority (this is why .co.jp and .jp sites get 100% priority in Japan)... If that very same .com domain has other languages as sub-folders, then that means each sub-folder shares in a percentage of that domain. If the .com domain is setup with japanese as the basic language - and not a sub-folder or sub-domain of English - then the .com domain works fine.

But this is a problem of language and bit space taken by hierogylphics... er, I mean kanji.

Understand? If there are five languages; then the sub-folder will give them each 20% on a search for a certain term. If there are ten languages, each will only get 10% returns... And so on...

In the case of most foreign airlines in Japan, they have dozens of languages in their sub-folder so Japanese gets about a 5% weight (if that much) in a Google search using Japanese language here in Japan. That means that these airlines voluntarily throw away 95% (more actually) of their possible Japanese customers who do random searches, using Japanese language and kanji, on the Internet.

People who search "航空" (Airlines) will get domestic airlines using a Japanese language based search as their #1 result. (Of course, but this doesn't serve the foreign airlines goals well at all.)

Try any foreign carrier and insert their SEO into a Google search (on Google.com or Google.co.jp - it doesn't matter)... The English based .com with /jp sub-folders won't even show up the foreign airlines in the top ten page returns.

Of course, in a search for a very common term such as "航空券"(airline ticket) the top four results of 24,200,000 are:

Japan Airlines: www.jal.co.jp

SkyMark Airlines: www.skymark.co.jp

Kokunaisen (a ticket aggregator): www.kokunaisen.com

All Nippon Airways: www.ana.co.jp

Notice anything special about these top returns? By the way, Kokunaisen, the aggregator site is 100% in Japanese, there is no sub-folder or sub-domain for Japan. Kokunaisen.com is the Japanese site. Like I said, any foreign carrier using a sub domain or sub-folder set-up will not show up in the first ten pages of a search.

Anyone with the most basic understanding of how SEO works (with an understanding of how Japanese language is 2 bits per character and Roman alphabet is 1 bit per character) would know that this situation for foreign carriers in Japan is intolerable. Why this continues in a tough market whereby airlines are losing passengers by the day is inconceivable.

The purpose of this blog is to help you to market Japan. I have shown the gross mistakes of many companies in the past including Pepsi, Universal Studios, Wendy's, Burger King, Carrefour, and many more. I explain the mistakes that these big companies make (and, incredibly, keep repeating over and over) so that you don't have to.

Perhaps someone at the airline's HQ in the USA or Europe will see this and wake up the troops. They should. They are losing money with this set-up...

Hopefully, they'll thank me... Doubtful... 20 years ago Otsuya Seiyaku didn't thank me either when I went on a popular late night radio program and said that their product, "Calorie-Mate" tasted like cardboard (Two years later they released Strawberry and Chocolate flavors - while improving the taste of "cardboard" and their sales of Calorie-Mate quadrupled. You know they paid R&D millions to come up with something I could have told them, and did, for the cost of less than a half-a-sandwich).

Anyhow, foreign carriers, I've pointed out that your tires are leaking air in Japan.... What are you going to do about it? Keep driving around on them? Be my guest.

This coming weekend, I will layout more mathematical evidence from a language based perspective why a .com English based site using sub-folders or sub-domains in Japan is a poor way to run any Internet site.

For a hint: Imagine that your site is in hieroglyphics... How is it possible that an English based site, with sub-folders or sub-domains, could possibly return as high of results as a site built on hieroglyphics? This is what your English based .com with sub-folder is doing... Your priority is low, so your will not show up at the top page....

If you are not in the top 5 on the first page of a search, you are not even in the game.

Japanese kanji are like hieroglyphics.

In the meantime, for proper background information that you need to comprehend this problem, (especially if you are not bilingual Japanese/English or Korean/English) see Wikipedia about Altaic languages of which Japanese is one...  People who do not speak two languages probably will have a hard time grasping this concept. It is important to understanding the problem.

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Keywords:

Google search, airlines, Japan, Yahoo, Burger King, Japan airlines, Skymark airlines, Google, Universal Studios, ANA, All Nippon Airways, Wendy's, Delta, Otsuya Seiyaku, Calorie-Mate, Pepsi, Carrefour, SEO