A lower tariff is honest only when it names the help it removes
Japanese operators cut mobile prices in the early 2020s largely by removing service: shop help, bundled extras and contract conditions. I argue that the removed help belongs in the offer as plainly as the yen figure, and that a pricing team unable to list it is not ready to launch.
A cheaper plan under our own name, with its exclusions printed
In autumn 2020 the government's pressure on mobile charges made a lower-priced plan unavoidable for every national operator.
NOTE II
Paying the shop counter for explanation instead of attachment
When I became CMO in 2021, our agency partners earned part of their commission for each optional service attached at sign-up: video, cloud storage, device cover and a security application.
I would rather a customer chose a cheaper plan knowing exactly what help it excludes than discover the exclusion at a shop counter. Marketing in telecommunications is not only advertising; it is also the tariff table, the commission schedule and the consent screen. I try to take responsibility for all three, and to say plainly what each one costs the company and the customer.
Consumer mobile lines
8.9m
Hinoura Communications, March 2026
Annual consumer marketing budget
¥41bn
Brand, pricing, insight, measurement and media
In mobile retail and marketing
29 years
From a shop counter to chief marketing officer
In a market where every operator cut its tariffs, I treat a mobile brand as the honest account of what each price still includes.
I am Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer for the consumer business of Hinoura Communications, a Tokyo-listed operator of mobile and fibre broadband services. The consumer business serves 8.9 million mobile lines and 2.3 million fibre households and earned ¥610 billion of revenue in the year to March 2026. My team of 290 covers brand, tariff design, customer insight, marketing science and communications, with an annual consumer marketing budget of ¥41 billion. I report to our President and attend the board when consumer pricing or brand decisions are on its agenda.
I did not arrive through advertising. I spent my first eleven years in consumer-electronics retail, selling handsets at a counter in Osaka and then buying them for ninety stores. I then ran shop operations for a mobile retail agency and, from 2013, Hinoura's own shop-network strategy. That route left me with a habit that sometimes irritates colleagues: before I approve a tariff or a campaign, I ask what a shop employee will be paid to say about it, and what an eighty-year-old customer will understand when she hears it.
Since the government pressed for lower mobile charges in 2020 and 2021, Japanese operators have competed on price with broadly similar networks. I have argued that the brand should state what each price includes and excludes, plainly enough that nobody is surprised at the counter. That view has cost revenue: consumer mobile ARPU fell from ¥4,880 to ¥4,260 over five years. It has also reduced churn, complaints and the number of customers who leave us angry.
A cheaper plan inside the parent brand
We launched Hinoura Online in March 2021 instead of a separate low-price brand. By March 2023 it carried 1.42 million lines; monthly consumer handset churn fell from 1.08% to 0.81%, while consumer mobile ARPU fell from ¥4,880 to ¥4,190.
Commission for explanation, not attachment
Our shop partners were paid to attach optional services at sign-up. After we replaced that payment in 2022, the attachment rate fell from 58% to 22% and sixty-day option cancellations from 31% to 9%. Option revenue settled about ¥4.9 billion a year lower.
A media budget tested by withholding it
In autumn 2023 we switched off television in three prefectures for eight weeks. It was doing more for customers over fifty and less for those under thirty than our attribution model claimed; ¥3.6 billion moved as a result.
Consent before an advertising product
We launched location-based advertising audiences only with explicit opt-in, cutting the three-year revenue forecast from ¥6.2 billion to ¥1.8 billion. Twelve months later 21% of eligible lines had agreed and 4% had withdrawn.
Current focus
We closed the 3G service in March 2026, and I am reviewing what we learnt from contacting the 412,000 lines that remained on it, many held by people over seventy-five. I am also setting our rules for generated images and voices, beginning with one firm line: no generated voice will explain a contract term to a customer.
Conversations I welcome
I am continuing as CMO and am not seeking an executive move. With the approval of our President and board, I would consider one independent outside director seat from April 2027 at a consumer-services company outside telecommunications, media, advertising and electronics retail. I accept a few speaking invitations on pricing communication, partner retail channels and marketing measurement.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Komorebi Digital Support NetworkDirector, non-executive and unpaid · June 2022–present
Isaribi TsushinExecutive director · April 2011–June 2013
Formation
Bachelor of EconomicsHoshinami University · 1997
Master of Business Administration, evening programmeTamayura Graduate School of Business · 2012
Noriko brought the finance director's case against her own proposal into the board paper, in his words. That was when I understood how she would work as an officer: she cared more about the decision being right than about it being hers.
Seiji AmakawaPresident and CEO, Hinoura CommunicationsThe full record ↗
Contact
I am continuing as CMO and am not seeking an executive move. With the approval of our President and board, I would consider one independent outside director seat from April 2027 at a consumer-services company outside telecommunications, media, advertising and electronics retail. I accept a few speaking invitations on pricing communication, partner retail channels and marketing measurement.
