A review of six appointments in mobile retail and marketing

Mandate

Hold the consumer brand together through lower tariffs, a shrinking shop network and the closure of the 3G service, while rebuilding how marketing spend is justified.

Outcomes

• Monthly consumer handset churn reduced from 1.08% to 0.74% between the years to March 2021 and March 2026, while ARPU fell from ¥4,880 to ¥4,260.
• Optional-service attachment at sign-up reduced from 58% to 22%; sixty-day option cancellations from 31% to 9%.
• ¥3.6bn of media reallocated after a television withholding test; annual withholding tests now reported to the board.
• Location-based advertising launched on explicit opt-in: about 1.6 million consenting lines and ¥1.3bn first-year revenue.
• 3G service closed in March 2026 after contacting 97% of the 412,000 lines that remained on it.

Decisions in context

I took the chief marketing role as the cheaper plans were launching and their full revenue effect was still ahead of us. The remit joined brand, tariff design, customer insight, marketing science and communications under one budget, which made it possible to argue about all of them together. The defining work has been to make the company's choices visible: what a price excludes, what a partner is paid for, what a test would need to show before money moves and what customers must agree to before we use their data. I bring disagreements into board papers rather than resolving them privately, because directors deserve to see the strongest case against a recommendation. The 3G closure tested whether those habits held under pressure, with hundreds of thousands of older customers to reach in person or by telephone. Most of my present attention concerns what that closure taught us and the rules for generated media in our communication.

Reason for the move

Current appointment.

Mandate

Simplify the consumer tariff range and rebuild the brand's explanation of price before an expected period of lower charges.

Outcomes

• Reduced tariff variants open to new customers from 31 to 9.
• Designed Hinoura Online, launched in March 2021 at ¥3,280 a month for 20GB, with a published seven-item exclusions list.
• Cut billing-explanation enquiries to the customer centre by 27% after redesigning the monthly bill around the total charge.

Decisions in context

This role moved me from the shop network to the decisions that shaped what shops had to explain. Our range had grown by addition: each competitive response produced another variant, and none was withdrawn. I led the simplification to nine plans for new customers, which required agreeing with finance which legacy customers would stay on older plans and how we would explain that to them. I also redesigned the monthly bill so that the total charge appeared first and the components followed, a small change that reduced billing enquiries noticeably. The decisive moment came in late 2020, when the board considered how to respond to the government's expectation of lower charges. I wrote the recommendation for an online-only plan inside the Hinoura brand and asked the finance director to write the case for a separate brand beside it. The board accepted my recommendation with his condition attached, and the plan launched a month before I became CMO.

Reason for the move

Appointed Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer in April 2021.

Mandate

Reduce complaints and repeat visits in partner-run shops while restructuring the network for falling footfall.

Outcomes

• Introduced a shop-staff accreditation programme completed by 6,900 employees across 14 agencies.
• Consolidated the network from 640 to 588 shops, opening 11 smaller counters inside supermarkets near older residential areas.
• Reduced average waiting time for visits without an appointment from 74 to 41 minutes.

Decisions in context

Hinoura recruited me from one of its agency partners, which gave me credibility with agencies and some suspicion inside the operator. My job was to make a network of 640 partner-run shops work for customers whose visits were becoming longer and less frequent. I introduced accreditation for shop staff, tied a modest part of commission to it and published waiting times by shop to the agencies concerned. Consolidation was the harder work. Closing shops saves money and removes help from the people who rely on it most, so we paired closures with small counters inside supermarkets near older neighbourhoods, staffed for help rather than sales. I learnt to present partner economics to my own leadership honestly, including the cases where our demands had raised agency costs without raising their income. That evidence later shaped the commission redesign I led as CMO.

Reason for the move

Moved to lead consumer brand and pricing.

Mandate

Lower staff turnover and complaint rates across a shop estate that had grown faster than its training.

Outcomes

• Annual shop-staff turnover reduced from 34% to 21%.
• Complaints per thousand contracts reduced by 38%.
• Introduced a rule, across all 118 shops, that the customer's total monthly charge is read aloud before signature.

Decisions in context

Isaribi Tsushin ran operator-branded shops for two national operators, one of them Hinoura, and had expanded quickly during the smartphone transition. Its shops were busy and its staff left within a year at a rate that made training almost pointless. I reorganised rosters so that new employees were never alone at a counter in their first month, introduced a career path from counter to shop manager and changed the area managers' measures to include complaints and repeat visits. The rule that the total monthly charge must be read aloud before signature began here, and I took it with me. I joined the board as an executive director in April 2011 and took part in decisions on shop openings, staff pay and a contract renewal with one of our operators. During these years I also completed an evening MBA, which gave me the financial vocabulary I had been missing.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Hinoura Communications to lead its shop-network strategy.

Mandate

Manage the handset range, operator incentive terms and stock risk across ninety stores.

Outcomes

• Reduced obsolete handset write-downs from ¥640m to ¥230m a year.
• Introduced written incentive disclosure to store staff, showing which operator paid what for each handset.
• Raised category gross margin from 7.8% to 9.6%.

Decisions in context

As buyer I sat between the operators, the handset makers and ninety store managers, each with different interests in what was sold. The economics were dominated by operator incentives, which changed with every season and sometimes made an unsuitable handset the most profitable recommendation. I could not change the incentive schemes, but I could make them visible to the staff who acted on them, and I began issuing a plain sheet showing which operator paid what for each model. I also reduced our exposure to unsold stock by ordering smaller first batches and agreeing return terms before launch rather than after. The role taught me to read a commercial scheme for the behaviour it would produce, a skill I have used in every role since. I left because I wanted to run shops directly rather than supply them.

Reason for the move

Moved to an operator-shop agency to run shop operations directly.

Mandate

Sell handsets and contracts and, from 1999, run the mobile counter's roster and training.

Outcomes

• Cut the counter's thirty-day return visits for billing questions from about 220 to 110 a month.
• Wrote the store's first plain-language contract explanation sheet, later used in 14 stores.
• Trained 23 new counter staff.

Decisions in context

I joined straight from university and was placed on the mobile counter because it was busy and nobody senior wanted it. The late 1990s were the years when handsets reached almost every household, and the counter sold contracts faster than customers could understand them. I noticed that many customers returned within a month with the same questions about their bill, and I began writing a one-page explanation in plain Japanese to give them at signature. When I became supervisor in 1999, I made the sheet part of every sale and tracked return visits by hand in a notebook. It was my first measurement and my first argument with a manager about whether slower sales could be better sales. I had no pricing authority in this role, and I describe it as a counter job because that is what it was.

Reason for the move

Promoted to category buyer at head office.