An increasing number of local governments are turning to YouTubers – people who make money by creating online videos – to promote their local specialties and tourist spots.
Some videos by popular YouTubers have attracted more than 1 million views, showing the power of social media in marketing efforts targeted at young people.
A screen shot of a YouTube video posted by the city of Iki, Nagasaki Prefecture, shows popular big eater YouTuber Yuka Kinoshita promote the city’s local specialties.
The city of Iki located in Iki Island in Nagasaki Prefecture posted a video on YouTube in December 2016 to promote local specialties such as Iki wagyu beef and sea urchins, the products that are offered as gifts to people who donated money to the city under the hometown donation system. Yuka Kinoshita, 32, a popular YouTuber known as a big eater, appears in the video, filling her mouth with Iki beef barbecue and steak and saying, “It’s really tender and tasty!”
The video got more than 1 million views by early February. In December 2016 when the video was posted, the city received donations totaling 60.73 million yen, nearly double the amount donated a year before. “Usually, PR videos created by local governments only get less than a hundred thousand views at the most,” said an Iki official in charge. “We are getting much more responses than we expected.”
The video helped boost not only donations to the city but also the sales of local specialties as a whole. JA Ikishi, a local agricultural cooperative which was introduced in the video as the seller of Iki beef, was flooded with inquiries after the video was posted.
The coop says the sales of Iki beef shipped outside the island increased 10 percent as a result. “Some customers told us they came from outside the prefecture because they saw the video and wanted to try Iki beef,” said a coop official.
A screen shot of a YouTube video created by the town of Hibi, Oita Prefecture, shows YouTubers from Asia experience mikan tangerine picking at a tourism farm in the town.
The town of Hiji in Oita Prefecture released a video on YouTube in March showing tourist spots to attract more foreign visitors. In the video, popular YouTubers from the Asian region such as Malaysia and Taiwan visit places including a tourism farm and an indigo dyeing factory and offer comments and information in Chinese.
The video has Japanese subtitles so it can be viewed by Japanese people as well. The town has posted eight videos so far, getting more than 400,000 views in total.
“(Creating YouTube videos) enables us to narrow down a target audience to promote to and save costs compared to using celebrities or professional models,” said a Hiji official in charge of tourism. “It is easy to create even for financially stressed municipalities.”