ZenMarket, a Japanese proxy shopping platform, aimed to strengthen its notoriety in the Italian market by tapping into a community fond of manga, anime and Japanese pop culture.
The campaign aimed to raise awareness of the services offered-from access to more than 10,000 Japanese stores to secure international shipping-by generating qualified traffic and new registrations on the platform.
The team designed a strategic plan focused on a vertical micro-influencer approach, activating profiles with a strong following in the anime, manga, and Japanese culture niches.
The content created aimed to emphasize ZenMarket’s ease of use, exclusive benefits (such as the ¥500 welcome bonus), and access to products exclusive to the Japanese market.
The key message: “Shop directly from Japan, safely, easily and conveniently.”
The campaign ran from February 26 to March 29, 2025 and involved 6 micro-influencers, selected for thematic affinity, authenticity, and audience engagement. Forty-two pieces of content were produced:
Each creator received detailed briefings and storytelling guidelines to express the strengths of the service in a personal tone.
These profiles, active on Instagram, used native storytelling to showcase their shopping experience with ZenMarket, from browsing to receiving packages.
To confirm the alignment of products and values with target audiences, it is critical to analyze and interpret KPIs.
These indicate the visibility gained by the brand and offering, interest in remembering the advice received, and visits to the brand environments.
KPIs of BRAND AWARENESS
The numbers confirm the campaign’s strong impact on the Italian target audience:
Top performers:
Impression analysis provides an excellent indicator of message distribution and diffusion in a new (Italy) target market.
Interactions mainly focus on Likes and actions of interest such as the very high number of Saves denoting active and engaged behavior of the target audiences, and suggesting a strong interest in remembering the “advice” to proceed to conversion or recommend it to others.
There is also 41.6 percent of non-follower audiences who viewed Reels, data that describe the virality of the content aimed at target audiences coming mainly from the creators’ content shares and consequently in the inclusion in the “Explore” section of Instagram.
This activation made it possible to validate the relevance of ZenMarket in the Italian context and generated an important viral effect, demonstrating:
High propensity to save content, indicative of a willingness to remember the advice for future purchase.
The campaign demonstrated the effectiveness of authentic and thematic storytelling to introduce ZenMarket to Italian audiences.
Active engagement, virality rates, and interest expressed in interactions laid the foundation for a solid and recognizable brand positioning in the D2C segment dedicated to Japanese culture.
