The Force Awakens in Asia: Lamplight Analytics Illuminates Cultural Nuances on Star Wars

Lamplight Analytics used their leading social media intelligence tool to understand which of three Asian markets -- Japan, Korea and China -- were the most excited about the launch of Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the film’s premier approaches.The search ran for a week, in anticipation for the film’s December 17th launch, just as conversations were reaching fever pitch.The results echoed a key truth known all too well at Lamplight: cultural nuance is key for success in Asia, as each market showed considerably different results. Japan has the largest and most engaged fan base in the region, Korea the most creative, and China, the most wide eyed, being four decades behind their peers.

Japanese social media users had three times as many online conversations as Korean and Chinese users combined, with Twitter and Facebook being their platforms of choice. Japan is a legacy Star Wars market with a long history of fanaticism for the film. Japan even received its very own The Force Awakens trailer, which revealed new plot points and turned threw the social media world into a frenzy. There were other factors driving the online conversation. Japanese artist Taro Yamamoto, famous for his parodies of traditional Japanese art, created custom Star Wars screens which were displayed at Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto, pushing the Star Wars fever to new heights. Finally, the R2-D2 clay pots released by Japanese convenience stores also sparked interest among Japanese fans, creating a stir online. Lamplight’s ability to capture and measure consumer reactions to marketing campaigns revealed notable successes in Japan.

Koreans are most active on blogs, forums, and Facebook and are most inclined to localising imports and interpreting them for themselves, including the Star Wars franchise. A key trend spotted by Lamplight was the appearance of individual social media influencers on threads and social networks, creating a form of buzz far different from the other markets. Social influencers from models and celebrities, to ordinary users with an extraordinary number of followers were seen cosplaying Star War characters, gaining thousands of likes on platforms like Instagram. K-Pop boy band EXO also joined in launching the song, “Lightsaber” in partnership with the film, to the excitement of Korean audiences online.

While China is on track to become the biggest movie market in 2017, Star Wars failed to gain as much traction as the markets online, despite China’s massive number of social media users. The volume of Chinese conversations was only one third of Korea’s output and unsurprisingly took place on Weibo, blogs and forums. Since the Chinese market is relatively new to the Star Wars Franchise, Chinese audiences could use more Star Wars fever to boost interest. China is poised to take over the U.S as the world’s largest film market by 2017, presenting a golden opportunity for the industry. Chinese singer Luhan’s song, “Original Force” went some way in driving the conversation,causing periodic spikes, but that did not match Korea and Japan’s sustained buzz.

Star Wars is a global phenomenon, and Asia is no exception. But like anything that happens in our inherently multicultural and delightfully complex region, a closer look reveals a world of difference between markets. “The dominant platforms are different across markets, and so is the tone of the conversation -- no two markets are the same” said Lamplight’s Marketing Manager, Nomfundo Msomi, emphasizing the importance of using advanced analytics and social listening to truly understand how things tend to unfold in the region. As the film’s launch approaches, all eyes are on Asian fans.