This feature article series involves PayPay employees giving their honest opinion on why they joined, and the surprises encountered after joining. This time, we sat down with Miki Tanabe from Marketing Planning Department!
Miki Tanabe
Marketing Planning Department
My main responsibility is to plan and promote local government and merchant campaigns. In case of the Cho PayPay Matsuri(Super PayPay Festival) that started on October 18, I’m in charge of online campaigns for electronics and other goods.
I’m also assigned to projects run by other teams and one of my duties is to outline the contents to be included in the campaign and service information emails sent to users.
I usually invest a lot of time in local government campaigns. I check promotional goods for campaigns and coordinate budgets with the sales reps in charge of the respective municipalities.
PayPay Inside-Out
From where & why did you join PayPay?
Miki Tanabe
I previously worked for an e-commerce site, where I was in charge of campaign planning and daily sales promotions. Although the number of users was only a tenth of PayPay’s, I was happy to see my marketing hooks and plans transforming into sales figures and receiving positive reactions. I joined PayPay because my interests matched the company’s values for going cashless, especially under the Covid situation, and because I felt I would be able to experience a variety of things through growing the PayPay app into a super app.
While many businesses have seen their sales plummet due to the pandemic, PayPay has been growing steadily because it’s become widely accepted by users and has taken root in their daily lives. Other than that, the opportunity to be involved in lifestyle changes was also appealing. A friend from my previous job actually switched to PayPay before me, so hearing about the vibe of the company beforehand was a big factor too.
PayPay Inside-Out
What surprised you after joining PayPay?
Miki Tanabe
That the budget for each campaign is huge. Here, the budget for one campaign is equivalent to the annual sales promotion budget in my previous company (laughs). It’s great to be involved in campaigns that have a large impact on users and merchants.
What astonished me the most was the dizzying amount of additional budget in the previous Cho PayPay Matsuri. I was just stunned at how large the budget was compared to my last job, I thought I misread the number (laughs).
Another thing that surprised me was that many people have good communication skills.
Campaign planning involves a great deal of interaction with many departments. Although I have my “usual” departments that I work with, I think the reason why I can candidly talk with people from departments that I have relatively little to do with is because many of them are good at communicating.
We would have 1-on-1s because we worked on the same assignments and got along, or we would just have random conversations. It’s interesting that these chats can sometimes lead to new work.
And yet, because I joined the company during the pandemic, I haven’t had the chance to meet all my team members even after 10 months (I’m sure the same goes for other companies). Come to think of it, it’s amazing that I’ve been able to work normally for more than 10 months even though I’ve never met all of my colleagues. We can usually talk via Zoom, but I’d like to meet them in person ASAP. I’ll be going to the office for a team building session soon, so I’m looking forward to meeting them then!
PayPay Inside-Out
Are you happy having joined PayPay?
Miki Tanabe
I’m glad I joined because being here will help me grow. I dealt with client work for the first time (!) and the massive campaign budgets are a sight to behold. I’ve never experienced anything like this before joining PayPay.
Before, I’ve only done campaigns for the company I belonged to and never for clients, but now I’m involved in large-scale client work. Even if I don’t get to directly communicate with clients, just being able to sit in on discussions with them or even prepare negotiation materials for my superiors is a learning experience and makes my daily work all the more fascinating! Plus, I can make use of my experience from my previous job, which I helps me grow more.
If you want to apply for the same job position as Miki, please click here.
Special thanks: Miki Tanabe / Edited by: Keiko (PayPay Inside-Out Editor)
*Employees’ affiliations are those of the time of the interview.
