PayPay Leader Interview is a series of interviews with PayPay’s top executives that show a glimpse into their personalities and perspectives. This time, we spoke with Takao Kodate, the head of the Marketing Planning Division, Business Operations Group.
Takao Kodate
Division Head, Marketing Planning Division, Business Operations Group
Kodate-san joined Vodafone K.K. in 2006, and after its acquisition by SoftBank in the same year, he was responsible for planning SoftBank Mobile services. Since then, he has consistently been engaged in mobile service planning and marketing.
Kodate-san joined PayPay in November 2018. From the initial “10 Billion Yen Giveaway Campaign,” he has been leading marketing planning to acquire users and promote their engagement. He has been serving as the head of the Marketing Planning Division since April 2023.
Table of contents
Delivering PayPay’s Value to Each User More Deeply
What motivated you to join PayPay and what was your initial impression?
Prior to joining PayPay, I was consistently involved in end-user service planning and marketing promotion at SoftBank. I was in charge of service promotions limited to carrier users, which meant limitations to the number of users we could reach. I wanted to challenge myself with marketing approaches to a broader range of users, and was drawn to PayPay’s policy of “open service development,” so I joined PayPay in November 2018.
Immediately after joining, I was involved in the “10 Billion Yen Giveaway Campaign,” and witnessed the number of users jumping to the millions in just 10 days. Looking back, it was an exhilarating experience. Being able to contribute to the launch and promotion of PayPay, which provides new value deeply rooted in users’ lives, has been a great asset to my life as a marketer, boosting my motivation and growth.
What is the organizational structure and mission of the Marketing Planning Division?
The Marketing Planning Division consists of two types of teams: teams that plan the marketing of PayPay’s payment domain, and teams that do marketing planning for higher penetration and engagement of financial services.
The Planning Division consists of teams looking after the promotion of the payment service and teams working on promoting financial services. The former aims to expand the user base with respect to payments made using PayPay, and is divided into specialized teams for various roles. The latter promotes marketing to provide value from the user’s perspective across the various financial services provided by PayPay’s group companies, using PayPay as their platform.
Both sides work closely together on projects, including weekly division all hands meetings. By separating strategy, planning, and promotion roles, each team can provide their full attention to their field of expertise and work more efficiently.
The Marketing Planning Division has two main missions.
The first is the further expansion and deepening of the user base. PayPay has over 64 million users (*as of June 2024), enjoyed by many people. We aim to expand the user base even further and promote marketing that allows users to feel the value of PayPay more deeply.
The second is to expand the use of financial services. In addition to the payment service, PayPay offers various financial services such as credit cards, banking, investment management, and insurance. Collaborating across the PayPay group, we promote marketing from the user’s perspective to ensure a unified service and experience on the PayPay app.
For example, we launch promotional campaigns and marketing to promote the use of payments using PayPay in stores where it is supported, or payments using PayPay Card in stores where PayPay is not available, driving an increase in overall usage.
What makes the Marketing Planning Division attractive and rewarding?
The biggest attraction is being able to engage in various marketing initiatives for more than 64 million users. We deploy large scale projects quickly, one after another. As a result, we can immediately see and feel the impact on society and how users use the services we work on daily. This is something only possible at PayPay, and I think it’s a very attractive environment.
Moreover, you can carry out the plans you devise to the end, along with many stakeholders. Where possible we simplify intermediate processes that other companies would require, to maintain a fast PDCA cycle. Depending on the scale of the project, approval from the president or vice president may be required, and at PayPay, the project lead communicates directly with top management. This approach ensures that each person takes ownership, leading to personal growth and experiences that you would rarely come by at other companies.
Are there any particular initiatives you are focusing on now?
So far, marketing measures and promotions have focused on mass marketing to expand the number of users. However, with the current scale of our user base, mass marketing alone has its limits. While we have always combined mass marketing with one-to-one marketing approaches, we have recently been focusing on segmenting users according to their needs and promoting marketing tailored to their usage.
For example, why current users have a favorable impression of PayPay, what insights led to that favorability, and the journey that brought them to this point. We are currently working on a marketing approach that segments users with similar insights and targets them. This initiative involves hypothesis-building, observation, and verification, and we aim to make it a successful initiative through the collective effort of the marketing team.
We also conduct user surveys to promote marketing, in which many people cite the convenience of the remittance (send/receive) feature as one of the reasons for using PayPay. By promoting this feature that provides a new remittance experience, we want more users to feel the value of PayPay which should further increase the number of fans.
How do you want the marketing team members to grow?
I want them to become marketers who see everything as their own responsibility and act proactively with initiative. The activities a marketer takes up at PayPay can influence society. Each person should be aware of this and enjoy driving projects, never forgetting that they are, at the same time, the biggest fans of PayPay.
Also, to explain to management and obtain approval for initiatives, members need to visualize and analyze data, understand the root issues and objectives, and communicate them effectively.
I actively encourage members, especially those who have less experience, to maintain a good balance between enjoying things from the user’s point of view while understanding what the essence is and explaining it in numbers, as they grow as marketers.
Where does your motivation come from?
I feel that that being able to experience the cycle of delivering services and marketing initiatives that we craft directly to users, getting feedback, and considering what to do next, helps me grow.
To digress a bit, when I was in my late teens to early twenties, I was a DJ at a bar in Yokosuka that primarily served an African American clientele. As a Japanese DJ, I had to select music that resonated with them, which was often rooted in African American culture. Through experience, I gradually learned which tunes worked well with different crowds. Seeing customers enjoy themselves and have a good time with the music I selected was enjoyable for me, gave me a sense of satisfaction, and contributed to the bar’s sales. I kept thinking about what songs or approaches would create a lively atmosphere next, repeating this cycle endlessly (laughs).
In a sense, I was running a PDCA cycle. I feel that the experience back then, and what I’m doing now at PayPay in marketing are broadly the same thing. Seeing users engaged in promotional campaigns and other marketing initiatives we deploy is motivating, and serves as a prompt to think about how to encourage even more people to use our services.
Although I now oversee the entire organization as Division Head, I am not detached from things happening on the ground. As a playing manager, I value opportunities to communicate directly with team members, participating in brainstorming and discussions. I want everyone to experience what I have experienced and the joy of marketing, and I feel that each member’s growth through such experiences will lead to better initiatives as an organization and becoming an even stronger team.
Which of the PayPay 5 senses do you place importance in?
“Work for LIFE or Work for Rice” (Don’t forget the Day 1 mindset. Take action, looking for essential objectives and values. Try to take risks again and again and never stop challenging). A build-up of experience and efforts are surely important, but I believe that continuing to take up challenges as if it’s your first time doing it will lead to the growth of the company and yourself.
Also, when considering plans and initiatives, the most important thing is to define its purpose. It’s easy to lose sight of the fundamental purposes and values if you focus too much on the immediate task on hand. I always ask myself, and other members, “What is the purpose of this initiative? What purpose or value do we ultimately want to achieve?”
Aiming for PayPay to Lead a Cashless Society
Tell us what you hope to accomplish in the future and your vision.
We want PayPay to lead the way in transitioning Japan from a cash-based lifestyle to a cashless society. This has always been the company’s goal since Day 1. To achieve this, we need to improve various things such as the quality of products, number of available merchants, and number of users, but we also need to raise public awareness and acceptance of cashless transactions.
I want to promote marketing activities together with my colleagues to make PayPay an indispensable service, at the center of this transition.
Lastly, a message for our readers please!
The Planning Division is comprised of members with marketing experience in a variety of industries. While having basic marketing skills in IT services is beneficial, experience in financial services is not mandatory. With logical thinking to judge things from a quantitative perspective and the mindset to proactively drive tasks from the user’s point of view, you should be able to learn a variety of things while actively providing output with speed.
Let me add that there are some common traits shared by successful marketers at PayPay. They have the execution power and driving force to carry out plans, the ability to coordinate while involving many members, and the tenacity to realize projects.
PayPay’s services are still developing. We are eager to grow, together with people who are motivated to further develop their skills as well as the business. If you believe you are the right fit, we would love to have you join the team!
Current job openings
Business level Japanese is required for all the following positions below.
*Job openings and employee affiliations are current as of the time of the interview.