Case Study · Mobile App · Japan & Korea
How a market leader cracked Japan and Korea — and beat their own UK numbers in month one
The client was dominant in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Japan and Korea were supposed to be the next step. Instead, costs were climbing every week, and nothing was converting. Here's what we changed.
Where they were
This app was already winning in English-speaking markets. The US, UK, Canada and Australia were solid. The team knew how to run Meta and Google. They knew their numbers. They had a playbook that worked.
So they tried to run the same playbook in Japan and Korea. It didn't work.
Three things were going wrong at once:
- ✕No localized creatives. The ads were translated English ads. They looked foreign. They sounded foreign. Nobody in Tokyo or Seoul saw themselves in them.
- ✕No app localization. The app itself wasn't built for the market — language, payment methods, cultural expectations.
- ✕Meta and Google costs were exploding. CPI, CPM, and CPA per registration were all climbing weekly. The English playbook was bleeding money in two markets where it never had traction.
What we did
We didn't try to fix the English playbook. We threw it out for these two markets and built a local one.
- 01
We partnered with local platforms, not global ones
Japan and Korea don't live on Meta and Google the way the US does. We built direct relationships with the social and display platforms that actually matter in each market — the networks local users actually spend time on.
- 02
We worked with local agencies on the ground
We didn't guess at cultural nuance from a desk in Europe. We partnered with agencies who live in those markets, understand the audience, and know what converts. They became part of the team.
- 03
We rebuilt the creative strategy for the market
New creative, built from scratch for Japanese and Korean users. Native to the platform. Native to the culture. Not translated — rebuilt. The hooks, the pacing, the visuals, the tone — all made for the people seeing them.
- 04
We built a process the client could keep
This wasn't a one-off campaign. We built a repeatable process for producing native-to-market creative, so the client could keep the engine running after we handed it over.
What happened
The numbers came in faster than anyone expected.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| CPI and CPA | Cut by 80% |
| Installs in first month | 10,000+ |
| Comparison to UK market | Outperformed UK installs in month one |
| Cost trend | Stopped climbing. Started falling. |
The UK was one of their dominant markets — the benchmark everyone in the company looked at. In month one, Japan and Korea were beating it. Not in year two. In month one.
What happened after
We were brought in to solve a launch problem. We ended up staying.
After the initial engagement, the client came back and asked us to keep managing the market — not as a launch, but as an ongoing growth channel. They'd seen what a local-first approach did. They wanted more of it.
The work shifted from launch to scale. Same markets, same approach, bigger budgets.
The takeaway
A playbook that works in one market can cost you money in another. Japan and Korea aren't "US with a different language." The platforms are different. The creative norms are different. The way people discover apps is different.
If you're expanding into a new market and your existing playbook isn't working, the playbook is the problem. Not the budget. Not the team. The assumption that one approach fits everywhere.
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