ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has begun demonstrations for the production of video content for physicians featuring VTubers in collaboration with ANYCOLOR Inc. (headquartered in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; Chief Executive Officer: Riku Tazumi; hereinafter “ANYCOLOR”), a VTuber business.

Today, the pharmaceutical industry in Japan is increasingly digitalizing its sales techniques. Conventionally, the industry’s model for sales activities has mainly involved MRs (medical representatives) interacting with physicians face-to-face. Following the tightening of regulations and the COVID-19 pandemic, we have more options for information gathering and communication that combine many different channels digitally, including online interviews, webinars and the utilization of owned media. On the other hand, we are pressed to find new approaches to problem solving. For example, attracting visitors and retaining webinar attendees are often mentioned as issues we need to address. We also have to seek a way to extensively and efficiently communicate highly professional information about pharmaceutical products to physicians.

ANYCOLOR is the top company in the industry. It focuses its operations on VTubers as represented by Nijisanji, one of the biggest VTuber group in Japan. Having commenced operations in 2017, the company formed a capital and business partnership with ITOCHU in April 2020. As of December 2022, ANYCOLOR has over 50 million subscribers and its content is viewed 3.37 billion times annually. The strength of content created by VTubers is its ability to prompt people to proactively view the content. It exceeds the standard means of communicating information and the use of celebrities to increase viewers’ interest in and identification with the information being shared. Recently, VTubers have been given a wider range of roles to facilitate the communication of information to viewers. One example of this is the utilization of VTubers' skills in education.^*1

In partnership with ANYCOLOR, ITOCHU has recently started demonstrations for the production of video content for physicians featuring VTubers. The videos are about the improvement of the health of hospital doctors who struggle with chronic sleep deprivation and the sharing of expertise with resident physicians. A dedicated media site will be made available to physicians to see how the video content featuring VTubers works for the sharing of information with physicians. Aside from inviting physicians to lecture, VTubers will be assistants and facilitators adding entertainment elements to the videos. This is expected to lower the barriers to viewing physicians' participation, increase the number of viewers and prevent more viewers from leaving in the middle of events. We aim to use this technology to enable the pharmaceutical industry to efficiently provide content to physicians in the future.

ITOCHU transforms business by shifting to a market-oriented perspective, which is a basic policy included its medium-term management plan. Based on the results of the demonstrations, we will discuss the utilization of VTubers and advanced technologies in expanding marketing support services for pharmaceutical companies.