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How a Japanese women’s magazine is using Google+ to find its next top model

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CanCam is a women’s fashion magazine from publishing house Shogakukan, first published in 1982. The magazine is wildly popular among girls, especially those in their early 20s. The magazine’s circulation was high as 800,000 back in 2006, but it has declined since then. Its popularity was largely due to three popular models who appeared on the cover at the time. And now the magazine is searching for its next-generation model online. To be precise, they’re looking on Google+. Anyone over the age of 13 can participate in the contest [1], simply by posting photos of themselves with the dedicated #cancam hashtag. The magazine’s editors are looking for more than just girls who can pose, but also someone with a mix of talents such as styling, editing, and self-expression. The number of +1s a girl receives in a given day is taken into consideration as the magazine chooses one girl per day. Generally speaking, there are two types of girls/womens’ magazines in Japan: Aomoji and Akamoji. Aomoji are magazine that encourage girls to express themselves uniquely, and Harajuku street magazines or Kyary PamyuPamyu would fall under this category. But CanCam is the latter type, focusing more about whether or not boys…

CanCam-plus

CanCam is a women’s fashion magazine from publishing house Shogakukan, first published in 1982. The magazine is wildly popular among girls, especially those in their early 20s. The magazine’s circulation was high as 800,000 back in 2006, but it has declined since then.

Its popularity was largely due to three popular models who appeared on the cover at the time. And now the magazine is searching for its next-generation model online. To be precise, they’re looking on Google+.

Anyone over the age of 13 can participate in the contest [1], simply by posting photos of themselves with the dedicated #cancam hashtag. The magazine’s editors are looking for more than just girls who can pose, but also someone with a mix of talents such as styling, editing, and self-expression. The number of +1s a girl receives in a given day is taken into consideration as the magazine chooses one girl per day.

Generally speaking, there are two types of girls/womens’ magazines in Japan: Aomoji and Akamoji. Aomoji are magazine that encourage girls to express themselves uniquely, and Harajuku street magazines or Kyary PamyuPamyu would fall under this category. But CanCam is the latter type, focusing more about whether or not boys will like them. So in that sense, Google Plus is a sensible choice for the magazine. Looking at the comments on the model’s pictures, it’s not surprising that many of them are boys.

CanCam’s next generation model audition will start on July 23rd and will run for 100 days. The final winner will receive a 10 million yen contract fee (about $100,000). If you’d like to follow along, you can check out CanCam Plus to see how the audition is going.

On a related note, Google+ has previously been leveraged by Japanese girl supergroup AKB48, as we mentioned in a past article.


  1. Being a Japanese national is not an requirement.  ↩