10 Things WWE Can Learn From New Japan Pro Wrestling

9. Proper Merchandise Crossover And Product Placement

New Japan is owned by a Japanese corporation called Bushiroad, which specializes in trading cards and collectibles of various kinds. Any big company would use every asset it has to promote its goods to as large an audience as possible, while trying their best to not force the product down the audience€™s throat. So how does New Japan promote the products created by its parent company? Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TJeX4EVd9Q For those that didn€™t watch the video, basically one of their biggest stars, Kazuchika Okada, makes an extra-long entrance, accompanied by an animatronic Velociraptor and carrying a large anime-inspired sword, both of which are related to Bushiroad€™s other products and brands. While it might seem outlandish or borderline cartoony, there remains a special kind of appeal of a world champion wrestler walking down towards the ring carrying a sword and accompanied by a dinosaur. So what does WWE do to promote something? A simple 30-second plug of a company€™s product line by the announcers, or by wrestlers who over-sell. It€™s been done several times: RAW is in an intermission between matches or interviews, and the camera suddenly turns to Michael Cole and company, who have either the latest WWE toys in front of them and pretending to be excited (because every man older than 40 loves plastic child€™s toys), or they plug something like a sponsor€™s food line (as seen with Jerry Lawler eating food from Sonic, despite his on-air heart attack allegedly stemming from poor diet). As for the wrestlers, DX and more recently Adam Rose have been infamous for plugging wweshop.com, and you could tell in their voices that it was shameless plugging. In some cases, it almost sounded like they were trying to say, €œBuy this product of ours because we said so€, instead of giving them a legitimately good reason for buying it. While it certainly works in some respects, they€™re still just repeating the commercials after all, instead of doing something novel like New Japan does. New Japan doesn€™t make the product the focus of the segment; it€™s used carefully without taking the focus away from the wrestler, which is a philosophy that WWE should try emulating.