Greetings from the Mercan editorial team!

2025 is nearly over, and it has been a year of continuous change for Mercari.

As our 2025 year-end feature, this article provides a curated look back on a year of transformation at Mercari, summarizing the Mercan articles that continuously communicated changes and new initiatives at the company. We take you behind the scenes of Mercari’s communication evolution: new approaches developed through collaboration with Corporate Communication, strategic outreach initiatives, and how the Mercan team is transforming with AI.

Note that this article was compiled and written using AI tools based on ideas and notes contributed by team members.

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Chapter 1: Change and Restart

In May 2025, the Employer Branding Team (“EB Team”), who is responsible for Mercan, was transferred to the Corporate Communication division, which handles internal and external communication and public relations, marking the start of a new organizational structure.

Previously, the EB Team belonged to the recruitment division, so Mercan was operated as owned media with a strong emphasis on branding for recruitment. But to genuinely strengthen our recruiting power, we recognized the need to build a brand as a “company that people want to support,” requiring us to deepen our partnership with the Public Relations division. 

With our strengths in outreach and branding focused on Mercari members, the merger with the Public Relations division created a new framework that can deliver stronger corporate messaging by integrating our external and internal communication efforts.

What’s more, two members of the EB Team returned from maternity leave in May and June just as this integration was taking place, marking a fresh start on both organizational and team levels.

Chapter 2: Strategic Outreach Initiatives

With Mercan now a part of Corporate Communication, we decided to pivot focus to broader corporate public relations with particular emphasis on communication of two areas: AI-Native and safety and security. Both were the most important themes symbolizing the year for Mercari, while also being particularly challenging topics to communicate effectively.

In fact, articles related to these topics made up the majority of Mercan posts in 2025.

AI-Native communication

In July 2025, CEO Shintaro Yamada declared that Mercari would undergo a transformation to become AI-Native. An AI Task Force comprising 100 members was formed to achieve this, and efforts to leverage AI accelerated rapidly across the company.

“We will establish ourselves as the top-of-mind industry leader in AI promotion.”
To achieve this bold goal, it was crucial to consistently publish articles about AI, such as those about the choices we were making to become AI-Native and actual use cases in different teams.

To convey Mercari’s commitment to adopting AI, we focused on carefully articulating leadership’s excitement surrounding AI and their determination to promote AI within the company, as well as the overall shift to a “Go Bold” approach to newly incorporate AI technology. It was important to share this information both internally and externally.  

We also designed AI-related communication in three layers for more robust outreach: high-level abstract messaging from leadership discussing the future of organizational transformation through AI, specific challenges in change management derived from this transformation, and attitude changes at the team and individual levels.

Three layers of communication to accelerate AI-Native communication 1. Messages from leadership Articles where members of leadership discuss their thoughts, successes/failures, and visions for leveraging AI Examples: – Leaders Talk! AI/LLM Behind the Scenes Open Door Series – Exclusive interviews with @mark and @kimuras 2. Organizational change Articles focusing on specific initiatives to demonstrate how the entire organization has transformed Examples: – Mercari’s Bold Move to Become AI-Native—The Story Behind Creating an AI Task Force of 100+ Members  – OpenAI Japan and Mercari Hold Custom GPT Hackathon at Mercari Headquarters, Producing Tools That Save Over 650 Work Hours a Year | Mercan  3. Team/Individual attitude changes and use cases Articles about how individual members are utilizing AI and how their work has changed Example: Finding the Fun in AI: The Mercari Legal Team’s Journey to Leveraging AI from Scratch | Mercan

In August, our AI-Native communication project won the “This Month’s Win” award (a monthly initiative to recognize influential projects and members within the organization and celebrate them together)!

We won this award thanks to an effective presentation of Mercari’s stance as an AI-Native company through our communication plan developed and executed between Corporate Communication and the IR and EB (Mercan) Teams in line with the August financial results announcement.

We worked closely together to create consistent messaging across the content communicated to investors by IR, the information conveyed to various media outlets by Corporate Communication, and the content shared by Mercan both internally and externally.

These communications sparked positive social media responses, with comments including:

• “This is how leadership messaging should work—when executives communicate like this and drive organizational change, you can see the whole company mobilize”
• “You can really sense Mercari’s commitment and determination.”

Safety and Security communication

Another key initiative was outreach about our safety and security efforts. For Mercari, operating a C2C marketplace means that protecting user safety and security is our utmost priority and the foundation of our service. Likewise, communication in this area is very delicate, with each word needing to be chosen thoughtfully.

What we were conscious of here was designing this content as “communication that builds trust” rather than “reactive communication.” For the article about the Transparency Report, for example, instead of just rattling off numbers and describing certain initiatives, we focused on conveying the stories that may not be obvious from the numbers alone, such as why Mercari insists on being transparent and who supported the push for transparency.

Our communication planning and editing expertise, combined with Corporate Communication’s media outreach specialization from the planning stage, resulted in messaging that was both sincere and approachable while maintaining Mercan’s warmth. Previously, we would write an article and then request a review from Corporate Communication. Shifting to a collaborative approach where we design communications together has greatly improved both speed and quality.

Additionally, we held an open-door session to promote internal understanding and adoption of the Marketplace Principles.

The Marketplace Principles serve as the foundational ideas that support all users of our marketplace. In this open-door session, we provided members with deeper knowledge of the principles by explaining their background and the significance of their formulation.

Also, to promote the principles in a friendlier way, we composed an original theme song using AI and developed an original coffee blend in collaboration with our office café. These initiatives helped people connect with the Marketplace Principles through all five senses and build empathy.

In terms of external communication about safety and security, there is still much to be done. We have started to plan articles for 2026 and beyond, and we will continue to develop communication from multiple angles to foster trust from users.

Chapter 3: AI-Native Transformation of the Team

Not only do we have our AI-Native communication project, but we as the Mercan editorial team are also striving to become AI-Native! With this mindset, the team’s AI utilization has progressed significantly.

Let me introduce some examples of how we have leveraged AI.

Changes to the article production process

In the production of interview-style articles, a lot of time was previously spent on transcription and structural considerations. However, we have built a new workflow that uses NotebookLM and Cursor, which has successfully reduced the time to create a first draft by 90%.

Specifically, we transcribe audio files using NotebookLM, which produces highly accurate transcriptions, and then extract key talking points with the prompt “summarize the three most passionately discussed topics.” After that, we load the transcript and talking points into Cursor and use a specific prompt to automatically generate a structured article while maintaining the usual Mercan voice.

As of December 2025, we have already created and published more than 10 articles using this workflow.
AIWritersDesk | Mercan 

Sharing article creation knowledge and refining the application process

We have also updated the manual that instructs members how to submit manuscripts to Mercan, and refined the Slack workflow for Mercan requests.

This new workflow has just been rolled out with full-scale operation yet to come, and we plan to make improvements based on feedback received from other teams that have used it.

Repurposing content by creating slides

AI has also made repurposing content easier, enabling us to share a single piece of content in multiple formats. Using Cursor, we create slides based on published Mercan articles, editing as necessary, and post the slides on LinkedIn.

Before, we typically only included a brief description of the article and a link to the article in each LinkedIn post. Now, we can present the key points of the article in slide format to create richer content. In fact, both of the posts we made in November that included slides achieved high engagement rates and were among our top three LinkedIn posts for that month.

While individual post engagement has improved, we still need to work on converting LinkedIn traffic to the Mercan website. Going forward, we’ll explore posting strategies that better drive traffic and create synergy between these platforms.

As the ones posting about being AI-Native, we must first become AI-Native ourselves. Keep an eye out for more changes to the Mercan editorial team in 2026!

Editor’s note

Looking back, 2025 was truly a year full of changes.

In addition to the changes to teams and the overall organization, we constantly thought about what we needed to convey at different times of the year amid navigating the challenging new topics of AI-Native and safety and security. Further, we also evolved as a team by incorporating AI into our daily work.

Our job is to articulate and communicate the state of Mercari today. While we still don’t have all the answers, the act of continuing to ask questions is what we feel makes this job interesting.

Mercari will continue its communication efforts in 2026, and we are thankful to all who read our articles in 2025.
Happy new year!

Appendix: Featured 2025 Mercan articles

In addition to the articles introduced in the text above, our editorial team members have selected a number of articles that they feel everyone should read. Here are everyone’s recommendations. 

@ytk’s recommendation
Thanks for Everything, 18th Floor!—Remembering the Office that Oversaw Mercari’s Early Days (only available in Japanese)
Reason: The starting point, the turbulent years, the hub… all of Mercari’s growth over the past decade is etched into the 18th floor of Roppongi Hills. We went from a big wide blank space, to literally breaking down walls on our way to going public. The 18th floor was like Mercari’s childhood home, filled with the passion of the founders and employees who worked side by side to overcome countless challenges. This article looks back on the excitement and decisions of that time, featuring emotional messages from current members and alumni alike. Time to get soppy!

@kajitani’s recommendation
Hello, Culture Hub! The New Place Shaping Mercari’s Future | Mercan (only available in Japanese)
Reason: This is a report on the Culture Hub, our new office on the 26th floor, which we’ve been documenting since the office relocation was announced. Why is Mercari making a renewed investment in its office space now? From an interview with CEO Shintaro to the pamphlet and special video we created with @suga for the opening ceremony, we worked tirelessly on initiatives to communicate that this wasn’t just a simple move, but rather a new chapter in our company’s history. You can see the pamphlet and get a look at the new office in the article—definitely worth a read!

@omiyu’s recommendation
Report on the in-person meetup for Mercari Salon (only available in Japanese)  
Reason: This is a report on the in-person meetup we held for Mercari Salon, which started up again in summer 2025. Members of the Mercan editorial team and others from Corporate Communication also participated in this event. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the Mercari Salon members—it truly reignited the flame in us to create a more beloved product for our users!

@iga’s recommendation
Breaking a Five-Year Silence: Behind the Scenes of Bottom-Up Updates to the Merpay Send/Receive Feature  
Reason: I recommend this interview about improving Merpay’s Send/Receive feature, which I handled the interviewing and writing for! New graduate members led this project with amazing determination, taking on an outdated feature with the attitude of “if no one else will do it, then we will” and successfully earning support from management. Read this article to fire yourself up!

@suga’s recommendation
Mercari Bold Program for Women: 2025 Global Edition a Great Success! | Mercan
Reason: This article reports on the Mercari Bold Program for Women: 2025 Global Edition, which is a program aimed at developing future global leaders. This article vividly depicts the intense nine-day program, from training in Japan to local research in five different countries, culminating in the final presentations in front of the CEO. By the time you finish reading, you will feel the energy of the young talents paving the way for the future, and the passion of Mercari to seriously nurture the next generation. This one really inspired me to do my best!