XXI. Ad

After a week of brainstorming about ways to increase the value of Hitachi’s internal brand at the strategic branding office, this week I learned all about Hitachi’s outward appearance at its advertisement department. Of course this department is located in Akihabara; what better place for an electronics company to brainstorm about and create its outward appearance? It was a bit unsettling at first to work right across the street from where last Sunday’s terrible stabbing spree took place, but luckily this week’s schedule was too busy to dwell on it for too long.

The week with the branding office had consisted mainly of meetings with various managers, brainstorming and working towards a final presentation. The week with advertisement was spent partly in meetings, but largely outside the office. According to one of my advertisement colleagues, Advertisement is something you learn by visiting expos and looking at ad campaigns, rather than sitting behind your desk reading through instruction materials. And so the advertisement people had created a full programme with lots of trips. On Monday, I received an extensive introduction in Hitachi’s national advertisement campaigns and I was allowed to sit in on a meeting where the advertisement team discussed their progress. Remarkably, this was a meeting for the junior staff, without the General and Senior Manager. The staff discussed a new advertisement campaign, for which the posters had just been designed, and everyone talked about their activities that week. Unfortunately there were no hand-outs and the subject matter was not yet familiar to me, so most of the meeting went over my head. After the meeting, Koike-san, one of my new temporary colleagues, took me on a walk through Akihabara, in search of stores that stock Hitachi products, to see what is on sale and, more importantly, how it is presented. We didn’t find any laptops, as Hitachi doesn’t really produce these for the consumer market, but we did find pretty much everything else, ranging from super-thin Wooo plasma screens and sleek cell phones to huge refrigerators and self-cleaning aircos. Wedged in between Panasonic and Sony, I didn’t notice the Hitachi logo at first- grey and red is stylish, but not really striking, especially in a sensory overwhelming environment like Yodobashi Camera (or Akihabara itself, for that matter).

On Tuesday I spent the morning learning everything about Hitachi’s international ad campaigns, and how they are tailored to various audiences. The American campaign, for example, focuses on the people benefiting from Hitachi’s products, featuring personal stories about a remote village that got high-speed Internet thanks to Hitachi, or a pilot who was able to continue to fly whilst receiving cancer treatment using state of the art Hitachi equipment. The European campaign also focuses on the people-behind-the-product, but it is less sentimental. Hitachi’s Asian campaigns also differ among each other: mainland China gets an environment-oriented campaign, whereas the Hong Kong campaign offers a high-tech vision of the future. All in all it was a very interesting presentation, especially since the European campaign is only visible in France, Germany and the UK, and not in the Netherlands. In the afternoon, I went out with two colleagues on a trip to Hitachi’s Sakado printing factory outside of Tokyo, where the company’s advertisement material is being printed. I had already been on a JPP-outing to Asahi Shimbun’s printing factory, so I already knew the principles of offset printing, but here I was able to come much closer to the machines and really see how they worked. Once more I was struck by the efficiency of Japanese factory workers; it seemed as if they had paid a lot of attention to doing their work as quickly and correctly as possible, making no superfluous movements and keeping in pace with the machines.

Tuesday was a long day, as there was another activity planned for the evening. I had been told that we were going on a kengaku to the TV quiz sponsored by Hitachi, the hugely popular Sekai Fushigi Hakken. I had assumed we would attend a short meeting, take a tour, receive some leaflets, that sort of thing. Imagine my surprise when upon arrival I was ushered into a TV studio on to a set featuring large plasma screens and mildly kitsch Neo-Classissistic decorations. We were invited to sit in the audience, and were instructed on when/how to clap, how to cheer and what to shout (Hitachi!). The quiz contestants were six famous Japanese, and had to answer several questions about the culture and history of Slovakia (each week the quiz features a different country or region). This quiz was typically Japanese in its format: it featured only three questions and more time was spent talking and making jokes than answering the questions. But it was good fun, and as it featured short film clips of Slovakia it was relatively easy to follow. It sure was a terrific surprise and a unique experience which I won’t forget.

On Thursday I spent the morning attending a meeting of the advertisement department and members of the strategic branding office, as they discussed the effectiveness of Hitachi campaigns in Asia and Europe. It was not easy to follow, but thanks to the hand-outs that were largely in English, I did get a good impression of what they were talking about. The meeting room was, however, rather warm and stuffy, and I was glad to go out again in the afternoon, this time all the way to Chiba, to visit the Interop exposition at the Makuhari Messe. This expo focused on IT products and networks, and most of the Japanese IT giants were there. Again, surrounded by loud music, giant screens and girls dressed up in a wide range of (very short) dresses, it was difficult at first to spot Hitachi’s subdued colours. We did find the company’s booth, however, and it turned out to be one of the most interesting to a lay person like myself, as it featured a demonstration of an earthquake safety system developed by Hitachi. When you are at home and a big earthquake occurs, you can just press one button which switches on the TV and the lights, closes the curtains and opens your door, offering a way out and at the same time protecting you from broken glass. Having experienced a 7.0 earthquake in a simulator, I think it is great to have a system take all the safety measures for you when you yourself are too shaken (literally) to think of all these things.

Finally, today has been interesting as well. This morning, a colleague took me on a trip to the technology museum close to the Nippon Budokan. The museum itself is rather dated, with a 1960s interior. But the attractions it offers still greatly appeal to children, as they can experiment and learn about subjects such as DNA, dams, optic illusions and outer space. Hitachi’s offering to the museum is a display called Nature Contact, which aims to teach children about wildlife through the use of touch screens that feature three different habitats (polar, tropics, savannah) and their wildlife. The best bit is that you can download software at home which enables you to raise a pet on your PC (a bit like a Tamagotchi) and then you can print out a barcode, which you can use to display your pet animal on the touch screen and play around with it. During our visit, the museum was full of children: they loved this display. In the afternoon, we went to Dentsu’s much quieter Advertisement Museum, which features advertisements from the Edo period to contemporary Japan. I absolutely loved it; the exhibition was small but well put together and I loved the vintage TV commercials and products. It was a nice ending to a week of exposure to various forms of corporate image building, from brainstorm, strategy and evaluation to the actual advertisement itself: newspaper ads, poster campaigns, TV commercials, sponsorships and direct promotion at expos. I feel I now have a clear image of what Hitachi is trying to do in terms of creating and promoting its corporate image. It has been a very busy week, but it has been lots of fun as well- and I haven’t even mentioned the countless lunches and dinners (including yesterday’s wonderful nomikai). Tonight I will go out with my advertisement colleagues once more, which I am sure will be a nice ending to an exciting week.

XX. Brand

After weeks of CSR research, which was a quite solitary task and also offered me a good deal of freedom in planning my own work days, I was quite surprised to receive a very detailed daily schedule for my week with the strategic branding office. It turned out very well, as my sempai Obukuro-san had arranged for me to meet with virtually all the managers of the branding office, to talk about all aspects of corporate branding strategy, from unifying the company’s outward appearance to legal protection of its trademarks. Of particular interest was the CSR-hearing he had organized for me with several people from the CSR department. I had prepared a list with questions in order to get additional information for my CSR report and got some interesting new ideas with regard to the role of CSR in Japan.

In between meetings, Obukuro-san and I brainstormed about a survey that will measure the level of employee satisfaction at Hitachi. Employee satisfaction is an important part of the internal perception of the Hitachi brand, which is why the internal branding department wants to find a way to take stock of the opinions and wishes of employees. As a framework for our brainstorm we used a theory proposed by Frederick Herzberg, one of the most influential psychologists in the field of business management of the 20th century. According to this Motivation-Hygiene theory, people are influenced by two factors: satisfaction, which is the result of motivator factors, and dissatisfaction, which is caused by hygiene factors. Hygiene Factors are the most important of the two, and include pay and benefits, relationship with co-workers and job security. If these factors are absent or inadequate, they will cause dissatisfaction, but they are so basic that they are usually taken for granted and do not provide additional job satisfaction. For this, one must turn to Motivator Factors such as achievement, recognition, promotion and growth.

In addition to these two factors, we distinguished between issues that are company-related (management, decision-making) and those that are workspace-related (relation with boss, co-workers). In a free brainstorm we came up with 60 or so questions that we wrote down on post-its and later organised into groups such as "love for the company," "leadership opportunities," "work-life balance" etc. From each of these 27 groups we created a representative question, which resulted in a wide variety of questions, ranging from "Have you got a clear idea of your career development within the company?" to "Can you have fun with your colleagues?" Whilst coming up with these questions, we found that many issues related to employee satisfaction are culturally determined. When I proposed and explained the idea of an ergonomically suitable work space, my colleagues were surprised and said that this usually isn’t something Japanese people would mention when thinking about job satisfaction. But when thinking about all the physical complaints that can result from bad posture and/or excessive use of the computer, such as Repetitive Strain Injury, it is surprising that the Japanese, with their long working days, don’t really see this as an important issue. On the other hand, a typically Japanese question asked whether employees were able to say something or give their opinion during a team meeting (instead of remaining silent and just listening to what the boss has to say). Compared to the situation in most Dutch organisations where everyone is more or less free to give their opinion whenever they want to, this is a fairly Japanese question. As the team is thinking about using similar surveys for the overseas offices in the future, thought should be given to this issue.

All in all, it was a very interesting week, which ended with my first presentation at Hitachi, in Japanese of course, using Japanese PowerPoint slides. I had prepared as well as I could in the limited time I had, and judging from the reactions I was able to get my key points across. Thanks to Obukuro-san’s help, I got the specific business terms right, as well as some pretty daunting grammatical constructions. I am very thankful for all his help and I must say that this week with the branding office has passed very quickly. The goodbye-dinner (admittedly a little strange after only four days), was great fun. We went to a very nice Japanese restaurant close to my work place which I have to go back to, as the food & atmosphere are great, and the prices reasonable. After that, we went to Tokyo Tower which I had only seen from a distance until then, and we actually took an elevator up this Eiffel tower replica. A typically Japanese thing to do (apparently, Tokyo tower is something of a dating spot for Japanese couples), but I really enjoyed it. I hope my week with the Advertisement department will be as much fun!

XIX. Hakone

Sometimes it is necessary to escape the city with its stress and its deadlines and its throngs of workers. So off we went, Margreet and I, to enjoy the tranquillity of rustic Hakone. Unfortunately, the weather forecast was bad- but we weren’t going to let a little bit of rain stop us. When we arrived in Hakone, the weather was warm and humid- but it was dry, so we decided to go for a hike along the remains of the old Edo-period Tokaido. There’s a fairly large stretch of road that’s still intact, as well as the newly renovated Hakone Barrier. In spite of its historical significance, we decided to forgo the checkpoint as the rain was gradually setting in (a recurring theme during the weekend). Instead, we jumped on a pirate ship that took us across lake Ashi. It was really raining by this time, but of course we went on deck to enjoy the view, which was quite beautiful (what with the mist slowly rising from the mountains that surrounded the lake). Naturally, the Japanese all stayed inside, watching the lake from behind glass.

We stayed at a traditional Minshuku, with onsen-water baths. During the night the rain really set in typhoon-style. We had been hoping to take the ropeway to get a nice view of Fuji, but the fog was so thick we couldn’t see more than a metre ahead of us. Naturally, the ropeway didn’t run in such weather, and when we took the bus up into the mountains we found that the famous sulphuric waters of Owakudani were also closed off to visitors. Luckily we were able to get our hands on some of the famous “black eggs” (boiled over the sulphuric water so their shells turn black) and thus added 7 years per eaten egg to our lifespan. Rather disappointed with the weather, we spent a large part of the afternoon in the wonderful Pola museum of art. Its collection is fine (one painting per impressionist), but it’s the building and the location in the middle of the woods that make it special. On the ground floor, the building has huge glass windows rising up from the floor so that you almost feel like you’re inside the surrounding forest.

Work wise, the last week of May has been a busy one, as I have been finishing my report on Japanese and Western Corporate Social Responsibility as well as preparing for my week with the strategic branding office. The report was well received, and although it needs some editing, I think it will make a good basis for my final report. That's at least one deadline helping the other...