Power crunch forces factory shutdowns
Ultrathin TV sets new standard
New technologies keep hearts beating
Expanded coverage: Asians offer fresh perspectives
dot com bubble：インターネット関連企業のバブル
angel financing：主にベンチャービジネス等への個人投資家による経済支援
viable business：存続可能なビジネス
（ R: Russell, P: Peter ）
| P : | How long has eigoTown been around? |
| R : | eigoTown was launched in June 2000, so it's been around now for about seven years. It was launched in the dot com bubble days and we set out to be the largest portal site for everything to do with English in Japan for Japanese people. |
| P : | Has that worked out? |
| R : | We had our ups and downs. You know, as a dot com bubble company, we were set up with venture capital or angel financing actually, and we marched ahead and spent lots of money and we were looking for a second round of investment at the time, as most internet companies like us were doing, and that was part of the business plan. And that finally fell through and left us in a very, very difficult situation in about 2001, where things looked really rather bleak. But at the time the decision was: is eigoTown a viable business, is it something that's worthwhile doing? And I thought, well yes I think there is a place for a destination site or a portal site that has all of the information that someone interested in the English language or English language-speaking culture would want to go to. And I think that we can do something that's both positive in terms of making a beneficial difference to the world and can make money and reward its investors and shareholders. So, we decided to go carry on and over the last few years since then, I think we've been able to build up a site that everyone can be very, very proud of and we know that many, many people come to eigoTown, hundreds of thousands of people come to eigoTown and rely upon it for entertainment, information, education, and community; so we are very happy about that. |
| P : | Perhaps you could just go into a little bit of detail for people who are not aware of the site yet, about some of the things that you do at the eigoTown site. |
| R : | Sure. So, eigoTown is divided into a number of different sections. One section is called eigoCollege. And so for example there you can go and do daily online lessons for TOEIC at the different levels, for Eiken at different levels, for Business English, Business Vocabulary... Within that section also there are a number of articles and information that are produced by authors, some from America, some from Japan, on subjects ranging from understanding "The West Wing" to new words that have become current in English. |
| P : | And this is all free, right? |
| R : | And this is all provided free and it's paid for by advertising. So companies that are selling products related perhaps to TOEIC or to "The West Wing" or to other areas will advertise within it. So eigoCollege, for example is one of our sections and there is a lot more to it than that, but other sections include Ryugaku Plaza, which is all about studying abroad. So, if you are interested in studying abroad in America or Britain or any other English-speaking country, there is a whole range of information there which will provide you information about specific courses that you can take at universities, at colleges, all of the stuff that you need to know about. For example, with home-stays and safety regulations, and how different the toilets are in America or Britain, or the parking regulations. |
| P : | Really? |
| R : | I mean it is a huge section. If you were to put eigoTown into a book, it would probably be over 10,000 pages long. There is a massive amount of reference about that. So within Ryugaku Plaza alone we have country guides, which are not related to any particular courses, but country guides which, if you are planning to be a student in Britain or Ireland or Canada or America, this is what you need to know. And so obviously that's a useful and very comprehensive reference section that people use. So, Ryugaku Plaza was another section. Another section is our BBS section where people who are interested in English can come together and discuss things. We have a Study Abroad expert within that section who you can just ask questions and he will, as an expert living abroad in Australia and having some experience studying abroad, can tell you all the things that you need to know, and try and help you with any worries or concerns that you might have. And obviously people get together and discuss other issues about the meaning of words or places to go or difficulties or problems that they have, or share opportunities that they want other people to be aware of. So, the BBS section is another. We have a great jobs section, so if you are looking to find a job where you can use your English, this is the place, and it will tell you everything from how to behave in an interview, how to write your resume, cultural differences between working in a Japanese company and perhaps a western company, and a whole range of, again, sort of reference information that you might need to know, as well as a list of specific jobs that you can apply for in getting that job of your dreams. And so the Eigo Job section is very popular. So, we have a number of different sections. Others include: for Japanese English teachers, for translators, for interpreters. We have a great podcast section of which this is one, with the Nikkei Weekly, Time Magazine, 'eigono hint' soap opera drama. We have fairy tales, we have a big blog section with Pakkun Makkun from NHK, with Hiroko Graves and other celebrities and a number of other different people. So, really, I mean that's the thing about eigoTown. Ask me to describe it, we'll use up all of our time. |
| P : | Right. |
| R : | It's absolutely massive, it's comprehensive and that's why I think almost anyone who is aware of what's out there knows that eigoTown is the place to go if you are interested in English and you are Japanese. |
| P : | Excellent. And when you set this up, I mean you'd already been in Japan for a few years. |
| R : | I had, yes. |
| P : | For you yourself, I mean I know you speak a certain amount of Japanese, but basically you are an English speaker. |
| R : | Absolutely. |
fanzines：ファンの作品を掲載した専門誌（同人誌）
desktop publishing：コンピューターを用いた出版の一連の作業
speech recognition：音声認識
red tape：官僚的形式主義
（ R: Russell, P: Peter ）
| P : | What were the main hurdles for you in creating a company which gives a lot of information about the English-speaking world, but gives it in Japanese? |
| R : | Right. Well, I think when I came to Japan, I must have been a bit crazy I think, because I don't know what possessed me to imagine that I could set up companies in a foreign country when I didn't speak the language. And I think it was because I'd always been involved in publishing and ever since I was 15, I'd been creating tourist guides for my local town and printing out 50,000 copies which were funded by advertising by the local fish and chips shop, and the pub, and the Bleak House museum and what have you. And basically going around, sort of, signing people up, then they'd give me the money, I'd pretend that I was just working for someone else - instead I was actually just working for myself. At the same time - because I was too young you see, they wouldn't trust me if they thought that I was doing it by myself. And I was doing that then, and I had my first meishi at the age of 15. Bradstow Publications with a picture of Mr. Pickwick on it from Charles Dickens there. And I was also publishing fanzines about, sort of, modern adult comics, adult in the sense that they were serious rather than superhero or funny animal characters. And a lot of the - when I was around the age of fifteen, sixteen, a lot of those who are now sort of almost world famous comic book writers, graphic novelists, were sort of friends of mine and wrote for the fanzines that I produced, from Alan Moore who did 'Watchman' and 'From Hell' and various other classic graphic novels. Warren Ellis who is a science fiction comic book writer, David Lloyd who is a famous artist, Steve Dillon. Anyone in the comics world would know these names. And so it was an amazing experience doing that and for various reasons I sort of lessened my activity in that world and when I was at college I was publishing student union magazines and handbooks. So, when I was in Japan, all I was about was publishing stuff. And so having decided to stay in Japan, I realized that I needed to do this in some form and I became familiar with interactive multimedia on computers through the Mac. I'd used the Mac for desktop publishing, which was, you know, laying out pages of magazines in Pagemaker and QuarkXpress. But it was the interactive capabilities to make multimedia software that fascinated me. |
| P : | I remember when I'd first met you, you were developing software for speech recognition. |
| R : | That's right. We were demonstrating at a conference and I think the classic one we had was a gorilla, I believe, sitting in the jungle and when you would say 'pick a grape' and he'd pick a grape, or 'eat a banana' and he would eat a banana. Or I think we had one which was 'vanish' and he'd disappear. And, yeah that was fantastic stuff that was based on speech recognition technology provided by Apple at the time. And that was very popular, and you were involved in one of the CD-Roms that we did for that. |
| P : | That's right. |
| R : | And we had an interview with you and so you would ask me to choose one of a menu of questions and you'd hear the question and then you would pop up and answer the question. So that was one way; or you would just - the speech recognition part was you would just say "So where are you from Peter?" or something like this and you would pop up and answer. So yes, speech and we did CD-Roms, we did the British UK '98 Festival. We worked with MacMillan to do a very well regarded children's CCD-Rom. You could buy the CD-Rom in T-Zone, in Laox, Dai-ichi Kaden, all of the retail shops (some of them aren't around anymore) at the time. But it was at the end of the 90's - 1999 - that we realized that one of the key problems with the distribution of CD-Rom software was the distribution, Softbank controlled it and if you didn't have enough money to get shelf space and proper, sort of, reordering from shops when they sold the product, it was very, very difficult to have a bestseller. And so the internet seemed like an opportunity to bring an audience to us and then we would be able to sell things to that audience. And so one of the reasons eigoTown was set up was partly that model, so, you know, if you've got hundreds of thousands of people coming to your website every month, then there is stuff that you can sell them. And we do sell eigoTown products, we've just launched our eigoTown 'Inside Guide' the first topic of which is Harry Potter. And we've had a number of CD-Roms that we've sold, but of course our main business is advertising focused. And so a lot of advertisers who want to reach our audience spend fairly considerable sums of money to reach that audience through our web pages, through our newsletters and other means. So yeah, so why did I do it, was it a problem? Yes, I was crazy to do it. |
| P : | But it has worked out. |
| R : | But it has worked out yes, yes. So, I think it was the arrogance and stupidity of youth that made me do it and pushed me forward. But I think if I were to do it again, I'd certainly say, I would do what you did, study Japanese for four years in college or something. And then to try and set up a company would be a lot easier because - not so much from the red tape of setting up a company per se, but in terms of being able to understand what's going on around you and really get a sense of what's popular or where the market trends are going. And also just in terms of networking, when you need to network with people who don't speak English and your Japanese isn't quite good enough to make that kind of bond that you might want to. |
| P : | Do you have any particular directions where you do want to build eigoTown from here on? I mean I know you said you've just published your first book. I mean, do you want to become a major book publisher, for example? |
| R : | Well, I think one of our models is that yes, we want people to come to eigoTown, we want to make money out of people advertising to those people through eigoTown. But certainly yes, we want to have a number of publications and products; so books, our own - becoming eigoTown as a publisher is one way that we can see that happening. The other is publishing software, publishing DVDs, continuing to publish interactive materials, whether they'd CD-Rom based or DVD based or online or most likely a combination of the two where you get a book with something and then there is also an online component. So, eigoTown as a publisher of products or a provider of services rather than just a place to advertise is the next step for us I think. Now, of course, there is an issue there of competing with our own customers in terms of our - we'll have advertisers who would then become - we'd become competitors of theirs, but we'll be very careful about that to make sure that that doesn't adversely affect us too much. |
| P : | So, you've just started publishing books. Are you selling the books in bookshops or are you selling them yourself or how does it work? |
| R : | Well, the books are being sold in bookshops and they are being distributed through various distributors in Japan. But also we have our own bookstore now called eigoStore, which is designed to sell western published books; "Da Vinci Code", "Harry Potter", any kind of book like that that you might find in a bookstore here in Japan which is in English, and we've partnered with Yohan to provide those books. We have about 15,000 books in stock at any one time. |
| P : | Excuse me, why would you get into a business that's as competitive as that when there are people like Amazon around? |
| R : | Good question. I think because we looked at the competitive landscape and we realized that Amazon is not really doing as good a job as it could be, especially in that area of western books and Japanese published books about learning English. And we think that we can we can do a better job of providing a better user experience and also certainly with the Japanese published books, there wouldn't be an issue of price because discounting isn't actually allowed in Japan, so you can't discount Japanese published books. |
| P : | Right. |
| R : | You can with western books. But interestingly enough, many of the books that we sell - western books that we sell on our site are actually cheaper than you can buy on Amazon. So, for us, we know, obviously we are not going to be able to be anywhere near the size of Amazon and it's just - that would be impossible. But we can, you know, there is a nice bit of pie there and we'd like a nice slice of it. And I think because eigoTown does have a relatively loyal large and regular readership, we can bring those people over once they see that eigoStore is a better experience to buy books and other products, so we'll have western books, we can have Japanese published books about learning English but also be selling other sorts of CD-Roms and electronic dictionaries, these kind of products. Well, it is nicer space to play in, if you like. You know, you've just got a more - you know, there's more selections of different things on different themes. Someone cares about this area, whereas unfortunately a number of the other bookshops around don't seem to care very much about making their spaces nice for their customers, and that's what we are going to do. And so yeah, we are looking forward to that developing. |
| P : | Are you a Nikkei Weekly reader? |
| R : | Absolutely. I mean I would be at sea without the Nikkei Weekly. I started reading it when I first came to Japan and it's just a fascinating newspaper. If you are interested in business and market trends and demographics and society as a whole, then this has a really interesting slice of it. Everything from, sort of, in depth articles on the way in which certain businesses are behaving, just to 'these are the new crazy products that are being put out this week'. I think the Nikkei Weekly is vital for any businessperson, newfound businessperson certainly in Japan. It makes you sound clever if you read it, you know, and there is always a market for that. |
| P : | Absolutely. |
Japan firms step up India investment
Back to school for engineers
Low-octane economy slows to a crawl
Expanded coverage: Social entrepreneurs gain cred
body shopping：専門家やチームを（プロジェクト等に）配属すること
KPI：主要業績評価指標
deregulation：自由化
auxiliary equipment：補助装置設備
（ A: Alain, T: Terri ）
| T : | So, now we are going to get to the meat of PTS K.K. How would you describe what you do? |
| A : | Okay. So, obviously in the first 5 years, we've developed heavily the consulting and project management on the IT, okay... |
| T : | Right, right. |
| A : | ...and primarily related to infrastructure... |
| T : | Okay, still related to infrastructure. |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | Okay. |
| A : | There was lot of work and we did all the major - a lot of the major relocations here in Tokyo, but primarily for the foreign financial... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...industry. |
| T : | Okay. |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | Okay. |
| A : | In parallel to that, we were trying to develop sort of a lower fee, but more constant sort of income, which we call Managed Services, and the idea being that you know chunks of the businesses be outsourced to PTS, like a helpdesk or portion of the IT - there is always a fine line between, you know, body shopping and providing a true managed service. And I think it's only probably the last couple of years where we are entering truly complete outsource solution where the client binds us with a service level agreement... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...with KPIs and so on. |
| T : | KPI, what's KPI? |
| A : | Key Performance Indicators to see how we're performing as an outsource, okay. |
| T : | I see. It's like milestones to check if things... |
| A : | Yeah, I mean, for instance that we are effectively able to provide reduction of cost, we are... |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | ...running efficiently, that their own internal staff are happy with our services or there is a grading or a measure of what we provide. |
| T : | Wow! |
| A : | So - but that's fundamentally different from the consulting/project management... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | And so for us, as being signed from two people to, you know... |
| T : | Yeah, I was going to get to that. |
| A : | ...being a 140 staff now. We'll be flirting with some of the bigger competitors that have been out there. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | But they tend to operate it more on a global scale. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | And funny enough, they also have the same challenges as we have to penetrate Japan. Japan has always been a bit of a peculiar market... |
| T : | Why would you say that? |
| A : | Strong bonds between vendors and customers that was one very stable economy in the old days, but now it's rocking, so.... |
| T : | Yes. |
| A : | ...people are looking more closely to the cost and hence they, you know, they rely more on external consultants to look at their business. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | Now, we are entering maybe a second phase where some of these financial industries are striving to be well established and there's more deregulation in Japan. So, in a way these operators are striving to operate the same way as they operate back in the US or... |
| T : | Or in Europe. |
| A : | ...or in Europe. |
| T : | I am much more clear... |
| A : | Okay. |
| T : | ...and you have a great way of making it clear, but one thing that I was trying to sort of figure out... the Data Centers. |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | So, what you have is large organizations that have lots of - any type of - can you give a little background on that? |
| A : | Okay, so - okay, that's a good one. If you look at the infrastructure that typically existed in the - within our various customers, if you take 10 years ago... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...Data Centers... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...were usually within the bank itself. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | Okay. And obviously as the IT has grown the real estate occupied by the Data Center was getting bigger and bigger. |
| T : | Right, right. |
| A : | But we have a big Data Center in the center of Tokyo. It's a very costly exercise, yeah. |
| T : | I can't even imagine. |
| A : | The real estate is hugely expensive. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | At the same time, the phenomenon of IT with the high density equipment, very power consuming. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | Not only the Data Center, but the auxiliary equipment like the mechanical and electrical to support that grew even faster. So, there was a strong push to take all this equipment and transfer them into Data Centers, which are, you know, on the outskirts of Tokyo. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | But still within a reasonable distance... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...because there is all sort of technology problems like latency... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...and that shouldn't be too far... |
| T : | There shouldn't be a lag in... |
| A : | ...yeah. Exactly. Maybe there are second tiers - equipment that could be very far, but maybe you can then put them in Singapore or China, who knows, yeah. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | So, we - at that time I felt that these Data Centers, which are part of our consulting because, you know, we were consulting on infrastructure, as I mentioned. |
| T : | Right, right. |
| A : | The technology where we were in IT, lacked the know-how of the other side, the Mechanical and Electrical, and they are very tightly connected. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | If I can give you a simple example... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...is if you stack the rack with full of equipment, well, it will need a certain cooling capacity, yeah. |
| T : | Okay. |
| A : | But sometimes these matrices were not fully in-tune with the people supporting the Data Centers, so I am saying the IT might stack up to... |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | ...to a maximum racks and... |
| T : | And then blow everything. |
| A : | Exactly. So - and the technology itself became a very dense... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...servers producing more and more heat, okay. |
| T : | Right. |
ITPM：IT プロジェクトマネジメント
M&E：製造エンジニアリング (Manufacturing and Engineering)
（ A: Alain, T: Terri ）
| A : | So, what used to be traditional designs are now falling apart because most of the Data Centers here which have a certain legacy maybe 5 years or 10 years, they all have a - they all suffer a problem of heat or hotspots, as they call them, and so on. |
| T : | Right. I see. |
| A : | So, the whole integration of the design made it quite a challenge. So, what we did in Tokyo with PTS, we started to develop a Mechanical and Electrical arm with true mechanical and electrical engineers that would work very tightly with the IT... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...and produce, you know best design and best practice for these Data Centers. So, we did that on the sort of IT/infrastructure environment and I think we had also the same issue on the IT project management and... |
| T : | Right. Tell me more about that. |
| A : | ...we - and construction project management, yeah. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | Okay. There again our ITPM... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...usually is plugged in a bigger program... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...which is usually when - when I first came to Japan by the architects, okay. |
| T : | Right, okay. |
| A : | Nowadays they are run by more specialist companies that focus on probably program management or construction project management. |
| T : | Also specifically for that. |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | The IT still plugs in somewhere underneath, yeah. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | So, we had quite a few situations where we were in large projects... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...where the IT scheduling was not fully embraced or given the decent, you know, allocation of time and so on... |
| T : | Wow!. |
| A : | ...especially because construction firm didn't understand fully the impact of IT... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...nor its importance. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | Okay, but if you look at the relocation project today, sometimes the IT approach is 40% of the whole budget, so it's quite a significant number. So, saying that we took the approach that we think that in project management there is a generic project management, you know, process and ways of doing things and then there are specialist areas, would be construction and IT. So, we are trying to enfold the whole thing. |
| T : | So, it's like you create - is this right, you create sort of a backbone of... |
| A : | Exactly. |
| T : | ...of the generic... |
| A : | That's right. |
| T : | ...Project Management. |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | Good Project Management practice is X, then plug in your construction and your IT. |
| A : | Completely, exactly. So, that sort of summarized the Project Management and the consulting area... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...in how we went to consolidate the ITPM and the construction PM and on the other side... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...of infrastructure, the M&E and the IT as well. |
| T : | And the IT. |
| A : | Okay. |
| T : | Wow! |
| A : | In the center, you have this managed service... |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | ...as we discussed, which still takes about 40% of our business now... |
| T : | Really? |
| A : | ...in terms of revenue, yeah. And the last 10%, we are trying to take off the ground a Management Consulting practice. |
| T : | Purely management... |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | ...in terms of the same area or... |
| A : | Yeah, so the idea that the management consulting will venture in areas quite different from... |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | ...what we traditionally do. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | For example, business process reengineering, okay. |
| T : | Right, right. |
| A : | Some cases where a company wants to review how they manage the whole firm and so on. The idea there that, you know, we will put in very specialized consultants - people that have been accustomed to operate in ways that - McKinsey style or, you know... |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | ...this kind of bigger consulting firms. |
| T : | Right. |
| A : | And ultimately these projects should have a rainfall effect on the other practices that we have... |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | ...in the firm, okay. |
| T : | I see. |
| A : | So, it's sort of a balance where we've already had projects running... |
| T : | Wow! |
| A : | ...and we have good hope that this will grow in the future. |
| T : | And I have to go to the last question, which is, what if any is your experience with 'The Nikkei Weekly?' |
| A : | Well, actually we had - recently we had a salesperson that was using 'The Nikkei Weekly' as a sort of, you know informant for leads... |
| T : | Right, right. |
| A : | We've seen some good information, which I think one has led to a prospect, to a customer. |
| T : | Wow! |
| A : | Yeah, so... |
| T : | Great! |
| A : | Yeah. |
| T : | That's good news. |
Russell Willis / President
eigoTown.com
eigoTown.com
Land price rise spreads to local centers
Sharp unveils big LCD plans
Accounting rules to fall in line by 2011
Expanded coverage: Popular psychics offer peace of mind for vulnerable, thin-skinned populace
mental disorders：精神障害
addiction：依存症
subjective feelings：主観的感情
neurons：神経細胞
（ N: Niall, T: Terri ）
| T : | What in the world does in your lab do? |
| N : | My lab works essentially on the study of what mental disorders, but especially disorders that are related to feelings, mood and emotion; and primarily the one that we are most interested in is addictions of various type, whether they are drug addiction or food addiction. But we are also interested in any mental disorder where there is a change in moods; so, for example, a very good example of that, say, is depression, where there is a long-term... |
| T : | I see. |
| N : | ...change in mood, a depressed mood. |
| T : | Right. I see. So, you're studying the reason or you're studying how the brain manifests depression, for example, or ... |
| N : | Manifest or express and perhaps yes, we are very interested to know how feelings and emotions arise in the brain or wherever they do arise. Some people may argue that they actually arise in the body also. We are interested in what the subjective feelings are, how they come about, how they change under normal circumstances and particularly how they change in certain of these disorders such as depression and addiction. Of course, getting at the heart of a very complex thing of an emotion or a feeling can be very difficult, but primarily what we are trying to understand is how - what areas of the brain produce these so-called feelings. What types of neurons in the brain do that, and perhaps what these feelings are for? I mean, we may know why, say, for example we feel good about something or we feel bad about something, but we question those things too, it's exactly what are these feelings for these emotions? Why do things make us happy, why do things make us sad? |
| T : | Very, very good and concise way to explain it. Now, one of the things I read on the site was, you know, evolution has to do with this, so the survival mechanism. |
| N : | That's right. Of course that's a whole different area of study is how, say, for example, emotion evolved over and over time and why did emotion evolve. So, for example, you could go out into your yard and look at an ant and you could probably point it and say, it doesn't have an emotion and it doesn't need an emotion. It got a very simple lot in life and it doesn't any particular emotion to be able to live and survive. |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | Now, as animals gets more and more complicated in their structure, is that probably the emotions develop more and more and more and we as humans probably, perhaps, arrogantly believe that we are the most emotional of all animals. |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | So the question is why have those emotions developed and what role do they play in our survival? |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | And how they develop is very, very fascinating, and perhaps how much more they develop in the future, perhaps they will... |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | ...some people may even reason that they may even develop beyond certain other aspects in life and that may become a problem in itself. And even if you look at different languages, for example, you just, say, compare... |
| T : | I see. |
| N : | ...English and Japanese, we have different words for different feelings, say for example... |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | ...in English we may say, we watched a movie... |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | ...and I think, we would say, it was funny. |
| T : | Right, right. |
| N : | But a Japanese person might say it was a omoshiroii, it was interesting. And so sometimes you can get a blend of two different or at least maybe have different interpretations or how it is interpreted to different individuals. |
| T : | I see. |
ingest：摂取する
expectations：期待
mingle：交流する
（ N: Niall, T: Terri ）
| N : | Now, what happens with addiction is that although we don't fully understand it, but we are certainly getting closer is that we know that certain things you could just simply ingest. You could eat them, you could inject them, you could snort them, there is all sorts of ways of doing it. |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | These are chemical things, they go straight into the brain and they essentially fool the brain into thinking; thinking is not a great word, but fool the brain into giving you this sense of pleasure. And that's why you do it. |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | And so and of course if that happens then you are more likely probably to do it again. Of course, actually that's actually quite difficult to prove experimentally that people do things because they like them. They could maybe perhaps do it simply because there is some other mechanism in the brain that will make you repeat something that you should be repeating and you could do it without actually liking it. And, in fact, some people argue... |
| T : | I see. |
| N : | So rather like the ant we are talking about... |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | An ant, say, for example, if it finds something that it needs, it may find some sugary water, is that it will tend to return there over and over again. Now, you could look at the ant and say, well I don't think he is very happy by that, he has just learnt to go there, the behavior is becoming reinforced over and over again. It is conceivably possible that that could actually happen in very sophisticated animals, like mammals and humans. In fact, some addiction researchers argue that. They say that the reason why in addiction is that we don't keep repeating this behavior that's very bad for us over and over again necessarily because we like the outcome. It is just that we just want to do it more and more. Whereas other researchers argue that well actually we do like the outcome but the more that we like it the more the brain tries to adjust to this pleasure. And pushing, kind of, our pleasure state lower and lower, so we got to keep doing this behavior more and more to, kind of, get ourselves back to normal again. |
| T : | Wow! That's deep. |
| N : | It sounds very deep but the concepts are actually quite simple and sometimes it's worth reevaluating your own behavior, why do you do these things. And, say, for example, probably most of those have in our lives, we do something that we don't want to do or we feel like we shouldn't be doing it. |
| T : | Yes. |
| N : | It could be, you know, should I that eat that third scoop of ice cream? Now you probably say, no, I shouldn't but I want to. |
| T : | Right, yes. |
| N : | And then evaluate yourself after you got that third scoop of ice cream, how do you feel about it? Did it meet your expectations? And that's an important idea is that often in addiction is when people finally get what they want, it doesn't actually meet their expectations. And so looking at it simply as like, we do things that we like is perhaps an oversimplification and it's something that's fascinating about this field, because you don't have to be a scientist. We have lots of expensive and fancy equipment; ask yourselves these very basic questions. |
| T : | Differences between research conditions in Japan and other countries; you came here partially because of RIKEN, so perhaps you will tell us what happened in the UK, what's the difference? |
| N : | Oh, the difference is between research... Well, of course, there's like a socio-economic differences, things like funding levels of course, but I don't think we really want to talk about that because I think perhaps what's most interesting to you and me too is the way people approach their science and approach things... |
| T : | Right. |
| N : | There are differences and in some senses we often joke is that Japan is a little bit, not old fashioned, but, kind of, old school, like we say, is that in Japan the Sensei-Gakusei, the relationship, the professor-student relationship is quite different I think. It's changing now, but to that, say, for example, in the US, and US, for example, it's very casual. And the student doesn't really have very much fear of saying his ideas or perhaps even telling the professor is wrong at something. Of course, the way Japanese society is structured is that the student would have a bit more hesitation or certainly have to enshroud it in much softer words to get that point across. |
| T : | But you feel it's changing a little bit? |
| N : | It is changing, oh definitely. This thing about scientist is it is very international; scientists mingle a lot and so they see the way the other people do things. And then this way that people are approaching their science and one of the great things I like about Japan is that the public has a very strong interest in science. |
| T : | Yes. |
| N : | They see science as a way to the future. |
Alain Wenckebach / Managing Director
PTS Consulting Japan K.K.
PTS Consulting Japan K.K.
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humanity：人間性
abolishing the slave trade：奴隷取引を廃止すること
medallions：メダル型の宝飾品
creamware glaze：クリームウェアの釉薬
porcelain：磁器
celebrity endorsements：有名人によるお墨付き
anglophile：イギリスが好きな人
oxides：酸化物
bas reliefs：浅浮き彫り
stoneware：咋器（せっき）
（ T: Tom, P: Peter ）
| P : | ...You're the 8th generation of the Wedgwood family. |
| T : | Yes. |
| P : | Dating back to your great, great, great, great, great, great, great... |
| T : | Great grandfather in 1759. |
| P : | Josiah Wedgwood. |
| T : | Josiah Wedgwood, yes. |
| P : | Okay. Tell us a little bit about Josiah because I have read a little bit about him and I have heard you speak about him and he is a very interesting character. |
| T : | I think he was a very passionate person. First and foremost, he was passionate about humanity. He had a strong fondness for science. He had a strong fondness for business and pottery. But I think a characteristic that is probably - that I hold dear and with Josiah is really in his passion for humanity, his passion to make the world a better place and especially in U.K. in the 18th century, no matter what he did in business or what he did as an artist, always his end objective was how can I make society a better place and... |
| P : | He was in favor of abolishing the slave trade in the 18th century, wasn't he? |
| T : | Absolutely and again this was quite remarkable as a businessman because it really didn't make much sense as a businessman then. A lot of things that Josiah did really went against the grain of his government at the time and of his patrons too, but he always stood fast in his beliefs. And I think that, you know, that in itself, has been so integral into what our brand is today, you know. If we didn't have that sort of integrity of - or value, we probably wouldn't have lasted as long as we have... But, yeah, you know, again Josiah - he really believed in fairness and even - going back when he was setting up his business, you know, he was one of the first people to set up a structured healthcare system, he was the first one to set standards... |
| P : | For employees. |
| T : | ...for employees, yes, which is - again in industrial England was very, very rare. And, you know, these are things that came from his personal beliefs and something like slave trade, you know, he looked at what resources that he would have to bring about the most amount of change and he used something - and at this time he was most noted for his jasper clay, and so it was very fashionable at the time, this was, you know, the neoclassical style was becoming very much predominant at that time period. So he thought one of the best way I can bring awareness for the end of slavery is to make little jasper medallions, and again we could take something that's fashionable and really bring a strong message for change, yeah. |
| P : | And he distributed those medallions to what kind of people? |
| T : | He distributed to opinion leaders, to aristocrats, to politicians, and... |
| P : | And they would wear the medallions? |
| T : | ...they would wear them or they would pin them on very much like we'd, you know, with AIDS we wear the ribbon on now with the bands that we wear. |
| P : | Yup. |
| T : | This, I suppose, was one of the first times when it came - yeah, first time making a little badge to wear and he had a relationship with Benjamin Franklin, so he had sent these medallions over to Benjamin Franklin, again asked him can you pass these out to opinion leaders at the time or politicians and friends that you might know, yeah. |
| P : | Okay. Let's get back to Wedgwood as a company. You talked about Josiah's jasper clay. |
| T : | Yes. |
| P : | Was that the main innovation or what was the first big innovation with Wedgwood China? |
| T : | It was actually a Queen's Ware - what we call 'Queen's Ware' today, which is a creamware glaze, and it's a bit interesting because in the - if you look at ceramic history, in the 18th century, most of ceramics was a copy of Chinese porcelain and there's a very distinct difference between the English pottery industry and Mainland European, where, you know, if you think of companies like Mycenae and what have you, a lot of them got their start by royal families going, you know, "This is gorgeous, this is beautiful stuff coming from China, let's make it." And it was - so the companies originated on patronages from the royal family. And Josiah didn't want to do this. He thought there was an opportunity to create a uniquely English style. So he set about, well, how can we do something that feels as delicate as Chinese porcelain, but is completely different that is very much - belongs to us and he came up again using his science, a creamware pattern, and I think Josiah understood celebrity endorsements well before anyone else did because what he did is he took this and he sent it to Queen Charlotte, and Queen Charlotte fell in love with this creamware, and she goes, "Wow! This is something that's English. This is something that belongs to us." |
| P : | I see, I see. |
| T : | And in the pottery industry in the U.K. everything was rather, you know, still stuck in baroque style and brown and - anyway Queen Charlotte fell in - not only did she fall in love with it, she also decided to rename it from what he was calling creamware to 'Queen's Ware' and made him Potter to Her Majesty. But the point is that we actually - we went out and through making a product that was unique; we were able to get the support of the royal family rather than having it outright. |
| P : | Right, right. |
| T : | And, you know, from that point on we've always had strong connection with royal families and his creamware - his first major success came with his creamware with a service made for Catherine the Great and... |
| P : | Of Russia. |
| T : | Of Russia. And, you know, she was an anglophile and she was looking to make the largest dinner service in the world at that time with all hand-painted scenery of English countryside and most English potters wouldn't touch this. They thought there's an impossibility, there's no way you can make that - she was looking for roughly a 1,000 pieces or a 50-place setting - 50 person service. |
| P : | Every single one hand painted... |
| T : | Every single one hand painted with English countryside. And Josiah said, "No, we can do this." And in the process he set up a very efficient factory, you know, assembly line with hand painters, but he saw - he knew he wasn't going to make money on it, he saw it as a wonderful opportunity or sort of the perfect marketing tool. It was very nice to have the endorsement from Queen Charlotte, but if he can actually break into European market and have a dinner service with - along these lines of Catherine the Great. So, he set up this assembly line, he decided that he would go to all the aristocrats, you know, in Georgian time people building these massive houses, and he went up to them, and he said, "Can I have the honor of painting your home on a plate for Catherine the Great. And, of course, everyone said, "Yeah, no, we would be delighted to." And he finished the service, again, and ended up 944 pieces with 1,200 scenes of it - of England painted on it, finished it in about 9 months. Before he sent it to Catherine the Great, he put it on display in London, charged tickets for people to go and see this. And everyone was very excited. They wanted to go and see whose house was chosen, whose estate was chosen to be painted on this dinner service. He got the aristocrats interested in his brand, interested in his products. And oddly enough, Queen Charlotte came strolling down to take a look at the service and she got quite jealous, you know, this is quite - this is much, much bigger than the tea service that you provided me. And from that point on, we've - again we've established ourselves as being worthy of royalty with Catherine the Great and with UK royalty. But in the process of doing it, he set up such a efficient factory that he realized that he can actually manufacture this for the middle class - the upper middle class, which was growing, and he knew that's where he was going to make his money. Because we did - we almost lost money on the Catherine the Great service. But again the endorsement from it just, you know, it just absolutely boomed with the middle class afterwards. So that was his first major innovation. |
| P : | Interesting. At the risk of asking you a very stupid question, you mentioned jasper just now, I really don't know what jasper is, you're going to have to explain this for me. |
| T : | All right. Jasper is probably Josiah's greatest invention or achievement. He invented a new ceramic body and what it is - It's actually a stoneware body and by putting different oxides into the clay, we can make the clay turn color throughout the entire body. But the beauty of it is you can make what we call bas reliefs or motifs, and we have, you know, we cover it with modelers, and they make this bas reliefs and they attach it to the clay - to a body, for instance, if you are making a vase and they take these motifs and put them on when the clay is still, what we call, leather hard dried before it goes into the fire. |
| P : | Are we taking about the blue Wedgwood that everybody knows now which I mistakenly thought was something else a moment ago? |
| T : | That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah and... |
| P : | All right, okay. |
| T : | And, you know, it's funny when - again there will be a body of clay that looks rather gray when the artist is working with it. And I would love to tell you the formula, but I am not allowed to, it's a deeply-guarded secret because it has been - the clay has been completely unique to us for almost 220 years. But what happens is when it goes to the fire, it would change color, so it changed to this pale blue and the relief were changed to a white, and that is just done, you know, again with porcelain you often use glazes to change color or you often paint it, but this was a stoneware body, which changed with just the - yeah, changed just with fire and... |
| P : | Another stupid question, I am terribly sorry. Stoneware as opposed to porcelain. |
| T : | Yes. |
| P : | Is... |
| T : | It's more of a clay - it's a more of a clay ingredient in there. |
| P : | Okay. |
oriental flair：オリエンタルスタイル
brand literate：ブランドに精通している
bandwagon：流行に乗ろうと真似すること
bespoke：注文品の
（ T: Tom, P: Peter ）
| P : | ...I was in your flagship shop a while back, and looking at the different cups and saucers and plates and everything you have on display there, there are not only the very traditional designs everybody associates with Wedgwood immediately, there are also some much more modern things, and some things that even look a little bit Japanese... |
| T : | Yeah, yeah. |
| P : | Now I understand that you have actually tailored some of your designs for the Japanese market. |
| T : | Sure, yes. Again, I think today, being part of a global brand, actually even if you look at styles or fashion in the UK at the moment, there is strong oriental flair, and so if we are to represent English style, we have to take into account what English style is today. And, you know, we don't want to make something specifically just for Japan, but we wanted to maybe take some influence from other cultures and incorporate that into our own style. We have a tremendous task because we are a brand that's almost 250 years, how do we balance our tradition and how do we be innovative. And we were founded on the principle of a spirit of innovation, and again doing something uniquely English. So, I think today one of the best things we can do is find maybe interesting parts of other cultures and incorporate those into our design. ...one of the reasons I have always been attracted to Japan is because if you look at business here whether it's - either branding or product development, there is so much to be learned. You know, I think if, you know, well, again relating to product development, if you can get it right in Japan, you'll probably be successful anywhere else in the world. You know, Japan has the most demanding consumers out of everywhere I have experienced, which is something I like. You know, because it really sort of pushes the envelope when it comes to making sure, you know, your quality is spot on and, you know, there's a lot of people now interested in China with all the excitement going on there and I keep stressing to people, don't forget about Japan. Actually, there's more of an opportunity in Japan now because, you know, Japanese consumer is, you know, they are much more brand literate and they are much more brand mature than most other regions of the world and you can't just rubbish that with branding things anymore. You know, you have to - you know, you really have to have something behind a brand. So, again this - it's a great challenge for us, you know, and it sort of keeps us on an edge and it makes it very, very interesting. For example, by contrast, you know, I spent quite a lot of time in China lately and our prestige level in China is growing very fast. We have a consumer, who will buy something just because it's the most expensive. In Japan, it's much more interesting because now, you know, that sort of bandwagon - in fact, you know, it's completely disappearing. You know people are looking for things that are unique; they look anything to make them more individualized and standout a bit more. So for us, I think that is - it's very, very interesting. A greater challenge there is in Japan though is a lot of people with Japanese - a lot of people in Japan think of Britain maybe, you know, 200 years ago and how do we promote Britain as a very contemporary design culture, which it is at the moment, and so, you know, the more that happens then the more we can start introducing contemporary and saying, you know, this is very much in the spirit of English design. This is very much the spirit of Wedgwood, and again we are just walking this tight rope between innovation and... |
| P : | Tradition. |
| T : | ...tradition, yeah and Japan gives us the best place in the world to do that, you know, I think because if we get all right here then it will be good for the rest of Asia, it will be good for Europe. |
| P : | When you have a visionary starting whether it be a company or some other kind of an institution, it's easy enough or it maybe it's not that easy actually for that person themselves to keep the vision going while they were alive. When they've died and somebody else takes the institution or the company over, you have somebody, who although they may be a direct descendent of that founder, they are going to have slightly different values, you know, everybody has it - slightly different sense of values. How difficult is it to maintain the original vision that Josiah Wedgwood had for the company? |
| T : | Thank you Peter for putting - reminding me of what this pressure, you know, and I am the eight generation, if I mess it up on my watch. We left it up to the eighth to mess it up. Yeah - no, it's funny, every family member has brought a different - had brought different aspects in and in a small way different identity to the company, but now I think our core values have never changed. I think it comes from a sense of pride from, you know, the previous generations, who've worked - I mean, yeah, who've worked - who've been involved with the company in its - and there is a tremendous amount of responsibility. But at the same time, you know, if I look at my father's generation and my grandfather's generation, they worked with that same sort of passion that I imagined Josiah did and that, you know, every single generation, including Josiah have never forced their will or forced their desire or ambition for the next generation to take over. It's been very organic in some sense, you know, and looking back at my grandfather and father's generation if, you know, you - as a child you saw this passion and no matter what you're interested in, either outside of business or outside of Wedgwood, you felt this kind of desire to keep perpetuating these values that they have had. So, yeah, I think although different influences perhaps when it comes to design, that actual core value of Wedgwood hasn't changed very much - hasn't changed. |
| P : | What about the philanthropic side, are there activities going on at the moment? |
| T : | Yeah, I think - yeah, very much so. We don't do anything on sort of a global level, but in each community and each market we try to be as active as we possibly can, you know. We have done some very nice events in Japan with refugees - international refugees and, you know, we are trying to also look for opportunities that are a bit unique... ...for instance, I think last year we had this wonderful auction at the British Embassy, hosted by the Brand Ambassador, and the idea was to get some English brands together and - for a big auction and everyone said 'Auctions don't work in Japan, you're not going to do very well with this.' No, you know, let's do it, try something different. And we took a vase and I stood up and said, "Okay, I want you all to spend a lot of money for this black vase. But what you will get - is you will get something completely personalized and completely unique and completely bespoke," and it generated quite a lot of money, I think, 2.5 - 2 million - okay, 2 million and I think we've probably the second highest item that went in the auction. And, yeah, so I look for things that - you know you can find - you can be a corporate and responsible at the same time. You know you can still bring a lot of decent purity to your brand. You know they can go just very nicely together. In the UK, we did something very similar with - Prince Albert had painted this lovely picture that we decided we'd put on to a vase and we put this up for auction at Royal Gala there. We got 400,000 Pounds... |
| P : | Good Lord! |
| T : | ...for the vase... |
| P : | One of the things we always ask in these interviews is, are you a 'Nikkei Weekly' reader and... |
| T : | Absolutely. |
| P : | It's coming up. |
| T : | Yeah - no, absolutely it's a funny - if I've been away for quite some time I always come back and it's a funny thing on my desk, isn't it, because there is a load of newspapers. And, you know, people usually expect me to go through and read, you know, three weeks of newspapers. |
| P : | No way. Right. |
| T : | And, you know, I am never very consistent with the newspapers that I do read. But this is God, it's honest truth, every Monday I am going through and I am taking up 'The Nikkei Weekly,' and that is what I do - go through. I thoroughly enjoy it. I enjoy the diversity. You know, it's one of the more dynamic newspapers for, well, English I suppose, you know, English-speaking environment to learn about Japanese business. I am always really intrigued with some of their articles. I remember reading an article about a small Japanese company that all they do is make the screws for hard drives, you know, something - it's a topic that I would have never really picked up, but you know I remember it was an article in 'Nikkei Weekly' that just stood out, and I was fascinated, you know, I went just right through this article and said 'That's the company I would like to go and invest in.' |
| P : | It must be very much indispensable. Yeah. |
| T : | Yeah, and so it is the one publication and one newspaper that does stay on my desk, yeah. |
Niall P. Murphy, Ph.D. / Unit Leader
Riken Brain Science Institute
Riken Brain Science Institute
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khakis：カーキ色のズボン
headway：進歩
service requirements：サービス要件
reside：存在する
sales associates：店員
（ J: John, P: Peter ）
| J : | When you think about the Gap brand, first, we are an American icon brand. We were the first brand to signal a shift in culture in the US and teach Americans how to dress casually both after work. What's changed over the last few years is the casual atmosphere has actually been embraced at work. And so the Gap mystique has actually carried on, not only in terms of the after work hours, but also is applicable for where to work as well. |
| P : | Is that applicable nationwide in the US do you think or is it something that is more specific to - I don't know, people working in IT for example? |
| J : | No, there has been a pronounced sea change over the last 10 years, Peter, in the US specifically. We used to wear a coat and tie 5 days a week and when the Gap brand showed consumers how they could dress respective to the work environment, it became a natural. People shed their ties and sport coats and they were able to wear sweaters and khakis and really nice pairs of jeans to work and it became acceptable. And, quite frankly, it's just more comfortable. |
| P : | Absolutely. |
| J : | Look at us. |
| P : | Do you see the same kind of change possibly happening in Japan? |
| J : | I do. |
| P : | To a smaller degree perhaps? |
| J : | Absolutely and our Banana Republic brand, which is part of the Gap Japan family of brands, is making some real headway in that - this is a brand that has only been here in Japan for about 18-20 months, so we're fairly new with Banana Republic in Japan. |
| P : | Is it that recent? I hadn't realized that. |
| J : | Yes. Our whole premise in Banana Republic is really to share with both the female and male consumer that they can really look great with the assortment of products that we have for them, and that they can be comfortable, be professional, and its not only appropriate for the work environment but also when they go out after work. |
| P : | Taste and clothes differ an awful lot from country to country, perhaps more with women's things than with men's things. And Japan has a very, I mean it has a unique look the young women like these days, which, I mean, my own daughter for example, when she goes outside of Japan to other countries, she finds a really, really big difference. Now, for a company like Gap that is operating in multi-markets all the time, what do you do? Do you tailor your clothes for each market or do you - presumably you want to keep an integrated brand out there too, right? |
| J : | What we do is, we take the essence of what North America provides us in terms of product creation. So we really take advantage of their inspiration and their direction. But one of the great things about having 200 associates here at Japan headquarters and over 5000 sales associates in our locations here in Japan - we are quite a local company in many respects. And so we're always taking that inspiration and we're twisting it and turning it and making it applicable and sensitized to the Japan consumer taste level. |
| P : | So, the impression I get of service in retail stores in this country has changed quite a lot over the years. How do you see the level of service in Japan compared with, I don't know, say Hong Kong for example? Or the US? The US is going to be a lot different. |
| J : | Well, I think it's very hard to compare Japan's service requirements with any other service requirements anywhere in the world. I think that the requirements here in Japan for service is so much higher... |
| P : | Really even... |
| J : | ...than anywhere I have ever experienced. It's one of the things we talk about often here. We have sales associates that have been in our system for over 9-10 years, some of them have been here since we've been here, which is a very, very fortunate asset to have, because of the service requirements. And, we feel that it's a continuous improvement type of activity where those 4000 or 5000 sales associates in the store, we have to continue to train, we have to continue to encourage, we have to look for new and innovative ways to make them part of our brand. A really good example of that is just a couple of weeks ago we ran a sales associate layering contest where we had 20 sales associates in 20 locations, set up blogs and they became stylists, and you could go on to their blog and you could see how they might put that dress together with a scarf or a jacket or how they would make outfits together. And they became celebrities essentially because they were able to share with their customers and with customers over and above that, what the appropriate look was for their particular store. And then people would come in and ask for them by name and they became very, very famous. Actually, we recognized four of them as winners. |
| P : | Interesting. |
| J : | Yeah. |
| P : | And this was through the website, so anybody could... |
| J : | Could access, yes. |
| P : | Access the blog and... |
| J : | Yes. And it was fantastic for them. Like I said, it was - it's taking an asset that you see every day and that you depend on everyday and you encourage them to look at their responsibilities a little bit different and we provide them a little bit of assets and encouragement and it's amazing what the power that resides out there in our sales associate force. |
| P : | Very interesting. |
lore：言い伝え
work-life balance：仕事と生活のバランス
be better off：一層良くなる
（ J: John, P: Peter ）
| P : | So, most of the people working for Gap Japan K.K. are Japanese employees? |
| J : | Absolutely. |
| P : | How many non-Japanese are there? |
| J : | We have about 17 total, so that's 17 out of roughly a little over 200 here at Japan headquarters and all of our sales associates and store management in the stores are Japan locals. |
| P : | How many stores do you have in Japan? |
| J : | Well, we have about 105 Gap locations and 20 Banana Republic locations. |
| P : | Okay, and that is spread all over the country. |
| J : | All over the country. |
| P : | What does the name Gap mean? |
| J : | Well, initially, lore has it that when Don Fisher started the business in 1969... |
| P : | Is that that long? |
| J : | Yes, he was thinking of the generation gap. Now, he was a man in his early 40s, so he was really thinking about the younger generation and he was inspired by Levi's jeans and by music specifically. So, when he opened up the first store in 1969 on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco, which is, I have a copy of it for you, the store was actually famous for records, tapes and Levi's jeans. |
| P : | So it wasn't a clothing store? |
| J : | Well it was... |
| P : | Levi's, records, and tapes. |
| J : | Yes, and that's how we got started and these circles that you see are to simulate albums. |
| P : | Okay. |
| J : | ...we are dating ourselves now Peter, but, you know, we used to put on a big platter, you know,... |
| P : | I still call everything records. That's interesting. |
| J : | A matter of fact, my first week on the job, which was last year August, I started on Monday and that Friday we had a summer concert event, and we had local artists as well as artists from the US here, and we had a concert that evening with 5,000 winners of a contest that we had. And donations from that concert, because we actually sold t-shirts at the concert, went to help build two elementary schools in Cambodia. So, kind of, going back to your earlier point around, it's more than just making sure we have standards in a country, we are actually looking for new and innovative ways to contribute back to those communities where we have factories and factory partners to participate in the community. And I think you referenced some product that you saw today at the Harajuku location, which is product Red. |
| P : | Oh, those ones, yes, yes. |
| J : | And that was made in South Africa. |
| P : | Yes, yes. |
| J : | Well, part of the profits from that venture, which is the 5-year commitment, will go towards serving people and communities in Africa to help fight and support AIDS awareness. |
| P : | Product RED. |
| J : | Yeah. |
| P : | That was about that. Okay, I remember reading about that in the newspaper now. |
| J : | And so Bono was here last December and he is a huge spokesperson for that effort and we are very, very proud to be part of that. |
| P : | Okay. What was it they were doing in product RED, was there a new cell phone that was red or something? |
| J : | Yes, Motorola has just introduced the new RED RAZOR... |
| P : | Or maybe there was an iPod that was red as well. |
| J : | And an iPod which is red. My executive assistant has a wonderful RED iPod which I appreciate through her. Armani is another local Japan partner that also participates. It's a great thing for the apparel community and the apparel business to raise our level of participation and involvement in community, not only in Japan which we are attempting to do well, but also realizing that we are a global community. |
| P : | I've heard that your employees are encouraged to leave the office early on Friday. Can you tell me about this? It seems rather unusual. |
| J : | Well, it's a little unusual for Japan, and to be honest its a little unusual for my team, but let me first describe what ‘summer hours' is. |
| P : | Please do. Please do. |
| J : | Instead of working from 9 to 6, which we all know in Japan nobody works from 9 to 6. It's usually 9 to 7, 9 to 8, 9 to 9 that's usually the itinerary. |
| P : | Right. |
| J : | We have to understand that it was only 10 to 15 years ago where the work week was actually inclusive of Saturday. So, we are pretty much a Monday through Friday working hours enterprise here, but one of the things we wanted to try this summer is to encourage employees to work from 8 to 5, Monday through Thursday and then 8 to 2 on Friday. |
| P : | So, wait a minute, that's 9 hours times 4 is 36 plus 8 to 2 is six, so it is a 42 hour week. |
| J : | Roughly, yes. |
| P : | Okay, okay. |
| J : | The purpose behind summer hours is we really wanted to encourage employees to have some sense of work-life balance. We felt as a US-based company doing business here in Japan, it's something that we could show the way, that we could encourage, that we can break a few rules if you will, and that we could put a bit more encouragement around a healthy worklife balance, and have [to] our employees advantage, a Friday afternoon to spend with their family or to go to a park or go shopping or whatever makes them happy. And I have admit, some people look at this and say, well, that's really strange and what am going to it with the time, I'm going to be lost, and who's going to do my work and all the reasons why we he can't do it. But what we are saying here is we need to find a way to be productive during the time we are at work and we need to squeeze out the non-value added work and the things that take too much time and don't really provide benefits to the company, and tried to squeeze our work days down and be really productive the time we're here, but free up some mind space so you can go out, and you can enjoy life a little bit. We believe, and we honestly believe - I have experienced this over 10 years, because we did it at Levi Strauss & Co, that employees, once they embrace a little bit of work-life balance, they find they are much more productive the time that they are here, they find that their energy level and their motivation and their enthusiasm is greatly enhanced by taking a little bit more time for themselves. |
| P : | How long have you been doing this in Japan now? |
| J : | We've just started it last Friday. |
| P : | You just started, oh really! |
| J : | Yeah, tomorrow is another day, so we are really optimistic. Let me just say this, I have one example which made it all worthwhile for me. I have received an e-mail from one of our team members on Monday who said, “You know, I was able to bathe my newborn son on Friday afternoon and not only did it make me happy because normally I can only do that on the weekends, but it also made my wife happy because I could spend more time with her.” |
| P : | What can you say... |
| J : | What more can I say, right. |
| P : | Yes, absolutely. That sounds great. It would be really interesting to maybe come back in 6 months and see how everybody is adjusting to it because I am sure for a lot of people it will take a little time to adjust. |
| J : | It will, but Peter, I would be overjoyed if people came back after this experiment and said, “John, we want to do this all year round.” I think it would be fantastic. I think the company would be better off because I think that our employees would find ways and would actually encourage management to weed out some of the unnecessary work that we do Monday through Thursday and that I really believe, especially in this business where there is so much combination of art and science that the head will be clearer, the enthusiasm will be regenerated and the batteries will be fresh. |
| P : | Very nice. |
Tom Wedgwood / Brand Ambassador
Waterford Wedgwood Japan, LTD
Waterford Wedgwood Japan, LTD
Market convinced of August rate hike
E-money firms duke it out
Automakers envision vehicles of the future
Expanded coverage: Aquatic environments given fresh life
carrier：航空会社
Cancun：メキシコのユカタン半島先端にある保養地
connecting passenger：乗り換え客
niche：特定分野
（ C: Charles, P: Peter ）
| P : | Where does Continental fly to, out of Tokyo or out of Japan? |
| C : | We have a really interesting business, and I think a very unique network here. You know, unlike anyone else, we actually serve eight cities in Japan and we are very proud of that. You know, in fact no other U.S. or European carrier comes close, you know - most would fly to, you know 1, 2 maybe 3, you know the big three cities. And you know, so for us we fly from Sapporo in the north and then Sendai, Niigata, Narita and then Nagoya. We don't serve Osaka, interestingly enough, but we do Nagoya and then Okayama, Hiroshima and Fukuoka are the eight. And so for all eight of those cities we fly to Guam, which is, you know, our Asia hub and base and you know Guam is a huge destination for the Japanese market. I tell people from the U.S. that it is sort of like Cancun to Americans. In many ways, it is the first international trip a Japanese person might take, you know, the nice hotels, the short flight, there is no time difference, people speak the language, it's safe. You know, so essentially it is the first place you go and what we are trying to do from a marketing perspective is actually even broaden it up a bit further such that it may be your first trip, but then you can't change the geography and the convenience and so you can take your family as a professional and what-not and do - just, you know weekend, even two or three times a year. So that's really our main business, and I should say that you know Guam is our hub, and, so beyond Guam we fly to a lot of destinations - we fly to Bali, Indonesia and Cairns, Australia and we fly to the Philippines and a lot of smaller islands in Micronesia, Palau, Pohnpei, Saipan, you know, various points. And so we fly from these eight cities in Japan to Guam and then 70% or 80% of the people get off in Guam and again that's the main destination, we are also serving a lot of other points as well. And it's a lot of fun, you know, and for that business I end up traveling every week to one or two of those cities generally within Japan. I quite enjoy that, just getting, you know the local foods and culture and customs, and there we have a great sales team that does great stuff in all those cities, and we get involved in the communities. And so I feel like we have really deep roots really throughout the country. We have been here, this October is our 30th anniversary of service in Japan and when you look at the cities, you know, we have a long history. You know, it's 25 years next year in Nagoya, 20 years this year in Fukuoka, back in June we celebrated, and many of the cities are 17, 18 years, you know, a very, very long history throughout these markets and that's really kind of our core and our history. Beyond that, 9 years ago in '98 which was also when I moved to Tokyo, at the same time we launched our Narita service to both New York and Houston, and so that's also become a very big business for us - Narita to Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey, but very close to Manhattan and Houston and Houston. Both of these are hub airports for us, and we have a lot of connecting passengers in Houston. Latin America, for example is very big. Mexico, we have 32 cities in Mexico, I believe, every Central American capital and most of the main cities in South America. So Buenos Aires and Lima, Sao Paulo and all these points, you know where Continental has really the best schedule in the market or one of the best. |
| P : | That's interesting because I think a lot of people are probably not aware of that. |
| C : | No, you are right, people who go tend to find out and one of our biggest challenges in the market is that, you know, we are not huge, we don't have limitless funds. And certainly the local Japanese carriers do have massive marketing budgets, and so you know they can plaster the city with billboards and trains and what-not, and so we tend to be very tactical and very careful in how we spend what limited funds we do have to get the word out. And so what we - the things we do, for example, we've sponsored a tango dance competition that Japanese would attend, but you know that market will go to Buenos Aires, you know, and we have the dancers to do tango. You know, and so we try to do very just, you know, shoestring types of things to be honest, but in all of our cities. You know, a good example in Niigata we are an official sponsor of the J-League Niigata Albirex team, and they actually every spring do their spring training camp in Guam, and so they train down there. And it's, awareness is really the key everywhere, and so what we like to do is we - last year when the team was returning from Guam of course there are media on the airplane, there are media at the airport, and 'meet the team' is a really, really big deal in this little city. And so we actually had Miss Guam and a whole team of musicians from Guam accompany the team, and so we actually got more media coverage from that. You know, in fact, we had our captain present flowers to make a ceremony at the gate when they left, with Miss Guam all the way back and then Miss Guam spent the whole weekend in Niigata, essentially just doing, shows in travel agencies, handing up leis, passing out flyers, doing media interviews. And so it gets us airtime, you know, and publicity that we couldn't afford to buy quite frankly. |
| P : | But do you find it has a direct effect on your sales? |
| C : | Sure, you know, of course it's very difficult to measure directly. But absolutely, I mean, just little things like that, because again we just can't afford to buy the advertising on our own. But we are willing to invest our time and our effort in our people, and we do things, you know, just very niche, very specific marketing-oriented programs in all of our cities as well and we really have, within the eight cities we serve, we think of this as 10 different marketplaces. So, eight cities to Guam, and Narita service we also have to the U.S. mainland, and then Nagoya; we also fly to Honolulu and so within those we have 10 different very distinct markets, and we have a marketing plan for each one. And really I mean our competition is different in each city, and so we have to approach them differently. But, you know, what's great about the business model, I like it so much, is that when you go to Sendai or you go to Hiroshima or these other points, we're the only airline that flies to a resort destination. There may only be two or three airlines that fly internationally and it would typically be to China or Korea or Taiwan, we're the only one flying to a beach. And so we actually have really, really loyal customers there in those cities because they might fly to Guam this year, and then next year for vacation they go to Saipan or Palau or Bali or something and so we actually get them, you know, every time they go on vacation. Which is really great fun and again if you are in Sendai, if you don't fly from your hometown airport (and we call ourselves the hometown airline), if you don't fly from one of these places your next best alternative would be Narita. But that is a 2-hour trip from Sendai to Narita and then an hour back, you know, to Tokyo Station, an hour from Tokyo Station to Narita and the cost of the rail would be 25,000 yen or so... |
| P : | Plus you've got to wait. |
| C : | Right. |
| P : | Exactly. |
| C : | And you can actually be in Guam in 3 hours. It is only a 3-hour flight. |
| P : | Yeah. |
| C : | And so to the extent that we can actually communicate that to people it's sold, you know, it's already done. But that really is a trick of just raising the awareness and marketing it in, by being in this business for a long time, that certainly helps, but it's just a lot of fun. You know, there is a long history; I've been here and I have just a great job, I enjoy it everyday, I am covering each city, and we are just in a very unique position in the marketplace. |
provincial cities：地方都市
short-haul flight：短距離飛行
percolate：浸透する
（ C: Charles, P: Peter ）
| P : | It is interesting you get to travel to provincial cities in Japan as well because most people in the sort of job you're doing probably wouldn't have those... |
| C : | That's right. |
| P : | ...opportunities either. |
| C : | Yeah, yeah, I feel good. |
| P : | Most of your flights from Japan anyway, as you said, short haul, that is three and a half hour flights typically. So perhaps it is not the same as if you are traveling from Japan to the U.S. or to Europe, but for in-flight entertainment for example, if you have a lot of Japanese customers, do you, for example, select music channels or movies or whatever that the Japanese customers are going to prefer? |
| C : | Absolutely, and it's very, very, very important for us, and even for short-haul flights we are very focused on that. I mean in fact for the short haul, just start there, you know, it's a three or three and half hour flight, but 90% to 98% of the passengers are Japanese. And so even though we're a U.S. airline we really do focus on being Japanese in our service and in training both - I mean at every step of the way, at the airports, you know, on the Guam side focused on Japanese, you know, just cultural sensitivity and what the preferences are and, you know, newspapers. In fact you know it's a similar flying time to domestic U.S. and if you look at the U.S. domestic market in particular they are taking everything off the airplane, it is almost like a Greyhound bus in a lot of ways but Continental is the only airline that has meals at mealtime, and we, you know, have free in-flight entertainment and we have pillows and blankets, I mean they are simple things but our competitors don't offer that stuff. |
| P : | Really? |
| C : | We do. And you know even on these short flights, from Japan to Guam, and again, it's a pillow, it's a blanket, it doesn't cost us a lot but I mean if you are looking and trying to save every single penny, you know, that's all been cut out since 9/11 at our competitors, but we still have it in place. And so you know we are very, very focused on being high service and you know as comfortable as we can for the Japanese customer. But you know you are also right in the longer flights it's even more important, and we're doing a lot to localize and be as user-friendly for Japanese as we can. I mean a few examples I can come up with for our 777 aircraft, which is really our flagship: we are putting in a new entertainment system, and we have 20 of those aircraft and two of them have it. And we are putting them in for the other 18 as quickly as we can - a new system that has 250 movie channels as well as, I think, 60 TV channels plus videogames and there's also a Berlitz Language Course. And you can actually study a language, you know in your native tongue, sort of on a matrix. I think it is a 90-minute course to get just a basic, you know, touch-up on the destination where you are flying to. But the point is within that 250, what's really interesting and what is great is in the old system we had only 12 channels. And so you know we would have 8, perhaps 4 primarily in English, and we might dub the Japanese that's available and one or two channels for Japanese, and that will be about it. But with 250 we will have, you know, and we do have a ton of content in Japanese, but then we also will throw in every other language you can think of, with one or two channels because there might be, you know, I don't know, like someone from Tel Aviv who speaks Hebrew and so we will have one or two channels in Hebrew, you know. And any language you can imagine because we are such a global company and you never know where people are coming from, so you know. Thai, certainly Korean in this part of the world and again a lot of Latin Americans, so Spanish and Portuguese will be in there as well. So, we do that and then one other thing that is really, really great and we have gotten good feedback on is our kiosks at the airport where customers check in, the sort of computer box... |
| P : | Automatic check-in? |
| C : | Yes, yes. |
| P : | Okay. |
| C : | You know and in the U.S. all of our airports have it, we are bringing them out internationally in many, many places. For those boxes, they have only been in English up until now. But actually now we have just been putting in as quickly as we can multiple foreign languages, and we have 12 including Japanese. And we get great, great feedback in that where they - you know for example, when you have a Honda engineer who is going to a plant in Alabama, and there is just no way in Birmingham, Alabama that the airport staff will speak Japanese, but that engineer who may not speak very good English can go to the kiosk and check himself in and view... |
| P : | And there will be a button on the screen says "Nihongo"? |
| C : | Actually, a flag, the Japanese flag. |
| P : | Okay. |
| C : | And, so you try to just have - and make it as user-friendly as possible for all the languages so that we can actually take care of a person. So that even if we don't have staff on the airplane who speak Japanese, when you are flying from, you know, New York to Europe, you could still on the airplane have a movie in Japanese, help yourself at the airport when you check-in in Japanese, and not just Japanese, but Chinese and Hebrew and Portuguese and other language as well. So, we really are a very, very global company. |
| P : | Presumably those kind of decisions are coming from the head office in Houston? |
| C : | From our headquarters, absolutely. But really our international growth, we are the most international airline of the U.S. Carriers. We are almost 50/50 in revenue terms, U.S. domestic and international, and we actually serve more international cities than any other airline of the world I believe, and certainly among the U.S. carriers just international points on the globe. And so we are very, very global and that has really been part of our strategy for the last 10 or 12 years, and so you're right, I mean, you know it has been planned from our headquarters, but within that because the Japan market is so important and really quite large for us, Japanese is going to prioritized and moved towards the top. You know, Spanish would really the very first foreign language because especially in Texas and other points where we are strong, you know and we have a big network in Latin America, but generally the second language we do is Japanese as a company. |
| P : | What about Nikkei Weekly? You've been here for fairly long. I presume you are acquainted with it? |
| C : | Of course, I am. And I enjoy reading it a lot. I mean I must confess I don't read it quite every week, but I would say two or three times you know a month, so over half the issues I do pick up and read, and find it really, really interesting. I mean, especially even when I was in business school in the US having recently left Japan. I then, every week went to the library to find it, because I just wanted to stay in touch with the country, and I think between the political analysis, business news from Japanese companies in particular, and even the new products and gadgets, that area I find really interesting, not so much as a consumer, but to know what ideas are percolating from the companies here and what markets are sort of being sought and pursued. Because, yeah, I think a lot of innovation still, you know, comes from Japan, consumer demand is here, and, as well as the companies thinking of themselves. So I've been, about 10 years, a pretty regular reader of The Nikkei Weekly. |
John Ermatinger / President
Gap Japan K.K.
Gap Japan K.K.
Strong sentiment backs rate hike speculation
Citibank Japan back in business
Automakers hit by slack domestic sales
Expanded coverage: Aircon makes school so cool
distributor：販売業者
Independent Business Owner：独立した事業主
direct selling：訪問販売
（ T: Terry, R: Russell ）
| R : | Japan is obviously a big country and Amway is big in Japan - could you give me a little bit of an idea of the scale and scope of Amway's operations here? |
| T : | Okay, we have been here now for nearly 30 years. And in fact Japan was one of our first offshore markets after Australia and the UK. Interestingly we went to Australia first because America and Australia spoke the same language, so if they made a mistake it wouldn't matter to the Amway business, but we came here and since that time we've much pretty grown steadily. Last year, our sales were around 110 billion yen and we have around 680,000 distributors here as well as something on the order of 260,000 Kaudake club members, they are people who just want to buy our products, don't want to have an Amway business. So if you add that together, that's in the order of 1 million people. |
| R : | That's huge. |
| T : | Yeah, like one in every 13 people you meet has probably got a relationship with Amway. |
| R : | Incredible. And is the Amway business model the same in Japan as it is worldwide? |
| T : | No. In fact the business model is different from pretty much country to country. Here in Japan it is not anywhere near the same focus on what we call business tools, so the videos and the cassette types and the books that people are used to associating with Amway businesses we don't allow here and that's always been the case. But apart from that, pretty much the product range and the way we reward our distributor network is pretty much the same as elsewhere. |
| R : | So those numbers you gave me were pretty overwhelming in terms of the total amount of sales and the number of distributors. The number of - are they according to independent business owners, as they are in the United States? |
| T : | We use the word in Japanese we say distributor, because that's the word we've always used. |
| R : | Okay. |
| T : | If we were having a conversation with our colleagues in the United States we would say IBO - Independent Business Owner and then that number is 680,000. |
| R : | 680,000 of those and then you have also people who are member of the Amway club who are just interested in Amway products and services. |
| T : | Yes, correct. |
| R : | So why do you think Amway has been so successful in Japan? |
| T : | You know Japan is the world's biggest direct selling market. And some statistics I saw in a magazine that they sourced from the ministry, from METI - Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed that something like 21 million people had some connection with direct selling here in Japan. Whether it's the Pola range of cosmetics or MIKI Prune or any one of them, why is that so? I mean Japan prides itself on the village concept and tight community structures, everybody knows everybody else and if you look at the history of post Edo-period, Japan, the growth of private enterprises has been around that door-to-door sales type. |
| R : | Personal recommendations, personal relationships with people. |
| T : | Yes, very much. Toyota used to sell cars by people knocking on doors. Insurance is still sold door to door and if you look at statistics, Japan ranks the highest in terms of - I am sorry let me take that back. If you ask people what influences your decision, more than 60% of people in Japan say it's 'people like me'. So the personal recommendation as you say and some degree of informed decision making is pretty unique to this marketplace. That's why we have so many distributors. |
| R : | To match all the different people... |
| T : | Yeah, and in that bunch of distributors there's people who like to sell a whole lot of product and there are people who just the product for themselves and their family. So as a business model across the 700 odd direct selling companies that are registered in Japan, it's pretty well known to people. The unfortunate side of it comes around that's happened to us in about 10 years ago is when people try and push the system too much and in that circumstance, we as a company have to be very, very careful, one, to maintain our integrity, two, to protect our reputation - integrity is important to us. And what we need to do is control the distributor...he gets excited about what the business opportunity represents and so over the last 10 years, we have been very, very careful about how we managed that, how we educate and train our distributors given the information that they need so that they can effectively recommend products to their friends and people they know. |
| R : | You said that some of your distributors are quite small and some are quite big as a multilevel marketing organization, could you give me an idea or how that small and big might... |
| T : | Sure, small is one. |
| R : | 1 person. |
| T : | 1 person. |
| R : | What's big? |
| T : | Big could be tens of thousands of people in an organization, so 1% sponsors another person to join in the business who sponsors another one who sponsors another one and... |
| R : | So lots of levels there. |
| T : | Yeah, and our structure is infinite, so that you can sponsor as many people as you like, we don't want to see that get out of control, we also don't want to see people build a business, 'When they want to take Amway as a business opportunity' built with too few people, and some of the people who have been in our business here for 25 years or more, obviously over a period of time have created organizations that are huge. And in fact one of the world's biggest distributors is based here in Japan. |
| R : | One of the world's biggest is based in Japan. |
| T : | Yeah, and that man travels all around the world because he's sponsored people everywhere. He was recently in Brazil and recently in India and I mean for him it's a global operation and he just has huge charisma and appeal and has been very successful. |
logistic infrastructure：物流基盤
CSR initiative：企業の社会責任の先駆け
self-expressive：自己表現
eat-your-lunch：打ち負かされる
（ T: Terry, R: Russell ）
| R : | So over the last 30 years or so, what changes in the business environment have affected Amway the most, I'm thinking here of things like the internet, mobile phones and those kinds of regulations. |
| T : | I think to answer the last part, first the regulatory environment, Amway as an organization, as a company we want to respond to the regulatory environment and we want to be a positive player in that space. So at no stage, would I ever characterize anything that the regulators have done as being a barrier to our business. In terms of the internet and mobile telephony and those sorts of things I mean it's a huge change and currently our digital sales would be in the order of 40% of that $1 billion, higher, edging up towards 50%, which makes us one of the largest internet trading companies in Japan. |
| R : | That's astonishing. I mean does that mean though that those sales are going direct to Amway HQ rather than through distributors? |
| T : | No they are going, they're orders that distributors place... |
| R : | So the distributors place, I see, and then they are still selling directly when they are buying... |
| T : | Absolutely - our job is to power the distributor network, but our internet site which we are currently doing some work on and our mobile site and at the end of each sales month are just overwhelmed with huge volumes, $10-$15 million worth of sales in a day. And we've put a lot of time and energy into that space because we realize that's where the society is going. |
| R : | Sure. |
| T : | And the most important people to us in one sense as the communications people, our audience is the people who have yet to join our business. How do you respond to the needs as they are changing out there in the marketplace? We are in Shibuya, what way the young people walking up and down the street, how are they communicating and how are they aggregating their information? So we have spent a lot of time and energy in that space, we'll be sending more time and energy globally in developing our capabilities and we hope to be doing some really innovative things over the next 12 to 18 months to reach out to that bunch of people who communicate in a different way than their parent's generation. I think the other thing that's really impacted our business over the years has been Japan's extraordinary logistic infrastructure. In Japan, we can probably get a product on the phone line on and probably the main, okay we can get a product to the people within 48 hours. |
| R : | It's incredible, isn't it? |
| T : | It's huge, and that means that your customer satisfaction levels are much different than they are in other markets, and when you think about it, it means that the products are touching so many different people. And the businesses are touching so many different people. That it can become for us and is for us a sense of - a point of pride. The other thing that we have learnt being in Japan over the last 30 years is that it is very important to give back to society. And the way that Japan approaches corporate social responsibility or the CSR phenomenon is something that we as a corporation globally have learnt a lot from. On the basis of - on the back of that learning couple of years ago, we set up an organization called the One by One foundation for kids and what we want to do is globally impact the lives of kids everyday and we don't want to do that through huge grant-made programs or by large gala activity, we mean one by one. So you'll see our employees volunteering to go and do things, our distributors would turn up to support the Special Olympics. We sponsor activities in nature forests and all of that in order to touch the lives of children one by one around the world |
| R : | So that's Amway's main CSR initiative in Japan? |
| T : | That's what we do. |
| R : | In Japan, or worldwide? |
| T : | Everywhere. |
| R : | Worldwide. |
| T : | Everywhere. What we decided to do was if we are going to have a CSR initiative let's make sure that we are all in sync with one another and that we are able to do something that made a difference. We learn a lot from what Avon was able to do with the breast cancer and the pink ribbon campaign. And companies like ours should do things like those. And the families that own our company seriously and honestly believe in the role of a person in giving back to community. So it's not something we do to attract attention. It's not something we do for PR. |
| R : | It's actually a natural instinct... |
| T : | Yeah, we do because it should be done and we're very proud of the fact that our employee base of nearly 580 employees are actively involved in these sort of programs all the time. |
| R : | So you've got your direct employees involved and you encourage your distributors to be involved at the same time? |
| T : | Absolutely, if we can bring one thing to a community activity in Japan, it's the large number of people who are in our network and what's most important in community-based activity is time, giving time to somebody who needs it, particularly with kids and in that context we believe that what we can give that few other organizations can actually apply is the number of people. |
| R : | Well its great to hear about Amway doing that. I would like to move on to one other question. If you could just very briefly summarize this, the differences between market conditions here and let's take as an example America or if you prefer Australia... |
| T : | I think that the United States and Japan are very similar in terms of market demographics and market issues. I think there is a bit more diversity in the United States. |
| R : | When you say market demographics, the type of people who become distributors in Japan are demographically similar to. |
| T : | Reasonably similar. Their level of education is typically higher, but that's - our distributors in Japan look like people in Japan, and our distributors in the US look like people in the US. So that when you think about the numbers that are involved, you would expect that. |
| R : | Right, right. |
| T : | I think in terms of market conditions, both United States and Japan are very mature markets for us, the challenge is to innovate, the challenge is to become consumer focused, the challenge is to become performance driven in a way that we've never been before in order to create new value in a whole range of different places. And the way that you do that in the two markets is intrinsically different, that's why most of the people who work here at Amway, Japan are can you believe it, Japanese. Most of the people who work at Amway Italy are, Italians! |
| R : | People who look like Italians. |
| T : | There's a reason for that and instead a direct selling company like our own or many of our colleague companies in the industry reflect the cultures and the communities that they are part of, and if we don't respect that and indeed honor it, then we wouldn't be very successful at all. So our challenge is those three things going forward is to retain the innovation, we have great R&D and we have made some great acquisitions in terms of IP. We now need to actually monetize that model a bit better than we have been doing and reflect it in the way we go to market. |
| R : | How about the competitive environment, is it tougher in Japan? |
| T : | In terms of products or in terms of the industry? |
| R : | In terms of the industry. |
| T : | Industrywise we are the biggest suppliers in Japan, we would battle with some of our competitors' market by market as the largest, but typically we probably are. In some places around the world, notably South America, people eat your lunch everyday and we don't do very well there at all. I think because direct selling is a mature industry here in Japan and it's becoming more and more understood. I think the marketplace is relatively stable. |
| R : | Right. |
| T : | The issue is around the products. Do you want to think about cosmetics and skincare, the first names that come to anybody's lips are Shiseido, companies like that that are just wonderful companies that produce outstanding products and have superb reputation being able to be in a marketplace with companies like Shiseido is really a plus for us. Our market share is small, but the quality, this demand that is in the marketplace means that we have to go on and continuously improve what we do. |
| R : | So how would you like to see the market for direct sales, organizations like yourselves developed in Japan and how do you think it will? |
| T : | I would like to see 125 million distributors but that's not going to happen. I think what I would like to see is, as we trend towards a social media environment and Web 2.0 becomes much more of a reality and Japan is one of the leading countries in the world in that sort of space. What I see is a network of highly-enabled individuals who make very definite lifestyle choices. And the strength of the LOHAS movement and the lifestyle movement here in Japan I think is a wonderful indicator of the possibilities. I mean Mixi is the largest community site in the world. |
| R : | Sure. |
| T : | And the way that podcasts and other things have taken off here is an incredible stimulus to us... |
| R : | More blogs are written in Japanese more than in any other language. |
| T : | Any other language and you know that Americans really dislike that, but it's true. And I think as we look around the region, I mean mobile this is a mobile community in terms of its computing power. The platform has become ubiquitous... |
| R : | Right, the mobile internet has been in Japan for such a long time and people are thinking now this is a great new revolution in the states, we have had it here for years. |
| T : | We can do stuff on our mobile phones that we can't do on internet sites in most countries and that's an incredible thing. So more power to it as young people become more accustomed to those social media environments and as Japan moves to that Hodan Sakai [ph] that self-expressive society. |
| R : | Finally Terry are you familiar with the Nikkei Weekly? |
| T : | I adore the Nikkei Weekly. I read the Nikkei newspaper everyday although I don't read the evening edition, I have to say it's - I just... |
| R : | It's a bit too much. |
| T : | Well I just get home and I am full for the day. But the Nikkei Weekly is a great summary of some wonderfully deep analysis and some really well positioned commentary that people in our sort of walk of life need to be able to access. And when I am in the United States, I will read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and I subscribe to the Financial Times and as well as the Nikkei and what it does is that gets our head around issues that matter. And as a business and as businesspeople unless we are focused on business - on things that matter, then what we are doing is writing a retirement plan rather than a business plan. |
Charles Duncan / Managing Director
Continental Airlines Japan
Continental Airlines Japan
Court OK's Bull-Dog's takeover defense
Toyota, Matsushita getting cozy
Wedding styles change with times
Expanded coverage: Wedding styles change with times
holding company：持ち株会社
private equity company：非公開株式会社
shot in the arm：後押しする助けとなるもの
USPs：独自のセールスポイントを持った提案
（ F: Frank, R: Russell ）
| R : | Okay. I am here today with Frank Foley, who is the General Manager of HIT Entertainment Japan. We are also surrounded by penguins, and trains. Frank, in Japan HIT Entertainment is probably most famous for Thomas the Tank Engine... |
| F : | Thomas, yes. |
| R : | But in fact there are a number of other properties which are equally famous such as the Guinness Book of Records, Barney and other characters such as Bob the Builder worldwide, which HIT Entertainment is involved in. Could you give us first of all the background to the company worldwide? I mean tell us a little bit about your operations in Japan? |
| F : | Right. HIT is actually it's a collection of I think 72 companies altogether. HIT is really best described as a holding company. We specialize almost exclusively in pre-school product. Guinness World Records is one exception. HIT originally did a lot of documentaries and non-children's programming as well, but about 2 years ago, it was June 2005 it was bought out be Apax, the European-based private equity company. And Apax looked at the whole thing and they decided where the assets really are is in pre-school. So they sold the rest off. Actually the previous management board got the rest of the business and still continue to run it, and we specialize in pre-school. They did keep Guinness World Records, and I think you know what that says is, you know, when private equity firms buy companies, you know what they are looking for is unreleased value and they try and put in the best team to create that additional value and they move on. And so I think they saw that Guinness World Records is just too attractive to that goal. So that was the one exception. |
| R : | Right, otherwise focused on pre-school? |
| F : | Preschool exclusively... |
| R : | Worldwide? |
| F : | Worldwide. As you said, Thomas is a massive character and that's strong in almost all markets we are in. Otherwise it breaks down to market by market there, somewhere one character, one brand or another is strong. For example, in the US, Barney is very, very strong. It's 20 years old now. Next year is their 20th anniversary I think in the US. And product has got a big - the brand has got a big shot in the arm from that and will continue. What's so great about this job is Thomas basically. It's working with a brand that has 100% brand recognition, everybody loves it, it's not about how do we sell this thing in this market, it's about how do we prioritize. And that's... even Fox is an extremely strong brand, National Geographic is a very, very strong brand but in Japan there are challenges in really getting to the mass market of those brands. |
| R : | Right, everyone who you need to know about Thomas, the Tank Engine already knows effectively. |
| F : | And actually Guinness World Records is the same. |
| R : | Right. So, but you said Thomas has been popular in Japan for about 10 years. HIT Entertainment has a whole range of different properties, Bob the Builder, for example. Surely one of the challenges for you now is to do the same with Bob and Angelina Ballerina, I believe, as has happened with Thomas? |
| F : | I think Thomas, it's a little longer, it's may be 12, 13 15 years or so. It really picked up once it got on Fuji TV and the market really expanded from there, and its grown to - now the number preschool brand in Japan and after Anpanman, and that makes it the number one foreign preschool brand in this market and that's a huge success, that's great and yes there is pressure on us to build other brands. The other brands that we work with are Bob and Pingu, they are sort of the - with Thomas, they are the three brands - three main brands we are working with, and as you mentioned Angelina and there are some other smaller brands as well that we do sell the stuff with, but the real focus is on those three. |
| R : | And the best way to prioritize how you license the rights to those properties in terms of keeping those properties in the public eye and obviously bottom-line, making as much money from them as possible. |
| F : | I think you know they are all at different stages of development, and they are sort of slightly different properties as well. So it's a different task with each one of them. Thomas is so big and so well known, I mean the retail value is public knowledge, it's somewhere around 350 million US retail for Thomas. So that's sort of, that's one task. Pingu is a growing brand for us, it's a brand, its USPs would be it's a family brand, it's got a very wide demo, all the way from infants through to mothers, OLs, and the sort of range of - there is a sort of a unique range of products, categories that you get out of that, because that's who are selling to. Bob is something that's very strong in some areas. It rates very well on television, DVDs sell extremely well, apparel does really well, but toys, we've got a challenge on toys, so that's the focus on Bob. So each one has its own challenges and its own strategy that's driving it. |
kid slots：子供番組枠
the be-all and end-all：最も重要なもの
vernacular：専門用語
（ F: Frank, R: Russell ）
| R : | So describe the market in terms of your competitors? So we have a number of companies who have foreign-originated properties. Obviously Japan is a huge market, world's second largest economy, they like characters, what's the key to success would you say in terms of being able to bring a foreign property here and make it successful? |
| F : | I think in our area, in the preschool area, you are selling to kids, so kids have to like it. And that's really where it starts and finishes. And that's driven by Television, so you've got to get on Television, so there is a bit of a, there's a B2B challenge there in convincing them to put it on Television, and that's very, very difficult. Most of the commercial networks now have dropped their kid slots, and there is no regulatory requirement on them to broadcast kids programming. So it's all going to NHK, so you really - if you're talking about broadcast, you're talking about NHK and you're talking about NHK Channel 3. So getting on television, that's the first task, and then when you want to get on television, the kids have to like it. If the kids don't like it, it just doesn't... |
| R : | You won't to be on television for long... |
| F : | That's to have an enduring evergreen type preschool product. There is another market where you really go into the sort of the fashion market, its more young girls, its junior high school, high school girls. I think Sponge Bob is probably, shouldn't mention competitors' products but its that sort of a phenomenon and Sponge Bob might prove to be enduring. But I think its kicked off as Pingu did, to be honest, with junior high school, high school girls and they buy a lot of stuff but the challenge there is that they move on, and if you find you don't want a market after that and once reach out or start to smell blood and they sort of see sales falling, they quickly clear off their shelves and the next brand is in there. |
| R : | But is television the be-all and end-all, is there any grassroots marketing, any alternative types of exposure that you can give to products if you don't have the blessing of TV? |
| F : | There is a certain business you can build and you could create a business of up to maybe 50 million, 60 million in retail based on word-of-mouth, based on the internet, there are few brands around that have done that online and mobile. But I think to get into the really top league, to get above the 150 million, get into 200 millions and that sort of sphere, you really need broadcast television to drive it. And a lot of that is really a B2B perception, you know to get Takara Tomy and Bandai and Gakken and these sorts of companies to invest, it's like 18 months old, but they are starting their product development - to get them to invest that sort of money in toys, they need to be sure that the brand is going to stay there and broadcast television for them is their indication. |
| R : | Right. Is there an issue in Japan vis-à-vis the fact that these properties are foreign when Japan obviously has a lot of its homegrown properties and the idea well, you know, okay Mickey Mouse is fine, and what have you, because its part of world culture, but really we've got our own characters now, why do we need these foreign ones, how would you describe... |
| F : | I definitely do...I think Japan is probably one of the most competitive markets for character brands, preschool and kids generally. The thing with Thomas is I don't think it's particularly seen as a foreign brand. The thing that amazes me about Thomas is that no Japanese company did it, it's a train culture and the train category was just left there for a foreign company to come out and take. It's just amazing. I think that was the exception and not the rule, I think it was opportunistic probably of the company that was doing it at the time. They just bought - it was sort of like Rupert Murdoch buying the soccer rights in the UK and building BSkyB on the back of it, why was it that British broadcasters sat around for years and didn't give the public what they wanted. |
| R : | Right, right. |
| F : | It's a similar situation, it's just amazing. We came in and we captured it, and we - luckily we did it with a brand that's so unique that no one else can really come in. You know, you couldn't even come in with a shinkansen and steal the train market from us, no, because Thomas has it and its Thomas... |
| R : | It's almost the generic example of intercultural train harmony, almost where everybody loves trains. So there is no localization of Thomas in terms of culture aspects regarding the shows and... |
| F : | No. I think the thing about Thomas is it's its own world, its Sodor Island and its Thomas and his friends, and there are some human characters in it. But they are not really the focus, so it's sort of a culture onto itself. |
| R : | So it's like an idealized train world which appeals cross-culturally. |
| F : | And for a lot of Japanese kids, Thomas for them is steam train, it's become a proper noun, it is part of the vernacular I think. It's interesting though because you do need to - an important part of television especially is localization, and we are still early stages, but we are sort of playing with ideas of how to localize Thomas, and it's sort of a watch this space type thing but I think somewhere around next year... |
| R : | Do you have any recent or upcoming developments that you're particularly excited about at the moment? |
| F : | Yes, there is one, and now that you've mentioned it, Bob the Builder, DVD special, called 'Built To Be Wild'... |
| R : | Built To Be Wild. |
| F : | It's Bob and his friends out in the west... |
| R : | Fantastic. |
| F : | Hee-haw type adventure and they find an old mine and they have to - all those sorts of adventures, it's great fun. And what we did on that, and this is actually something I took from my television background with Fox, is that one of the challenges with content, with foreign content, let's say, Thomas is foreign content, in this context Bob is foreign content, is to make that - is to communicate the excitement, the entertainment value that your product has. And you are competing against all these Japanese brands, which parents have known, they know more about, so what I have always tried to do is to use people who would be able to bridge that gap. And I have used a lot of foreigners, well-known foreign talent and who are respected by parents. Thane Camus, for example, is one person who used to help us a lot at Fox, and I got in touch with Thane again and he has done, he came on as a guest voiceover talent for a new character in this particular series, and he's helped us out with a lot of interviews and publicity and whatnot. We did a TV spot with him, it's running on TV Tokyo at the moment. |
| R : | Selling Bob The Builder... |
| F : | So watch out for Thane, and he's brilliant, the Japanese loved him, we did test market and focus groups and everything, and he is perfect, he is brilliant and all that. And Thane actually - his own children loved Bob The Builder, so it's from the heart, the whole thing that they actually loved him, he knows Bob The Builder far better than we do. He's seen the shows a 100 times. |
| R : | So he's made his children very happy. |
| F : | Oh yes. |
| R : | One last question. What is your experience with the Nikkei Weekly, is it a newspaper that you are familiar with? |
| F : | Yes, I subscribe to it and I actually pass on to my Japanese colleague here, what was done on it, and I put a big circle around a couple of articles, I don't want to overload him, but you know articles related to our industry... |
| R : | Take a look at this... |
| F : | Would be good for him to read and I think it's excellent for anyone in business at all, for Japanese people learning, business people learning English, it's a great way to pick up vocabulary to build up just reading comprehension and all that. It's the cheapest business text you'll get on a weekly basis. |
| R : | Can't get better recommendation than that. Thank you very much. Thank you Frank Foley. |
| F : | Thanks a lot. |
Terry White / Chief Communications Officer
Amway Japan Limited
Amway Japan Limited
Nikkei index climbs to 7-year high
Consumers seek adventure
Nissan chief hints at longer-term vision
Expanded coverage: Spongy marshmallow given soft gourmet touch
CRM：(Customer Relationship Management) 顧客関係管理
disciplines：専門分野
central planning：中心となる企画
streamlined：合理化された
（ D: David, T: Terri ）
| T : | How would you describe McCann Worldgroup specifically here in Japan? What do you guys do for those of us who don't know? |
| D : | Well, McCann Worldgroup started off as McCann Erickson the advertising agency, which still it is, and that entity has been in Japan since 1961, and it's a complete service advertising agency. Well then, about 7 or 8 years ago, globally we started to restructure a bit as the communication industry changed and instead of just advertising, of course, most of their clients want integrated approaches to all marketing communication. |
| T : | Right. |
| D : | And we started to build individual companies that service other areas. So we have a company called MRM, which is mostly a direct response and CRM company; Momentum, which is mostly a sort of advent and promotions company. We own Weber Shandwick, the PR Company. So we have a number of other companies, and that all comes under now a total group called Worldgroup, McCann Worldgroup. And my job as the planning director is really to sort of sit in the center of all of these companies and make sure that we are developing processes and strategies for clients that don't look at particular types of communication or promotion, but sit there and go what's the best solution and what sort of companies or disciplines or activities do we need, and how do we actually plan a complete process. |
| T : | So you're the central planning hub? |
| D : | Yeah, it's like having a central planning hub that works across all these different types of disciplines, which is something that you know our company is doing, you know, other companies in that sort of industry are starting to think about because you can't plan... In the old days we used to have like media planning departments that would just book the radio for example or TV or print, and then you would have a CRM company which was going up and doing something totally different in terms of developing a database and mailings and then getting into the internet, etcetera, etcetera. Of course that's useless. So you got to actually have a central planning to integrate all those things properly. |
| T : | One of the things I've learned in doing these Nikkei Weekly interviews is that some of the accepted wisdom, I guess, is that in Japan there is a lot of the issue of no central planning, like a lot of corporations here. A little more than perhaps in North America or Europe. There is like no central planning at all. |
| D : | Right. |
| T : | So it was a real need here in that sense, I think. |
| D : | Yeah, it's sort of interesting because our client base is split pretty much 50/50 between our global clients and local Japanese clients. It is sort of interesting when you come and look at the Japan marketplace comparing it to say the United States, that a lot of even the major Japanese corporations take a very separated point of view. You know it's very hard for example a marketing executive from a big American packaged goods company, when they come to Japan and find out that their Japanese competitors will have the PR department, the advertising department, the sales department, and the marketing department, a) are all separate entities. And sometimes all have their own advertising, and their own advertising agencies, and their own promotions. |
| T : | These are major companies here. |
| D : | And these are major companies, which in the American model of course, all that would be under the marketing department. So sales, advertising, PR is all just sub branches of the marketing department, and it is all streamlined and centralized more or less, whereas here it is still done in a very separated way. Not in every company, and it is changing, but there are still many companies that do it that way. That just means that you sometimes have to work with companies where you're doing one thing for them and they are doing something totally different at the same time, you know, so... |
| T : | Yes, it makes for a diverse work experience. |
| D : | It does, yeah. |
silo：（組織の中で各部署の）交流がない様子
confines：規定するもの
empowered：力をつける
（ D: David, T: Terri ）
| T : | Actually we are sort of moving into - the market here for corporate communications in general, I have a number of questions about it, but how would you describe, besides the issue of silos, how would you describe the market here, and it's 2007, so lots of changes, lots of new things going on? |
| D : | Well, yeah, in the whole marketing communications area, well, there are a number of things. One is that, as a general rule, it's not growing that fast. |
| T : | Really? |
| D : | And it's probably not growing as fast as the economy is again. So, one of the interesting things is that you actually look and see that companies are not increasing their budgets, for example, as much as the economy is. Now that is also reflected, you know, many companies will tell you that their sales are not increasing as fast as the economy goes. |
| T : | I see. |
| D : | And there are a lot of economic reasons why that's happening, but at the same time of course it's a mixed thing. So like everywhere else in the world, you know, the emphasis on the internet is growing. In Japan, perhaps more than most other countries, emphasis on mobile communication is growing because of the Keitai being so powerful here. So there is a different balance that outdoor is much more powerful in a marketplace like Japan than say it is in the United States, or you are going to get to look at the subways, right. |
| T : | Right, yes, that's true. |
| D : | Nobody wants to advertise in the subways because they are afraid you just get graffiti all over it tomorrow anyways, so they are wasted, so there are different sorts of things like that. But the other thing too I think is that, you know, some companies like ours fortunately are having a pretty good time at the moment, but the industry as a whole is having to get used to change, just as the whole society is getting used to change and getting used to the fact that things aren't going to work exactly the way they did in the past. And so while some companies are saying let's keep on doing the same thing that has always worked, other companies are sort of starting to experiment a bit more and question the mix of things, you know, the traditional reliance on television, etcetera is changing with some companies. |
| T : | One of the reasons that I'm a McCann fan is because this type of media, you go beyond 'are you buying 'x' toothpaste', I think that's really, really important because people aren't just wallets. |
| D : | No, people aren't wallets, that's the point. There's not - I've never met, you know I always make a big point that whenever I am teaching inside a company or giving sort of presentations to people in our industry if you're in a room listening to me give a talk about advertising or communication, by definition you're not a normal person because normal people don't want to know about it. Normal people don't sit there watching reels of commercial after commercial after commercial... |
| T : | They don't go to the award shows... |
| D : | They don't go to Cannes, the award show that's on this week and for many, many, many people it would be punishment to do that. So unless it was one of those goofy shows about the 50 funniest commercials or something, right... |
| T : | Right, right, exactly. |
| D : | So, way I look at it is that we have to break down that barrier of understanding that real people don't think like we do, real people never want to be considered as consumers. In fact if you go out to people on the street and say I'd like to talk to you because you are a typical consumer they'd say I am not a consumer, you know, I am Ralph or, you know... |
| T : | Exactly. |
| D : | You are not going to do that. So we have to think of it in that way. So we end up doing an awful lot of research to understand not the consumption/usage of products and brands, of course we do that, but what we feel what's much more important is to do a lot of background work on understanding people. And so in the last 3 years or so here in Japan we've launched a lot of ongoing studies where we have one major thing we do which is called McCann Pulse which is an ongoing look at people's lives, and we then within that put together programs like 'Real Mothers' or 'Real Fathers'. It started off with real mothers with us, in the general course of discussions with young mothers, women in their 30s with young children discovering that they thought of themselves as being very different from women who are only 10 years older in their approach to motherhood, but also in their approach to themselves. And so we started to dig into what do they really think about themselves, themselves as mothers, themselves as wives, themselves as women, and that was one of the confines, was that today a young mother doesn't see herself as a young mother, she sees herself as a woman who has chosen to be a mother as part of her life, as opposed to not that long ago when you had a child you gave up your life. You were only then seen as a mother, okay. So motherhood is just, it goes back to my earlier point, it's a luxury that you choose to enter into as opposed to any other luxury you choose to enter into. After doing that, we published these magazines about 1 or 2 a year where we summarize what we've been finding out about these things. And after a couple of those on mothers, one of my guys that works for me here came up and said, what about the poor fathers? Because of course what we were learning in all these discussions was that while women were feeling more empowered, more confident certainly because of the experience of the OL lady during the bubble years as they have got older, got married etc., that worldliness they learn from becoming the world's largest luxury goods buyers, etc., etc., has spun off into a different way that they treat their husbands or different expectation for their husbands. And so we all know that Japan went through their phase where you as a young woman would say, you know, I want a husband that not only makes money and stuff but is actually intelligent, you know, is actually going to pay some attention to me. We've also had 10 years experience of being educated by Korean soap operas. What is - I always talk about the fact that the really popular culture like soap operas is the real education world. What the women learn from Korean soap operas. There is a hope of romance... |
| T : | That's right, gentleness and... |
| D : | Right, now I know because I have gone to Korea many times and I have a lot of Korean friends, that isn't true, but the perception in the media is, media is a very powerful perception model (don't believe anything you hear on this show). And so we got into doing this thing on real fathers with sort of that stuff and then we've done other things - we also did a thing on Heisei kids. Late last year we did a - we started to go into more depth on the kids that are in that sort of 16-, 17-year old period that's the first kids born in the Heisei period, which is an interesting route because globally that is the first generation, if you think about the average 17-year old kid today in Japan, he got his first mobile phone at 9 and-a-half. |
| T : | Right. |
| D : | So he's had a mobile phone for 8 years, and he's only ever known 3G phones, he's only ever known internet-ready phones. So what is now considered in the United States as the most advanced, you know, |
| T : | Junior had... |
| D : | These kids have only ever known that. Now they may not have used all the capabilities, but their minimal idea to expect from a phone is what the rest of the world sees as the most advanced phones. And what perception then does that give them in terms of expectations, etc. So we've put together all these studies in sort of booklets magazine formats and send them to clients or give them to radio journalists. |
| T : | Really? Thank you. What I am looking at now, listening audience, is very neat- A4 - no B5 magazines that are, thank God, in English as well, that tell stories. |
| D : | And I have just been reminded that I have to say for the 'Real Father' study we actually have a website that is opening on Monday. |
| T : | Alright. We'll link to that. (English: http://www.mccann.co.jp/insights/realfathers/e) (Japanese: http://www.mccann.co.jp/insights/realfathers/j/) |
| T : | Last question is what's your experience if any, with the Nikkei Weekly? |
| D : | The print form or the podcast? |
| T : | Oh no - well the podcast - this is the first time but the print - the newspaper. |
| D : | Well, every Monday morning that's the first thing I do. |
| T : | Oh. |
| D : | It gets - I get into the office at about quarter past seven in the morning and its usually lying around somewhere and the first thing I do is go through it and look for what's going on and what's in trend things and what I can talk to my colleagues in New York and London and show off about... |
| T : | Wow. |
| D : | You know, because I always gets the e-mails every week, you know, about what's happening in Japan and it's usually in the variety of what weird stuff are they drinking this week, but... |
| T : | There is jealousy there. |
| D : | There is a jealousy thing. Today you know, like years ago, it was like there was literally tell me something strange to tell at dinner parties. |
| T : | Right. |
| D : | More and more it is literally like give me an idea because if you think ... |
| T : | Because that's where it is happening. |
| D : | Right. Because if you think about [innovative flavors of]water, if you think about any type of beverage, because I am looking at the water you holding but, beverage if you look at the convenient stores... |
| T : | Right. |
| D : | And what goes on here, they are literally the products that one in five of those will be a hit in France in 3 years from now. |
Frank Foley / Senior Vice President
HIT Entertainment
HIT Entertainment
Beleaguered Abe ponders postponing poll
Wanted: 90,000 software engineers
Temp agencies scramble for staffers
Expanded coverage: Tokyo's Akihabara slated to become IT testing ground
highly qualified personnel：高い能力のある人材
with bell and whistle：非常に複雑な
redundant：不必要な
leveraged：支えられている
at one's fingertips：すぐに使えるようにしてある
（ D: Daniel, P: Peter ）
| P : | Okay, this is Peter Barakan. Today I am talking to Daniel Edwards, who is the Office Managing Partner in the Tokyo office of Heidrick & Struggles. Excuse me sir, Heidrick & Struggles is a new name to me. Can you explain a little bit about what it is the company does, first? |
| D : | Certainly. Heidrick & Struggles is an executive search firm and we focus on placing senior executives, generally at the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer or Board level, ideally into Fortune 500 or equivalent-size companies. |
| P : | Okay, and the company is worldwide? |
| D : | Yes, there are 55 offices spread across the globe and probably about 12 offices in Asia-Pacific, and we have been here in Japan for the past 15 years. |
| P : | So you're finding highly qualified personnel - you're headhunters basically. |
| D : | Absolutely. |
| P : | In common lingo. |
| D : | Yes, we like to disguise it, but we are in fact head hunters. |
| P : | Are you finding Japanese people to work in foreign companies, foreign-owned companies or vice-versa or a combination of lots of different things: how does it work? |
| D : | It's a good question, and I think our world is the full range of placements in dealing with domestic candidates and non-domestic candidates, domestic companies and non-domestic companies. The majority of our work has been finding Japanese candidates for multinational corporations operating here in Japan, but we would certainly like that to change. |
| P : | In what way would you like it to change? |
| D : | We would like to spend more and more time working with Japanese corporations, either finding them executives within Japan or helping them find executives for either their operations overseas or acquisitions they may have made overseas. |
| P : | Okay. So let's take - let's try and take, I don't suppose you can give names, can you? |
| D : | To a degree we can or situations where we might be helpful, it might be interesting to be helpful I think. I have noticed since I have been here that there is an increase in activity around Japanese firms buying assets overseas. So Nippon Steel's acquisition of Pilkington Glass, a British company and or Japan Tobacco's acquisition of Gallagher... Our hope is that as the economy has strengthened here and acquisitions overseas increase, we may be able to talk to headquarters here in Japan about potentially finding them executives for some of those companies overseas. |
| P : | I see, and typically how do you go about finding people? |
| D : | That's a good question. The - I would have to say the expectation I think sometimes is that we have a joint database with bells and whistles on that spits out three or four names in every project we work on... |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | But, the reality of the situation is that today's workforce is so mobile that the database can become redundant very quickly. So honestly on every project we work on we take quite a fresh approach and spend a good deal of time working to identify the top, let's say, three or four individuals who may be appropriate for that situation and that's through a combination of telephone work and desk research. It's not to say that those three of four individuals will be available or interested in the position that we are recruiting for, but it's our job to identify the top people and then trying to see if one of them is available. |
| P : | Okay, and that sounds like a fairly intensive line of work? |
| D : | It is labor intensive and obviously as in many jobs we work long hours here, but we are leveraged by a group of 100 to 150 people who are based in a knowledge management center with Heidrick & Struggles in New Delhi. |
| P : | New Delhi, and they are what, coordinating information globally? |
| D : | Some of that. It's proactive talent mapping as well so rather than waiting for a project to come along and going out to try to identify the top five CFOs in the healthcare sector, we might do that in advance and so the group there is proactively mapping out talent to identify. |
| P : | So a client comes to you and you say, 'Ah yes we have just the person for you.' |
| D : | That's right. |
| P : | Sort of at your fingertips. |
| D : | Five of those in our shopping basket exactly, yeah. |
| P : | Interesting. |
cultural affinity：文化の親和性
subset：小集団
MNCs：Multinational corporations
ad-hoc：その場その場の
succession planning：後継者育成
tenure：在職期間
（ D: Daniel, P: Peter ）
| P : | Have you found any major differences between the way your business works here and the way it was when you were in New York? |
| D : | Absolutely. Even in a short period of time of 5 or 6 months there are some obvious differences to me. I think that executive search in Japan is harder in that finding candidates who are qualified to work in multinational corporations is a challenge, in that candidates will need to have some kind of cultural affinity with a multinational corporation in order to be effective and be comfortable communicating with numerous different parties overseas or across the rest of Asia. And also be comfortable with perhaps a slightly different business environment from a traditional Japanese company. So almost by definition before you start a search, you are immediately dealing with a subset of the overall candidate pool, whereas you maybe dealing with the entire candidate pool in the search in the US or Europe. That's one difference, but that being said, once you have come up with a shortlist of perhaps the three to five candidates for a position, we find that clients are able to make decisions much more quickly around who they might want to hire than in the US or Europe, and I put that down to the fact that clients understand that there is not a finite pool of talent to search from. A client in the US... |
| P : | You mean there isn't an infinite? |
| D : | Sorry, apologies, yes, non-infinite pool of talent to search from. |
| P : | Okay. |
| D : | Clients in the US will be happy to carry on shopping for one of a better description, always convinced that the grass maybe greener somewhere else, and whereas here clients realize the difficulty of finding qualified people for multinational corporation situations. From a candidate's standpoint, one of the things I have noticed is that loyalty to one's previous employer plays a more significant role in the close of a candidate. So it's harder here to extract a candidate from their previous company than it might be elsewhere. |
| P : | Also, you were saying to identify whether the candidate is going to be suitable for working in a multinational or not? How do you go around making that decision or that judgment? |
| D : | It's a combination... |
| P : | You have to meet the person? |
| D : | Absolutely, it's a combination of I think qualitative assessment and quantitative assessment. You know, on the quantitative side, you can rely on prior career and educational experience, if someone has worked in MNCs before and shown some success, if someone has been perhaps educated overseas, done an MBA before. It's not an absolute measure, but that's an indicator that maybe a higher chance of success. And on the qualitative side is sitting with an individual and running him through an interview and gauging face-to-face how suited they might be. |
| P : | Right. So you find a candidate for a client. How long do you stay involved in that process once you've placed the person with the client? And if the deal goes through, is that the end of your participation? |
| D : | This has evolved over the 5 or 6 years that I have been with Heidrick & Struggles. When I initially joined, we didn't have the capability to provide any kind of professional on-board surface or after-care as it were. And we would do it on an ad-hoc basis. If an individual consultant had formed a close relationship with a candidate, they would check with him regularly over the first couple of months that they might be at a new firm. However, we have since branched into what we call leadership consulting, which ranges from working on organizational structure with boards and CEOs, succession planning, but also quite importantly as you pointed out, on-boarding as well, and we will have a leadership consulting consultant assigned to a placed candidate for the first maybe 3-6 months of their tenure. |
| P : | You said that people warned you, you might have to have increased patience when you are in [Japan], and you find that wasn't the case. Have there been any other issues in Japan, which you weren't expecting, but have produced problems for example, or that you found challenging, let's say? |
| D : | I think the most common question I receive from the people who I previously worked with in the US is, how can you do business in Japan if you don't speak Japanese? And I would say that, you know, 90 odd percent of the individuals whom we interact with through our executive search work here, in all industry sectors quite frankly, whether it is the industrial sector, healthcare, consumer technology, speak very good English, and from that standpoint, while I'm spending a good deal of time trying to learn Japanese, it's not been as great an obstacle as one might have imagined. |
| P : | If you don't speak or read Japanese, obviously to get your business information you rely on the English language media. Are you aware of the Nikkei Weekly? |
| D : | I was more familiar with the Nikkei itself. However, in advance of this conversation, I've done some of my own research and started to read the Nikkei Weekly and, you know, I would now consider myself a reader. |
David McCaughan / Executive Vice President
McCann Worldgroup
McCann Worldgroup
A world of stuff at your thumb tips
Party manifestos unveiled ahead of poll
Pricier food, services squeezing consumers
Expanded coverage: Tokyoites take to urban farming
synergies：相乗効果
leverage：活用する
tripolar：三極化
convergence：収斂
（ D: David, P: Peter ）
| P : | When did Land Rover become part of the Jaguar Group? |
| D : | Well, both Jaguar and Land Rover were actually a part of what's called Premier Automotive Group, which is a cluster of brands owned by Ford Motor Company. |
| P : | Yup. |
| D : | And it includes Volvo as well and until recently it included Aston Martin, but in fact that particular company was sold literally within about a week ago. |
| P : | Really? |
| D : | So, these three brands are the sort of premium brands owned by Ford Motor Company. |
| P : | I didn't realize Volvo was part of the same group. |
| D : | Yes, it is. |
| P : | How interesting. |
| D : | Since around about 2000 or '99, somewhere around about that time. |
| P : | But operating completely independent here in Japan. |
| D : | Each of the companies operates as an independent entity within The Ford Group of Companies in the Ford World, but independent in the sense of brand. So, maintaining brand identity, maintaining a business as that brand, but from the point of view of enterprise efficiency, we look for all of the possible synergies that we can look for in terms of sharing technology or investment or know-how and it's a very investment-intensive business, and is a very knowledge-intensive business. So, these days to be competitive, you have to be able to dip into a really big resource pond and that's why you see so many of what used to be smaller manufacturers now being a part of bigger groups and owned by bigger companies because to survive in today's world there is so much that you have invest in terms of knowledge that small companies really can't keep up with that anymore. |
| P : | And is that true for every company in the car industry, including the ones that are not premium brands? |
| D : | Pretty much so, I mean just to meet the legislative requirements these days for safety, fuel consumption, emissions, all of these things that you're obliged to do just as to get into the start line, price of entry if you like... |
| P : | Okay, all right. |
| D : | ...the know-how that's required to be able to deliver those things gets more and more and more difficult, requires more and more and more investment and know-how. So, smaller companies inevitably, they get squeezed economically by this and then as this happened in the last decade, they become acquired by larger companies that see some value in the brand, and so the merit for the smaller companies that it becomes able to access this kind of pool of information or to leverage the purchasing power, for example, of the big company. These kind of things change the equation then for that small company and make it a smaller brand, make it possible to continue in business and be healthy as part of a bigger entity. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | But at the same time, of course, when you're talking about brands the whole point is that it represents something differentiated, so a Jaguar is not the same as a Volvo is not the same as a Land Rover. |
| P : | Absolutely, yes. |
| D : | And so you have to work hard to maintain those distinctions and I mean people often say, "Well, cars look all the same these days, don't they?" And actually yes they do... |
| P : | A lot of them do, yeah. |
| D : | ...they do and it's not that manufacturers want them to all look the same, but in a sense we get legislated into a fairly tight framework and in terms of what we are required to do technically for vehicles, safety particularly. |
| P : | Surely those regulations must differ a lot from country to country, don't they? |
| D : | Well, they do differ, not so much country to country these days, more block to block, what do I mean? Take Europe as one legislative block... |
| P : | Sure. Sure. |
| D : | That's one of the benefits of being European community. USA is another sort of legislative block. Japan is different and then you have some other countries, which are kind of trying to figure out where they are in the firmament, as it were. Are they going to attach themselves to this pattern or that pattern? It's a sort of tripolar situation really at the moment. There is a lot of interest, I think, in increasing the convergence, moving closer and closer together. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | Certainly, manufacturers would wish this because then you don't have to find three variations of the same answer to solve, you know, legislated versions of the same problem. |
| P : | Right, right. |
| D : | So, we would like to go that way. And generally the governments and, you know, the people thinking about and formulating the legislation in these major markets are all kind of going in the same direction. They want to protect their citizens in terms of safety, they want to, you know, pollute the planet less, they want to use less carbon fuels and they all are going in the same direction. |
| P : | Sure. |
| D : | But trying to get everything going at the same speed, trying to get everybody to actually say, "Well, we can all agree on this," is not that easy. And some of that's political because of the local pressures and some of it may be concerned with the specific conditions in one market so that when you take a country like Japan, geographically small, big population, high metropolitan population densities and density of cars, okay, Japan will say, "Well, we have special problems. We want to do all of the things everyone else wants to do, but we've got kind of special problems. So, we want to do it with a twist." And it's the with a twist bit that causes, you know, every manufacturer to go, "Okay, you are right, with a twist," and then America has a different set of, you know, local political things that it needs to negotiate and there's a twist there. So, it's those sort of with a twist things that give the manufacturers fits, but the general tendencies are all going the same way, everybody is trying to make cars that are safer, cleaner, and less fuel consuming. |
alternative fuels：代替燃料
ethanol：エタノール
hype：誇大広告
endgame：最終段階
ample：豊富な
arable land：耕作に適した土地
sunk cost：埋没費用 (支出済みで回収できないコスト)
down the road：今後
interim：暫定的な
screw around：時間を無駄遣いする
（ D: David, P: Peter ）
| P : | Are we going to be seeing Jaguars and Land Rovers that run on alternative fuels? |
| D : | Well, we already have Jaguars and Land Rovers that run on alternative fuels, but it depends on... |
| P : | Oh, excuse me. |
| D : | ...what alternatives we are talking about really. |
| P : | Well, I was talking about ethanol or whatever... |
| D : | Well, I mean at the moment we produce cars that basically run on gasoline and diesel. |
| P : | Yeah. |
| D : | And, yes, there will be products in the future that will run on something else, but, you know, then we get into the debate about what they should run on. |
| P : | Sure. |
| D : | And to be honest, I mean, there's a lot of hype at the moment about, you know, bio this and ethanol that and hybrids and so on and frankly there is no single horse to back here, that's going to be the almighty solution. Probably, we are looking at a period in the next 5 or 10 years where manufacturers will start to offer everything, consumers may try everything and some solution may fit to a certain consumer or a certain market condition better than others. That solution may not be quite right for somewhere else. To me anyway, none of these things is the endgame, I think it's all, you know, a little bit of shuffling that's going on and on, and I don't think hybrid's the at the moment, but it's developing a role. I don't think in reality the planet is going to grow what would otherwise be foodstuffs and then turn them into fuels, I don't see that happening, I don't think that's a politically survivable... |
| P : | I must say I hope not, yeah. |
| D : | ...yeah, I just don't see that being really - you can do it on a - all of these things can be done on a small scale, but you start thinking about rarely replacing petroleum products, rarely replacing that volume, I don't see it coming off in that way, so you know a country like Brazil where they have ample supply of material that they can use, waste the material mostly that they can use to produce a kind of bio-fuel... |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | ...fine, but the idea that somewhere like Japan starts growing bio-fuel, I don't think so. What are the economics of that, and then you should pay someone else in another country to turn their arable land from food production into fuel production, I don't buy that either. So, I think that there are some limits there, even though you can burn the stuff, it doesn't necessarily follow that everyone is going to end up doing that. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | And if you think about the investment that's already out there in the car industry and the investment and it's out there in the oil industry, how do you distribute this magic fuel, because without distribution you don't have consumption, so it's one thing, you know, to discover this new sort of Holy Grail fuel, but it's another thing to distribute, those kind of challenges are not met yet. Hydrogen, for example, wonderful idea, you can burn it in engines very much like today which is a great idea by the way because that means that all the sunk cost of the industry can still be used, but how do you store it, and how do you distribute it. |
| P : | Right, right. |
| D : | We don't have answers to that yet. That may be 10, 20, 30 years down the road, fuel sales 10, 20 years down the road, that's why I said, I think, this is a sort of interim period where we are going to see lots of different things kicked around and there will be a lot of... |
| P : | Experimentation. |
| D : | ...political footballs involved in this before technology is moved as to something that really could be a rather more almighty solution. ...I came for a - I was very fortunate to be chosen for a program run by the European Commission called the Executive Training Program in Japan. We kind of short-handed to ETP, and I took part in ETP4. The program is still running. It's up now to the ETP20 something, I can't remember the number now, and that was in 1983. I came out for that program and it was an 18-month program. First year was language school... |
| P : | All right. |
| D : | ...with daily language school from probably 9 till 3 everyday and then you go home and prepare vocabulary and you practice some Kanji and you... |
| P : | That's pretty intensive. You must be invaluable to head office in England because... |
| D : | Tell them, please. |
| P : | No, I mean really to be able to understand the thought processes behind the decisions made by your Japanese colleagues here is something that not all - I mean, not very many businessman, non-Japanese businessman here can do probably. |
| D : | I am not sure whether I do either, but I think I recognize the signs when I don't, which is perhaps just as important. I can't put myself in their place and I realize that. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | That's one of the - I think that's after you have been here a while, I mean one of the clear things is that you are a non-Japanese and you never will be. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | No matter how many hours you prepare to put into learning the language. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | That's - you learn that and a bit more but that's it, but one of the important things that you acquire is the understanding of when you don't understand, and then you kind of have to let people have their run to the point where you understand again, kind of thing. So, it's a little bit like skimming stones, you know when it touches the water and when it flies through the air. You don't - you are not necessarily in continuous touch with every single thing that's going on, part of it you understand intimately but another part of it you don't understand until it gets a bit further on and you see what the result is and you have, okay I understand how we got there now. I think it can be uncomfortable at first because it's like, I don't know, it's like taking the hands off the wheels or something... |
| P : | Yeah. |
| D : | And riding a bike with no hands or something, you know, and you want to grab the handlebar, but you shouldn't - you kind of, I suppose, learn that you shouldn't interfere at that point, you have to let things run because the fact that you don't understand isn't a good enough reason or you don't completely understand isn't a good enough reason to screw around somebody who does understand. |
| P : | Interesting point. |
| D : | So, try to let it run and I suppose I feel a lot more confident after several years in Japan to do that because... |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | ...you trust the people. |
Daniel Edwards / Managing Partner
Heidrick & Struggles Japan
Heidrick & Struggles Japan
Gov't plans net taxation on financial income
Unemployment hits 9-year low
Matsushita Electric in biggest-ever recall
Expanded coverage: Businessmen switch ties for leis
hub：拠点
island hop：島を巡航する
latch on to：興味を惹かれる
in-flight entertainment：機内エンターテインメント
across the board：全体的に
go off the beaten track：一般的な方法を外れて
itinerary：旅程
（ PS: Paul, PB: Peter ）
| PB : | How many destinations does Virgin fly to out of Japan now? |
| PS : | Out of Japan, we just have a daily service to London. |
| PB : | To London. |
| PS : | Yeah. |
| PB : | Okay. |
| PS : | But that connects on with our own services or with our partners to, well, you know, dozens and dozens of destinations. |
| PB : | Right and are you flying - do all of your flights originate out of London or do you have flights from one foreign country to another foreign country, from the point of your - being an English company? |
| PS : | Yeah. Well, very much the hub is the UK. |
| PB : | Right. |
| PS : | We do actually have a few flights that go on, so for example our flight that goes to Hong Kong then goes on from Hong Kong to Sydney. |
| PB : | Okay. |
| PS : | We also have some flights in the Caribbean that start in London, but then island hop. |
| PB : | Okay. |
| PS : | So, we are pretty much a UK hub based airline, but there are a few flights that go on. |
| PB : | What sort of services have you found that the Japanese travelers particularly enjoy or latch on to? |
| PS : | Well, very interestingly we get very, very good feedback about our in-flight entertainment from Japanese travelers and, you know, watching movies seems to be very important to Japanese. One thing we do have that works very well is video-on-demand on board... |
| PB : | Right. |
| PS : | ...so you can stop the movie, you know, go to toilet, go and have a walk around the cabin, come back and start again... |
| PB : | Right. |
| PS : | ...not many airlines have that at the moment and that seems to score a lot of points with Japanese. I think Japanese travelers care a lot about food as well, so we have bento boxes on board. The presence of Japanese cabin crew does well for us. |
| PB : | ...the job you're doing now, does understanding the Japanese psyche play any kind of role in it? |
| PS : | I think it does actually, yeah. Obviously understanding the needs of travelers is very important to us and if we want to succeed in this marketplace we need to understand what services are important for Japanese, which destinations they want to go to, so understanding the Japanese psyche is important. I think especially now because I detect coming back to Japan this time there are changes going on in our market. Japanese used to be, I think, quite nervous travelers and, you know, they used to want to go to the same destinations that everyone else had been to. They very much used to want to travel in large groups and stick together and have everything organized for them. Still a large part of the market is like that, but this time I detect a lot more independence and... |
| PB : | Among younger travelers or across the board? |
| PS : | Not necessarily. No. Across the board. In Japan, now people seem more confident to go off the beaten track and to organize things for themselves. You know, package tours is still a big, big part of the market, but every year there are more and more people who book their own air ticket, book their own hotel and arrange their own itinerary. |
| PB : | Right, the internet has really opened everything up in that way. |
| PS : | That's helped a lot too, yeah. |
sweeping changes：抜本的改革
modernize：現代化する
（ PS: Paul, PB: Peter ）
| PB : | Within the air travel industry as a whole in Japan, how do you see the role of Virgin and how do you see that developing? |
| PS : | Okay. Well, I think we've got an interesting role to play here because we are a relatively small fish in this particular pond. You know, we have our daily flights from Tokyo to London. We don't have the kind of market power to come in and make sweeping changes in this market... |
| PB : | Right. |
| PS : | ...but I think our mentality is that we do want to be a leader, so where we can we would like to encourage the market to modernize. In terms of our own operations, I think, we would love to expand here too. You know, there were some very interesting other Japanese cities that I would love to see a flight from, for example, from Osaka to London or from Nagoya to London at some point in the future. Right now, this year the market probably isn't ready for it and we need, you know, the Japanese economy to continue to recover for another year or two. We are very much committed to Japan and we would like to expand our operations here at some point in the future. |
| PB : | Okay, the Nikkei Weekly, are you a reader? |
| PS : | I am not yet. No. I mean to be completely honest with you, when I was approached about this interview, I had heard the name, but I didn't know much all about Nikkei Weekly, since then I have asked a couple of people if they know a bit and most people do actually so - and you have been - I don't how I have avoided Nikkei Weekly so far, but I know you have a very good reputation. |
David Blume OBE / Managing Director
Jaguar & Land Rover Japan
Jaguar & Land Rover Japan
Abe unveils bold post-Kyoto initiative
How to deal with the 'other' party
Anti-TOB measures being adopted
Expanded coverage: Tourists catch glimpse of real Tokyo
recruitment services：採用業務
financial deliverables：資産報告書に含まれるレポートのひとつ
SOX：上場企業会計改革および投資家保護法
audit：会計
interim：暫定的な
turnover：売り上げ
joint ventures：合弁事業を興すこと 、共同企業体
（ D: David, P: Peter ）
| P : | Hello, this is Peter Barakan. Today I am talking to David Price, who is Managing Director of Robert Half Japan. First of all, perhaps you could explain for some of the people listening to this podcast that don't know what your company does, what Robert Half Japan is? |
| D : | Robert Half is the world's leader in specialized recruitment services. Robert Half International actually consists of Robert Half, which has various recruiting lines of business as well as Protiviti, the world's largest specialist in financial deliverables, SOX, internal audit consulting, management risk, and Robert Half Recruitment Services consists of specialized recruitment for permanent as well as interim management contract positions. |
| P : | Okay, you are headhunters. |
| D : | We are headhunters. |
| P : | Okay. |
| D : | That's another way of saying it Peter. We are recruiters. We are headhunters. |
| P : | But you are a pretty big company, okay, so obviously you are dealing in fairly large numbers of permanent executives. |
| D : | We have 13,000 staff globally. Our turnover for 2006 was a bit over 4 billion. We have over 350 offices globally for the recruitment business, and Protiviti has another 50 plus offices. So yes, we are pretty large. Globally, we are pretty much everywhere. We have offices in North America, Australia, Europe, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong; soon to be several other locations I probably shouldn't mention them yet. |
| P : | Now, so in your case even now 90 something percent of the company is going to be foreign companies, are they, or... |
| D : | In our case now, we are dealing... |
| P : | ...joint ventures? |
| D : | ...we are dealing more, I would say, maybe not 90, a little bit less. We have a little bit more than 10% of Japanese companies we are dealing with because from the beginning, one of the reasons I came here I was able to create a company with a culture that I - the culture and to go after the business that I felt was happening in Japan now or would be happening in the future. In other words, to face the realities in the market as they are and as they will be because as I said earlier this market is changing and becoming more like us, where if you look at England or Australia or America, the recruiting companies work with the whole market. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | And traditionally here some of the Japanese recruiting companies work with the whole market, but they don't do specialized recruiting for various reasons particularly well, if I may say so. And most of the foreign recruiting companies that are here just work primarily, if not entirely, with foreign companies. That's a very small slice of the business pie. |
| P : | Right. Well, I can remember going back to when I first came here in the mid '70s and most Japanese people had a very negative attitude towards changing jobs, period. |
| D : | Yes. |
| P : | That obviously has changed gradually over the years and I guess the bursting of the bubble, as it were, in the early '90s had a big effect on that. People realized that, you know, the lifetime employment environment changed an aweful lot to the point where you couldn't rely on having a job for 20, 30 years, like you could before. |
| D : | ...one of the ways the market is changing is that specialized skill: finance, sales, technology, legal for some, a few examples. |
| P : | Really specialized people, yeah. |
| D : | Fairly to really. |
| P : | Okay. |
| D : | But such people, if they have the skill set, in some cases they don't need the bilingual ability, in some cases they do but they don't have to be - companies are having to forget about nationality here if there is such a skill. For example, with the SOX, Sarbanes-Oxley, the legislation that all companies listed on the US Stock Exchange have to pass this checklist when they do their financials every year. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | These professionals are in such sort supply that if someone can do it and someone is bilingual and if someone has the skill set and the language capabilities... |
| P : | There are about 100 companies who will want them. |
| D : | Yeah, they have to bring them in, they have to bring them in on a contract basis from wherever they can get them practically and it's going to be even worse with J-SOX because the Japanese companies are going to have to be and they are going to need - there's going to be all the Japanese companies that are going to have to pass this yearly regulatory sort of audit checklist. They have to comply and they have to have J-SOX specialists. There's going to be a huge demand for that, all companies listed on the first section... |
| P : | Right. |
downturn：沈滞
recession：景気後退
business acumen：商才
cold calling：売り込み電話
CPA：公認会計士
sought after skill：求められているスキル
（ D: David, P: Peter ）
| P : | You were talking about some of the differences in the recruiting business here and in other countries; you mentioned places like Europe and Australia. I remember going to Australia once actually and being amazed that somebody I had only met five minutes before offered me a job. And again, this was about 30 years ago, maybe the Australian market has changed somewhat since then; perhaps they are not quite so adventurous. But what do you think are the unique challenges that you find here in the Japanese market? |
| D : | Well, getting enough good candidates, to me I hate to keep coming back to the same thing but it's just such a candidate-short market and it has been even before this current boom and it will be afterwards in some areas. In some areas, not as much; if you look financial services front office, when there is a downturn that slackens quite a bit, but if you look at finance and accounting, financial control for manufacturing and service companies, they need better people. Even when there is a recession, they need people who can help them cut costs. They need - they meaning manufacturing service companies in Japan, need professionals that can work cross departmentally and better operational, very good business acumen, critical thinking skills, and increasingly as the market internationalizes and then the different industries here open up and the trade barriers drop. It's happened, you know, in the tech world, it's happening, in medicine, it will happen in construction more in the future. They are going to need these type of professionals. And likewise, sales here is not so much relationship-based as it used to be, so they need people who have, dare I say, western sales abilities; cold calling, business development, not just taking all the relationships and carrying them forward. So, I would think if I could say two broad areas where need is the greatest is finance and sales; having said that because of all the changes in business, legal. |
| P : | Okay. |
| D : | Legal is coming up. |
| P : | Right. |
| D : | And the challenge is just as there are only 20,000 CPAs, compared to 300 and plus 1000 in America, country a little over twice the size of Japan. There are I believe I read there are only 21,000 Bengoshis here and there are hundreds and thousands of them in the States... And because of this great demand and just various things pulling businesses in different directions, there is more and more of a need for contract positions now not just in tech but also in finance, we are seeing some in marketing, sales and marketing, creative positions. Once again, like you will see in other parts of the world, marketing and creative positions or advertising companies are being contracted out increasingly. I think we will see it in HR, legal... |
| P : | When you say contract positions, you are talking about short term or... |
| D : | Paid either by the hour... |
| P : | Oh, that kind. |
| D : | Essentially by the hour, day, week or month, you know... |
| P : | Oh, okay. |
| D : | ...depending upon the role and... |
| P : | You were saying that a lot of these people are going to be bilingual and what's crossing my mind is that a lot of Japanese people who are going to be bilingual and have these special skills are people who have studied at universities in other countries, a lot of them in the US I would imagine. And if they have these skills, if they have the bilingual ability, they are going to be much better paid working in the US probably. Are they are going to be coming, I mean do you find a lot of the people you are looking for are not coming back to Japan to work? And if so, do you find out wherever they are and bring them back? |
| D : | Well, we are betting a lot on - another reason I came to this company is because, for example, we have over 275 offices in the States and some of them have been there for decades, so I know we are in touch with a lot of bilingual people who are or will be coming back and that's one of the things we are working to do is networking with those offices so we can have a good connection. Networking with universities, networking with associations, so we can have - because it's all about the candidates. I mean don't get me wrong, I value our clients and we work for them, they pay the bills, but in order to serve them we have to get the candidates... |
| P : | Absolutely. |
| D : | So we definitely - I would say other than the East Coast, New York, DC, maybe Chicago and of course the West Coast with LA and San Francisco, the salaries are definitely higher here, among the highest in the world. |
| P : | Really? |
| D : | So they soon should be coming back and a lot of Japanese nationals eventually want to come back. Some of them are like me and they like living outside of their country, maybe better; but a lot of them end up coming back. So we definitely want to keep a good line and they are so valuable here and that's why it's all about value and they are so much in demand here that you will see the wages continue to go up for, once again, people and especially people with highly sought after skill set such as SOX. |
| P : | Okay finally, Nikkei Weekly, are you a reader? |
| D : | Occasionally, yes I am. I like the - I love the articles, the local and global articles and in fact we'll have to start bringing it in the office to subscribe. |
| P : | Will you find as a magazine it's of use to people like yourself and other people? |
| D : | Sure. |
| P : | English natives, English-language natives working here. |
| D : | Absolutely. It's got really a - I have enjoyed when I have read it. You know, a lot of the articles let me know what's going on in the business and social world here. |
Paul Sands / General Manager
Virgin Atlantic Japan
Virgin Atlantic Japan
Setting rules for constitutional change
Rents in Tokyo rise skyward in 2007
Financial firms face modern challenges
Expanded coverage: With avenues that entertain, Kichijoji continues to charm
upsurge：急激な高まり
brand-building：ブランド構築
earned media coverage：メディアによる報道
palpable：手に取ってわかる
distilling：引き出すこと
rationale：理論的説明
win-win：お互いに有利な
（ R: Robert, P: Peter ）
| R : | In our business -- the business of public relations -- there's a revolution going on in Japan right now. |
| P : | Oh really? |
| R : | Yeah, there's a tremendous upsurge in activity as Japanese companies -- that need to build their future communicating with foreign audiences overseas -- are driving because they realize that to build their business, to export from Japan, such a great trading nation, that they have to communicate effectively to all the people, who need to hear their stories so that those people will do and think what they want them to do or think...which is to buy Japanese products and to think highly of Japanese brands. I think a lot of that thinking is now penetrating the consciousness of Japanese corporate headquarters in a far more worldwide brand-building way than has ever been the case before. So, our business was naturally attracted by the opportunities this trend represents. |
| P : | That's really interesting because I've been living here for over 30 years and I wonder why nobody realized that they had to get a message out to the outside world until now. I mean, Japan has been an exporting country for a long time. |
| R : | It sure has been, but I think what's new is that there's a 'generation gap' in Japan and a lot of the younger executives -- who through the rotation system spent some time in Europe or the United States -- can see the power of marketing, the power of new ideas in public relations, to move people, to create markets and to create a buzz where none existed before. Now they are assigned overseas, but they come home to Japan, where we have had domination of marketing by the Dentsu model, where advertising and the power of advertisers has been far more important and controlling than the earned media coverage that public relations people undertake on behalf of clients. Around the world, public relations is regarded as a profession. In Japan, not so much so because marketing is more understood as an advertising thing, a paid for thing, but that's changing now... |
| P : | Interesting, because working in the media, you get a palpable feel for how advertising is dropping in the media, especially in radio, its becoming almost dead now... |
| R : | Right. |
| P : | So much more of the advertising money is going towards the internet. |
| R : | Indeed. |
| P : | So, it makes a lot of sense, I mean, if people aren't getting satisfaction out of advertising then there has to be another route to go. What kind of PR would you, for example, be recommending to people that have traditionally worked more in advertising? |
| R : | First of all, almost everything in public relations begins with relationship- building, making an introduction that starts with a logical rationale, connecting a company's interests to the interest of the journalists' readers and of course that would be of interest to their editors, and the advertising department (like creating a 'win-win'). A lot of our work is focused on taking the complexity of any company and distilling that complexity into a simple and compelling message that through repetition in a relentless way, through multiple communications channels, reaches the target audience and educates them about the premise our clients are trying to communicate. I think in Japan in the past, the PR profession crystallized in the 1950's after World War II. The business was born at a time of simple press agentry, hospitality with journalists, sending out a press release, fairly straightforward and simple stuff, but today PR has evolved to all these new things like stakeholder relationship management, corporate reputation and blogger outreach. It's become a far more advanced business, and in Japan, change is happening only slowly, but all of a sudden it's happening now, massively across the full spectrum of industry. |
modi operandi：運営方法
implementation：実行
painstaking：骨の折れる
ideation：観念作用
colossus：大国
lopsided：一方に傾いた
captive audience：（嫌な話でも）聞かなければならない聴衆
（ R: Robert, P: Peter ）
| R : | ...now we are seeing that around the world if you look at who is blogging today, more blog posts, according to Technorati (our recent researcher), are in Japanese compared to other languages. Isn't that a fantastic thing to know? |
| P : | Really? |
| R : | Of course, people assume it's English or maybe they assume Chinese, but no, number one is still Japanese, according to the most recent data, so the 'share of voice' for Japan in global communications can be much higher than it has been. I think the country can 'punch much more above its weight,' to use a boxing metaphor. |
| P : | So, you are obviously keeping up with people, who do research on what -the things like you just mentioned - the fact that there's more blogging going on in Japanese than other languages, do you try to keep up-to-date with what's going on in other countries as well, I mean, on a global level? |
| R : | I think that is what's unique about our business model here at Edelman because it's almost like in the public relations industry, in the world of communications, really there are two worlds in Japan. There is English and the foreigner -- that world -- and there's Japanese and 'us in Japan.' The intersection between those two has not really been that great in the past, but now I think we see a tremendous integration of corporate communications. A large Japanese multinational historically -- almost all of them -- have had really decentralized communications, where American communications are done out of New York and European communications done out of London, and head-office in Japan has really been more concerned with domestic communications in Japan. But now we are seeing headquarters in Tokyo wanting to play the leadership role in global communications, in an integrated way, where the Japanese world and the foreign world are the same world. |
| P : | Okay, so you've got two probably extremely different modi operandi. |
| R : | Sure. You know, we are aware of the difference in communications overseas. Well in Northern Europe or North America, communication is direct to the point... |
| P : | Right, right. |
| R : | In Japan, context is important. It's up to the recipient of the information to interpret what is being communicated sometimes. A foreigner gets frustrated sometimes listening; thinking, "okay, well, get to the point," so with the languages themselves, with their styles being so different, building 'one voice global corporate communications' on behalf of a company or its products...that's really hard actually. |
| P : | Up to now, are there any problems that you find unique to Japan or not necessarily even unique, but the things which you find hard to get your head around in this country? |
| R : | I wouldn't call it a problem; I'd call it a difference or a distinctive quality. |
| P : | Okay. |
| R : | When it comes to communications, quite often the big picture or the strategy is the most important thing. Every communications campaign needs a theme, it needs key messages that people can relate to, think of it like the lyrics to a song. |
| P : | Okay. |
| R : | But in Japan, I think the big picture in a communication strategy does not come nearly as naturally or as quickly as the tactics of the program, the fine details of implementation. So, when it comes to the quality of a communications program, every last detail in a methodical painstaking way is developed to the finest standard of perfection, but sometimes the big picture, the strategic ideation, 'what is the overall point here of what we're saying'... that especially as it relates to overseas communication does not come naturally. So, it takes to getting used to... |
| P : | I know exactly what you are talking about, and we won't go into details of that now...how would you like to see your market develop here in Japan? |
| R : | Well, think about Japan's size and reputation in the world, a global colossus in the automotive industry, consumer electronics, in all of these different areas Japan is supremely successful, but when it comes to marketing or communications, Japan is not known to be successful, so our objective here is to make Japan a world player and to project its power as a great country when it comes to communicating on behalf of Japanese interests. We are a foreign company globally, but here in Japan -- incorporated in Japan as a Japanese entity -- we are using our business as a platform for the expression of that new Japanese voice in [international] PR, the public relations business, and that's never been done before. Japanese PR has dealt with Japanese audiences, so we are going to transcend all that [around the world]. |
| P : | One impression I've had over the many years of living here is that corporations here in Japan, when they are trying to get their message out, they always try to do it from the point of view of themselves which is okay, I mean, obviously you know that has to be done too, but there seems to have been not enough emphasis put on the receiver and quite often - I don't know, I find it a little - it seems to be a little bit lopsided and perhaps corporations can actually acquire a negative image through not being sensitive enough to the way people receive their message. |
| R : | Excellent question! It comes naturally for a Japanese corporation to communicate top-down in a one-way corporate monologue of control where there's a mass consumer that's the captive audience. But these days these companies are realizing that credibility does not come from control, credibility comes from an actual conversation with those people, and a conversation means asking people what they think, it means if you are coming with a new product, maybe you give it some bloggers and they check it up beforehand and you take their feedback into consideration. This trend is called co-creation. Think of the iPod; do you like your iPod if you have one because of the color of it or the way it feels in your hand? Probably not...most people like an iPod because it's their music when they want it, how they want it. So, they have to co-create the experience of that product, and I think if other companies follow that in terms of their communications, just as you were asking, they are going to be very successful. |
| P : | Finally, how aware are you of The Nikkei Weekly? |
| R : | Well, very aware... |
| P : | You're a reader? |
| R : | Indeed indeed, and I would say that all of my employees are readers as well. I mean, we are in the public relations industry...our job is to consume the media. |
| P : | Of course. |
| R : | I have the one job where it's okay to read the newspaper while I am working or to surf the website or to listen to the radio. |
David Price / Managing Director
Robert Half Japan Ltd.
Robert Half Japan Ltd.
Shareholders suddenly getting vocal
Fine line for Abe on Yasukuni
Latest trend in travel: investment tourism
Expanded coverage: S&B Foods promotes spice of life
MITI：通商産業省(Ministry of International Trade and Industry)
low-end：低価格の
commission：歩合
prisoner-of-war camp：戦争捕虜キャンプ
blue chip stock：優良株
（ V: Vivian, P: Peter ）
| P : | How did you find the business environment in the late '60s, early '70s and, well, I mean throughout if you like, but particularly going back that far, it must have been a lot more different from the western business environment then than it is now? |
| V : | Yes, especially if you go back to say 1970, of course, Japan was having their big economic boom and yet, for example, our sort of business computers and terminals and cash registers and all that accounting machines, Japanese were still searching. And so we could do very well here and people like Fujitsu and so on were still struggling, but they were getting a lot of support from MITI. So, the thing that I noticed most was there was a tremendous amount of government advice to put it right politely... |
| P : | Guidance. |
| V : | ...guidance and it wasn't all bad, but they did sort of - well, we spent an awful lot of time worrying about, for example, what MITI thought or other ministries thought just to make sure we were doing things that wouldn't, you know, sort of offend the Japanese culture. Bear in mind, we were big. I mean, we had about 8,000 employees in 1970 which doesn't sound like much now but we were a very big company then. And, you know, we were sort of a model company, we had a manufacturing here and, you know, so we tried to sort of be a good citizen. And as I say, lots of companies did things with us Japanese companies, wanted us to sell their products, even some of the stars today came and, sort of, asked us would we do stuff with them, yes, and in our arrogance too in many cases we said, "No." |
| P : | Was that your decision to make in some cases? |
| V : | No, unfortunately those were head office decisions... ...I don't know if you know much about NCR, but it was, you know, a huge monopoly, all cash registers in the world were sold by NCR and then gradually, gradually it changed, but that mentality existed that, you know, if it's not invented here in America it is, you know, it is not much good to us. And they - I should say we learned the hard way in many instances that as Japanese progressed - for example, the first electronic cash register wasn't invented by us, it was invented by the Japanese. |
| P : | Really? |
| V : | And many of our head office people said, "Well, you can't have an electronic cash register," it sounds laughable now. |
| P : | Right. |
| V : | And that was 1972, when the first electronic cash registers were sold here and then, of course, we responded and, you know, we did well. But the problem we had is the same sort of problem the automakers in the US have now is that our costs were higher and in fact we got out of that whole low-end cash register market. But fortunately because of our retail expertise, you know, we could hang on to the department stores and, you know, the big sort of supermarkets and so on because we knew what they needed in terms of their infrastructure and so on whereas the Japanese were still learning. Now, of course, it's a different game, everybody knows, but still amazingly at that top end of the market, NCR is still very good here in Japan. Department stores, we have a huge share of the market and that's partly because we have been so successful in the US, for example, Wal-Mart is our big customer, so... |
| P : | Oh right, you don't get any bigger than that. |
| V : | But we were ahead of the times and I think, you know, if I think back on my NCR career, almost everything we ever did here in Japan was ahead of the times. We were the first people to treat technicians in the same way as white collar workers. We were the first company to pay commissions in Japan, you know... |
| P : | To your salesman? |
| V : | Yes, you know, for a big company to pay - we were the first company to do many things. |
| P : | And did all of those decisions pay off? |
| V : | Absolutely. I mean, we were very, very successful as a result. In fact, I've got a magazine which I have shown Russell where we were on the cover in 1970, we were voted by President Magazine, the second best managed company in Japan and there is, you know, of course, all the statistics about profit and return on assets and everything else. But the thing that struck them was that we were managed in a sort of hybrid fashion between the American ways and Japanese ways; try to take the best out of both and so, you know, it was a nice experience, yes. |
| P : | Do you think it was the flexibility in management style that was responsible for this? |
| V : | Yes, very definitely here in Japan, this man Anderson, his boss was an Englishman, who - they had been in prisoner-of-war camp together. This guy gave him absolute autonomy and they bought buildings and they did this and they did that - all stuff which corporate didn't interfere with, and it was that flexibility which allowed the company to a) grow and b) you know, make an awful lot of money which perhaps in Europe and even in the US, they didn't sort of have. In more recent years, the company became very centralized and they lost some of that and I think perhaps it hurt NCR a bit. You know, we were a public company here, we were a public company way, way back on the second exchange and then we got on to the first exchange, that was in the '50s. |
| P : | Good Lord! |
| V : | And we were a blue chip stock. 70% was owned by head office, but 30% was our regional joint venture partners who sold off their shares and so on and so forth. So, you know, we were a very highly regarded company and very, sort of, well known in that sense. |
entrepreneur：起業家
spout：とうとうと話す
triangular merger：三角合併
adamantly：かたくなに
（ V: Vivian, P: Peter ）
| P : | So what kind of consulting do you like to do? What do you think is your forte? |
| V : | Well, you know, especially I find with smaller companies, you know, they are somewhat wanting in management skills and that's not their fault. You know, you get an entrepreneur who has got a great idea and he runs with it and then he sort of doesn't quite know how to organize properly and, you know, all the sort of simple things that are not my sort of invention but that I remember from my past years and that seems to help people. And I think, without being too boastful, you know, for younger people to have somebody, who is older just to sort of say to them, well, what you are doing is good and maybe you can tweak it a little and that perhaps is motivating to them. Then, I have had a few clients that are slightly bigger and that's where perhaps it's even easier for me because all I do is spout the stuff that I have known for years and years, you know, helping reorganize... |
| P : | Right, right. |
| V : | ...people and so that is also quite fun, yes. |
| P : | And what's it like guiding people through how to do business in Japan now compared with when you were NCR, right? Do you feel things have changed quite a lot? |
| V : | I would say - and of course, I can't really answer that question in the sense that I never helped, you know, smaller companies in the old days, but my guess would be that it's easier now because rules and regulations are heck of a lot less and they are trying to, sort of, encourage a small business here and, you know, just one example is that you can start a company for next to nothing and so on and so forth. |
| P : | Right. |
| V : | And they really have been quite good. In fact I have been amazed at how flexible they have been in terms of helping all kinds of small businesses, including Japanese small businesses, but certainly foreigners have not been excluded and I think it's now extending, you know, up the ladder. There is, for example, this triangular merger kind of thing which big Japanese business didn't want and the government pushed it through, I think, quite rightly. I mean if you want to be a global - if you want to fight in the global arena, you have to play by global rules. |
| P : | Right. |
| V : | And I was really - I was astonished that Keidanren, for example, you know, adamantly opposed this triangular merger situation. |
| P : | I expect they were quite honestly scared that a lot of large Japanese companies would be taken over by Americans. |
| V : | Well, you know, I mean the arithmetic is clear. American companies are much bigger. But, I mean, all they are saying is our management is lousy because nobody is going to take over Toyota or Honda or, you know, a lot of very fine Japanese companies and it's only the ones who are trying to keep their jobs who worry. But, you know, if you are a shareholder, you should welcome it, you know, because if someone is going to buy your company for a lot of more money than your current management can, you know, generate and share value, you should be very happy. But all these things take time, but I think the government for once really saw it correctly and this will shake things up. There is no question. It will shake things up. |
| P : | Right. |
| V : | And, of course, the first thing that the Japanese companies did, instead of sort of saying, "Well, let's manage better," they've all tried to, sort of, make maneuvers to make it more hard for companies to take them over and it's a sort of defensive mechanism and to be fair, there are lots of Japanese industries that are really poor by international standards. For example, the whole pharmaceutical industry, I mean, they are right, because there are a couple of good companies, but most of them, I mean, could be snapped up because they don't - they are not really that good, but of course they do have market share and so they are very attractive to some of these huge foreign companies. |
| P : | Finally, 'The Nikkei Weekly.' In your position working in Japan as an English speaker, have you been a reader of 'The Nikkei Weekly'? |
| V : | Well, as you know it used to be called the 'Japanese Economic Journal', and I read it assiduously. |
Robert Pickard / President, North Asia
Edelman Japan
Edelman Japan