The origin of brands whether it’s an ironic statement like Virgin or an emotional gesture to family like Amstrad or whether it’s just an ego massage like the countless companies that take the founder’s surname says a lot about the company’s attitude to its identity. You protect your brand name like your family name, after all the two are one. Or if it’s ironic like Virgin, let’s call the company what we’re not this may reflect an audacious business attitude.
But what of Hitachi? The origin of this brand says a lot, volumes even, about the company’s attitude. The founder, Namihei Odaira, designed the Hitachi brand mark before the company was established in 1910. Such was his belief that a brand was necessary to win the trust and confidence of the people. Odaira used two Chinese characters ‘hi’ meaning ‘sun’ and ‘tachi’ meaning ‘rise’ and this was designed to capture his vision of a person standing before the rising sun, planning for a better future.
That was almost one hundred years ago, before brand became such a hotly debated subject. Today Hitachi is ranked the 23rd largest company in the world (Global Fortune 500 (2004)), with net sales of US$82.4 billion. However the focus and importance placed on brand is as significant today as it was when Odaira created the company in 1910.
In the UK Mark Wilkin, head of brand and communications, is the brand’s guardian protector of this Eastern vision and he’s proud of the company’s heritage: Our Japanese roots are not something that we have to apologise for. A lot of the key attributes that people associate with Japanese brands manifest themselves in Hitachi’s products: reliability, high quality and innovation.
Wilkin joined Hitachi in 1989 as distribution sales manager in the business systems division. At the time the company was expanding into new territories in the Middle East, Africa and Russia, Being a tall guy with ginger hair people used to joke that they picked the wrong person to go into Moscow and the Middle East.
However what Wilkin lacked in espionage qualities he compensated for with product knowledge and a general ease of communication. This type of role demands a lot of face-to-face especially in the Middle East and Southern Europe. And I knew a lot about the product and was able to cover the benefits very effectively. One of the problems with selling hardware is that you can lose sight of user-benefits: unless you’re able to communicate these you are never going to sell the products.
This comes easy to Wilkin as he has a natural interest in technology. I didn’t get an engineering degree but technology has always fascinated me. Working for Hitachi where cutting-edge technology is alpha and omega has been a mixed blessing for him. In one respect it enhances his enjoyment at work, in another he’s tempted to indulge in this feast of electronic toys and gadgets though he restrains himself with the help/instruction of a strong-willed wife.
While his enthusiasm for technology may have caused some ripples on the domestic front it has served him well in business. Within 10 years Wilkin was made European product marketing manager on the business side ie. looking after storage, display and security products. Four years ago the company merged B2C and B2B operations and with that Wilkin took up his new role as general manager product marketing. This meant looking after TVs, DVD players, camcorders as well as the business products. Wilkin comments, This was a steep learning path. Fortunately I had a good team of marketing and sales people.
On the challenges faced as a result of marketing to consumers, he states that talking to a much broader group of people and one that is not necessarily English speaking were two of the main challenges. Yet he’s keen to add that they met business objectives in terms of growth (quantities and revenues) and profitability. In 2002 he was promoted to group executive business planning which primed him perfectly for his new role as head of brand and communications.
Of all his roles the current one is probably the most challenging. There are problems with the brand in Europe: awareness levels are low and the brand message is inconsistent across the 24 group companies operating on the Continent. These problems are exacerbated by the brand’s pre-eminence in the Japanese market. Wilkin says: It’s everywhere. Elevators are made by Hitachi, as are bullet trains, banking systems and check-out systems. It’s also visible in newspapers as it’s a huge business that’s traded on the Nikkei.
In Europe, Hitachi does not enjoy the same level of exposure and this coupled with what Wilkin describes as a shy approach to marketing has led to a brand that’s failing to realise its potential. Is this a case of a multinational attempting and failing to transfer its marketing policy from one culture to another? Wilkin is adamant that this is not the cause: I’ve found that the [Hitachi] companies I’ve worked for are keen to embrace and utilise European skills, there’s not an attitude of ‘because it works in Japan it has to work here’. There’s a flexibility and benevolence within the company and an encouragement of participation in the decision-making.
In going some way towards explaining the company’s brand issues he suggests that there’s a latent reluctance to push the parameters of its identity. Sometimes we’re shy about making more of the brand. We let the products speak for themselves. The company’s extremely innovative it patents more products than other companies but as we move forward we have to do a lot more to build brand awareness and convergence. He states that the target audience is oblivious to the company’s strapline: It is ‘Inspire the Next’ but most people are unaware of that, they have no idea what that means in a Hitachi context. We need to make this relevant and believable to business users.
But if half the battle is acknowledging the problem, then the company is striding towards a solution and this is being steered from the very top. Sir Stephen Gomersall, formerly British diplomat in Japan, was appointed as the European chief executive last October and part of his remit is to develop the brand with the overall objective of increasing business in Europe. Wilkin took up his new role at the same time: he reports directly to Gomersall and is essentially assisting him with the brand brief.
Wilkin has nine direct marketing/brand staff, he’s recently appointed marketing agency Loewy and he’s also working closely with marketing communications staff from the different companies. The key is that people feel involved and that they are involved. This is a huge task, each of the group companies have their own thoughts on how they see the brand. This is not merely a result of different people taking different approaches to marketing but also of the fact that the companies vary drastically in their offerings. While most people know that Hitachi makes electronic products, its financial companies, power stations, automotive-parts manufacturers there’s even a foundry in Birmingham are less well known. These companies have got quite different channels to the end-user. They are so diverse is it possible to have a core message?
To this end Loewy is currently carrying out qualitative and quantitative research, primarily on business users across Europe. This aims to gauge the level of understanding amongst this audience: What do people say when you mention Hitachi? What sort of targets should it set in terms of improvement? What are the best communication methods to reach this audience? Wilkin adds, We also have to understand why they like buying the products and where there’s good brand awareness we need to ask ‘why?’ In terms of increasing brand awareness the team will be paying particular attention to Germany, France and the UK.
Apart from the skeleton of the project Wilkin is reticent about where it’s headed. He doesn’t want to speak too soon: Loewy will return its findings and he will use this to form the objectives of the campaign. He’s also determined that all of the objectives are measurable and so he’s unwilling to hypothesise on what path the research will take: I am a big fan of measuring against objectives. I suppose this comes from my sales background I don’t see why this should change just because I’m working in marketing.
The irony of working at the frontier of new technology was not lost on Wilkin. Hitachi has released a new DVD recorder hardware that allows customers to skip ads. Wilkin states that he would definitely use this facility himself this could imply that TV advertising will get nowhere near Hitachi’s media schedule this autumn. With the traditional brand building platforms gradually eroding, Wilkin states that it’s time for the marketer to get clever and he candidly points out that this is the sole purpose of the creative agency.
And in some ways Hitachi is ahead of the game: it has a product placement deal plasma TVs and DVD recorders in the summer blockbuster War of the Worlds, and is being leveraged with a promotional offer. This is not its first time on the silver screen: a Hitachi vacuum cleaner featured in Bridget Jones’s Diary.
This dalliance with Hollywood may impact on Wilkin’s campaign but given his methods and measurable approach it is unlikely that he’s banking on something so tenuous. Instead the campaign will be based on a finely-crafted plan with clear objectives, methods and expected results. There is no doubt that Namihei Odaira the brand’s avant-garde originator and creator will be pleased with this Zen-like approach to restablishing Hitachi’s status.
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