For simplicity I am going to look at localising brand taglines specifically, and use them as a proxy for brand positioning, because ultimately this is the point. I am going to use “tagline” to mean either the semi-permanent brand tagline motifs, as in “Honda – the power of dreams”, as well as product-brand taglines, and also campaign taglines, such as Apple’s “Mac vs PC”, which are obviously more transient, but essentially the process is the same.

In some of the examples, e.g. MasterCard, a campaign tagline ends up becoming the brand tagline, for a good few years at least, which is far from uncommon, so overall I feel confident generalising in this way.

It is also true that the same principles can be applied to other executional choices when localising e.g. the visual realm, choice of music, voice actor, you name it. All elements ultimately need to be considered within the same framework.

In general I think there are 3 approaches to bringing a global tagline into Japanese.

Approach 1: Leave it in English

• Although in many European markets and some Asian, proficiency in English is high enough to just go with a tagline originally crafted in English, that is not true of Japan, so unless it is really, really simple the target audience will not understand it.
• This can be justified if you can assume that some people will get it, and for the rest spell it out in some form or another: sometimes just writing it in katakana to make it feel more familiar, or else explain it in Japanese without attempting to replace the original English.
• This is often the most expedient approach for brands looking for global consistency more than local emotional connection.
• I believe it is usually a big missed opportunity and only really makes sense if the brand trades off its global status almost exclusively in differentiating itself.
• It is most likely to make sense for a brand that has lots of products that can have a product brand story told about them, and particularly if they are really innovative products.
• An example would be Nike’s “Just do it” motif. It really helps that the original is so simple that most of their target audience would get it, and the fact that their products are designed around universal human features, namely their bodies. However, it would be wrong to believe that Nike loses nothing by not having a proposition that is as powerful in Japanese as “Just do it” is in English.
• Another example would be the original iPod and iPod Nano TV campaign by Apple using the dancing silhouettes that became so iconic. If you have a break through product with visceral cut-through creative and your brand benefits from its foreign / global cache, then you can more or less leave it alone. These cases are fairly rare though.

Approach 2: “Adapting” it into the Japanese Culture

• The adaptation approach aims to bring the same meaning to life in Japanese as a copy line that stands on its own without any mention of the English mother line
• You usually create a variety of alternatives that range between being direct translations on one end of the spectrum, through to ones that take more license with the original meaning on the other, but might push a resonant button among the Japanese target (see option 3 below)
• The closer you are to the direct translation end, the more it feels to the audience like a direct translation, and this serves to emphasise the foreignness of the brand again.
• What usually happens in this scenario is you are able to hit on a copy line that more or less says what the original English line says, but it does not resonate as much as the original does in English, but the way a lot of brands think this is an acceptable price to pay for global consistency and feels like a safe choice
• The more license you take the more chance it has to resonate and feel like a made-for-Japan communication, but at the cost of consistency with the brand globally, causing unease for global brand managers
• Localising the tagline but then applying it to creative assets (such as TVCs, transit ad creative, web assets, etc) that have not been adapted or transcreated themselves leads to communications that do not quite add up to the local audience.
• If a brand has the local resources to develop local creative assets then I would usually be recommending the 3rd approach below, but these lines are blurry, and there are examples where this adaptation approach has been very successful.
• Foreign brands should not be trying to become or act like domestic Japanese brands, but rather to find a way to leverage their foreignness to give them an advantage over local competition (e.g. aspirational, innovative….), since the local players will usually always win on grounds of familiarity. Hence retaining an element of the global campaign is often a vital ingredient, not simply an acceptable compromise, and this would apply to Approach 3 below as well.

A priceless example

The Priceless tagline / proposition for MasterCard started off as a campaign but has more or less been woven into the fabric of the MasterCard brand as a permanent part of its identity. In general all credit card brands assert that when you pull out your credit card the brand name on it says something about who you are, and prestige often bordering ostentation is the traditional territory of the category. In contrast MasterCard’s agency developed this brilliant proposition:

“There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard”

The insight behind the campaign is that there are special moments in life, often serendipitous, usually shared with loved ones, that no amount of wealth could purchase. For a credit card brand (= access to money) to be dramatising this insight shows that the brand understands that there are more important things than itself. This implies that it is magnanimous, humble, and big-hearted, traits that many people would prefer to have associated with themselves. And besides the prestige can be communicated through the creative execution itself. It also taps into the post-80s/90s materialism sentiment that in fact luxury is at heart experiential, so it was and still is very much “of its time”. Copy lines never really work in isolation, and the high-end feel of the execution adds “luxury” attributes to MasterCard’s brand image.

“There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard” – Priceless Campaign localised to Japanese

The creative device evolved to become a very simple set up stating the price of an experience or thing, but then trumping it with an emotional outcome, which is “Priceless”. The simplicity of it is the hardest thing to adapt into Japanese, and actually this is always the case. The best copy lines or creative devices are sort of hacks of the language that manage to say something profound and impactful in a very simple way.

The only way to adapt this into Japanese AND retain the original meaning is to spell it out, but to find a copy line that does it in a relatively short and elegant way, and I believe they succeeded with “お金で買えない価値がある”, literally “there is value that cannot be bought with money”. MasterCard actually retain the English word “Priceless” as a branding device, more than because they assume their Japanese target would understand what it means. Many will not, but it becomes another branding device that adds value to the brand through repeated use.

Approach 3: Transcreation of the Concept into the Japanese Culture &Psyche

• This approach aims to take the DNA of the idea, and find a way of bringing that core idea to life within the Japanese psyche or culture in full knowledge that this will take it away from the original meaning.
• In terms of the creative development process it amounts to going back to the creative brief, rewriting that, effectively adapting that, and then starting afresh with the creative development working with Japanese planners and creatives.
• At that point what makes it the same campaign? Just how far can you strip a campaign back before it becomes something different? In fact, how far can you strip a brand back before it becomes something different?
• In its purest form the best creative briefs define the emotional response that you aim to elicit and empowers the creative process to press that button, which is always going to require language and culture-specific communications.
• Since the emotional responses of humans are universal, a creative brief stated in these terms and accurately translated into local languages can be the bedrock for a brand that plays in the same emotional territory wherever it is advertised in the world.
• To my mind this is the ideal approach since if a brand does not strike an emotional chord with people in a market, it will always be hobbled and less robust as a global brand because of it.
• However, the stimuli that will elicit the same desired emotional response will differ culture by culture, potentially target segment by segment too. This fact alone goes a long way to explaining why adapting brand strategies to multiple markets is such a tricky process.
• Usually you do not have or in fact are not able to strip a campaign concept to such bare essentials, for various reasons. For instance, the global client just does not have the bandwidth to get into the conceptual nuances in foreign markets. It is, after all, just one of many they have to manage. It is certainly true to say that the more they trust their local brand and agency teams, the more likely they are to allow the brand to be transcreated.

Semantic Ambiguity

One of the things you learn from working in the adaptation and transcreation areas a lot is that really good copy in any language leverages ambiguities implied by the choice of words to claim as broad an emotional relevance as possible while still “feeling” sharp and precise.

A good example that is close to my own heart is for the brand Indeed, the world’s biggest job search site, and adapting its global brand platform “How the World Works” into Japanese for its Japan market launch campaign, developed by our colleagues at MullenLowe in Boston.

The genius of this tag line in English is that it is a familiar expression that implies wisdom and knowledge of a complex human system, but by matching it to the context of recruitment sets up a double entendre with its literal meaning of how people find work, which is of course the raison d’être of the Indeed brand. The sharpest of communication strategists among you will have noted that this is an inherently flexible device since it says “we know how the world of employment works”, and, by inference, how to get you the right job, or to the companies recruiting the right candidates, but it does not say what that “How” is. The “how” comes in via the creative.

With the Japan launch of Indeed in 2015 the “How the World Works” campaign, which doubles as a brand tagline, was transcreated to carry a similarly powerful emotional evocation: 「その仕事が、世界を動かす」which back-translated says, “work that moves the world”. Brand positioning connoisseurs will have already noted that the savviness double-entendre is not retained in this transcreation, and instead emphasises what is more emotive connotation to Japanese people, the idea that your work has a higher purpose in the societal sense – a core brand value for the Indeed, although one that is not made explicit in its English tagline. If there is an intended ambiguity, it is in the way that 「世界」in Japanese can been both “your world” and “the World”, which was exactly the range of mental scales that we want the brand to transcend.

As someone who works across Japanese and English everyday, I am tempted to believe that the Japanese language, because of the unique way it has evolved as a sequence of assimilations of foreign languages, is extraordinarily flexible in the options it gives copywriters to play with, an unprovable theory that I intend to explore in a future post.

Approach 4: Stratified brand platforms

Is there a 4th approach? Actually, I think there is. It is where the international brand’s communications are stratified into global creative, usually in the approach 1 or 2 adaptation approach, usually projected through traditional media like TV. But then in other “high touch” channels like social, digital engagement and event-based promotions, the approach is closer to approach 3), being highly contextualised. This is often also very pragmatic given the centralised structure of many global brands, since seeing the same TV ads go out in all markets is very reassuring to those brand stakeholders who are not necessarily engaged in the nuances of international market cultures, but allows the freedom to the more ‘under the radar’.

A good example of this hybrid approach is RedBull, at least for the first few years after they launched in Japan, when they ran the global “Gives you wings” animated TV creative but simultaneously built out their extreme-sports & music-based engagement programs. It is my impression (I am not a RedBull expert) that now as a mature brand in Japan they have dropped the “gives you wings” TV work and have built out their extreme sports and music platforms into the dominant local brand-building platform, and very effective it is too.

Photographer Credit: Jason Halayko/Red Bull Content Pool

Idealism vs Pragmatism: what is the true path?

Ultimately I do not believe there is a single “right way” since brands exist in the real world where budgets and mental bandwidth can be constrained, and so I can accept that any of the 4 approaches above could actually be the correct choice for the organisational context in which the decision is made, and all of them can work. But from the point of view of someone like me who loves to help brands resonate, flourish and become the transcultural conduits of fresh ideas and compelling propositions, approach 3 is the most exciting to be part of.

Japan has, I believe, a good image for customer service and I have certainly had numerous conversations over the years with foreigners visiting Japan who have been blown away by the attention to detail, courtesy as well as genuine human kindness.

Some of the traditions that set Japan apart are things like beautiful and meticulous gift wrapping in retail stores, similarly delicate presentation of food in restaurants, cleanliness in general,  things running on time, and on a higher level safety and reliability.

At the same time I have heard many anecdotes, mostly from foreign residents in Japan, but also sometimes from visitors, telling of mind bogglingly annoying treatment.

What’s going on here? Is this another one of Japan’s “contradictions”?

Japanese cultural stereotypes

This topic will get very cloudy very quickly if I do not focus it a bit more. Some of the examples I mentioned in the first paragraph are intertwined with public service investment policy and regulation that I am not qualified to go into. What I want to focus on instead, even though I am not exactly qualified in this area either, is the human end of it. People delivering customer service. Even with this focus the threads of arguments can quickly get intertwined with more complex national issues like how the education system works, but I will try to steer away from too many sweeping generalisations.

There is an ever so slightly derogatory Japanese word for theorising about Japanese people and what makes them different. It is called NIHON-JIN-RON, and in general I try to steer clear from it, since there is so much tripe written in the genre, and it can get borderline racist. In this case though I need to flirt with it in order to get anywhere near the heart of the question, and besides Japanese people actually love it when they hear that they are different and unique. I apologise in advance for any offence caused and would welcome being put right in public e.g. via my twitter account @jameshollow.

Apologies done, first of all let’s try to define the right conditions that can deliver the ultimate in customer service. I would argue the following ingredients are key:
– rigorous training regime based on high standards
– staff with pride in their work, want to do their bit
– knows their company / product really well
– access to personal information (either their own memory or access to data)
– empowered individuals, prepared to make own decisions
– creative / think on their feet to work out bespoke approach
– empowered to work around / bend rules if circumstances demand

I suspect that the first 3 conditions are met more often in Japan than say my native UK, hence people’s pleasant surprise in general with service quality when they come and stay here. Overall I suspect the average level of care is higher.

Incremental improvement of service?

In the same way that Japanese manufacturers have used detail-oriented management processes to constantly improve quality and reliability, so service brands have applied similar practices to hone their care, and hence general standards of care and support are high. A first hand example of this is the difference between JAL and BA cabin crew. You can share a joke in the galley far more readily with a BA crew member, but having flown with young kids on both airlines, the JAL crew were obviously trained on the essentials of caring for a family with young kids far better. There was no comparison.

I also believe that although not absolute, Japanese people are a little bit happier in a role that serves others, because it feels like they are doing their bit for society, and in Japan values are a little bit more tilted towards serving society than serving yourself.

For the 3rd point about knowing your product better, the more stable job market in Japan that meant people stayed with the same employer for longer may in the past have conferred an advantage here, but today with the contract working structure I am not sure there is anything to call out here other than perhaps training again.

I would though point out that training works both ways. Japanese people are used to absorbing lots of information from a young age, so their ability to suck up detailed product information and protocols may well be higher. I suspect they are less likely to challenge the principles behind them as well.

The Japanese customer service fail

The last 3 criteria though explain why Japan often finds it hard to deliver really really special customer service, outside the family run hotels and restaurants where as owners the service providers are more empowered.

Japanese employees I would say are less empowered to make decisions for themselves, more afraid of the potential consequences of breaking the rules or doing something differently, and not just for themselves, (a type of thoughtfulness in itself, but one that may not help the individual guest they are serving), and hence unable to make people feel ultimately special.

Taking the UK as the counterpoint, I guess the first 3 criteria are on average less often met, but if they are the last 3 are more possible than in Japan.

America for its part is renowned for encouraging the extremes, serving up the best in the world and the worst in equal measure. The statistical Bell curves for most things tend to be broader in diverse America than the tighter clustering around the average in homogenous Japan, whether its for height, education standards or I suspect customer service.

Japan can deliver dire service too however, but I suspect it is of a slightly different kind, not rooted in pure sloppiness but instead in inflexibility. The relatively tighter training combined with the customer service provider’s frequent inability to think for themselves (while at work anyway) can lead to some terrible experiences, and I believe there is a particular type of fail that annoys us long term residents most because we know where it stems from.

A nice example I heard recently was from an Italian friend who runs a luxury watch importer. He was taking his extended family out to a restaurant, an Italian no less, as he concedes the Italian cuisine in Tokyo is pretty damn good. He had a booking from 7pm and arrived with his large group 5mins early in light rain. At the door he could see the empty table reserved and prepared for them, since it was the only one big enough to seat them. The waiter though would not let them in the door until 7pm, since that was when they booked from. My Italian friend was literally pulling his hair out as he recounted this experience, so I can only imagine the earful he gave the waiter. “If that happened in Italy, I tell you…” I doubt it made much difference though.

I have heard enough stories like this over the years now to have a label for them: “the does-not-compute fail”. It’s a bit like the frustrations you suffer when you present a slightly uncommon set of circumstances to any hard wired operating system, only the option of “wait and speak to the operator” is not available and even then escalation may be fruitless. It’s caused by the dutiful member of staff following a set of rules or regulations to the letter without feeling any sense of empowerment to interpret them in the spirit in which they were intended, or empathy with guest’s discomfort or frustration for that matter. Although you could also call it a failure of the training regime too.

It is not just in customer care that this trait can treat is head. I have heard from numerous sources, both anecdotally from friends working in the field and more officially in reports that the safety regime in the Fukushima Dai-ichi suffered from this kind of vulnerability, so the results of this kind of auto-piloting are not always trivial.

In the same way that it is certainly not true to say that western companies don’t get the training bit right, since many do, it is not true that no Japanese customer service professionals do not have the wherewithal or charisma to make things happen for their customers. Many do, but there a relatively fewer of them I bet.

Hybrid brand cultures as the ideal?

The interesting question is what happens when you blend corporate cultures and the different balances of personality types you get between Japan and other markets, as NISSAN and Renault have attempted to do with their alliance discussed here. I have also written before about the Japan hybrid at a cultural level in the context of the Japan x Brazil hybrid as being a particularly interesting one, but there are many more being explored today.

In fact this is something that Japanese service brands are exploring with increasing vigour as they finally dig into their enormous cash stock piles and expand their operations overseas, and threaten to steel the mantel of Japan Inc from the Japanese maker brands.

One notable area of service brands which were relatively quick of the blocks in this are the Japanese convenience store chains like 7eleven, Lawson and FamilyMart. They are applying their processes for training staff in customer service, also hygienic practices when serving food, areas which give them a competitive quality advantage in many Asia countries. Combined with best practices in logistics management and other infrastructure they are expanding rapidly in Asia, already boasting over 50k stores between them outside Japan.

Another brand trying to do something similar, only with a bit more fashion sense, is UNIQLO, the phenomenally successful Japanese fashion retailer, dubbed the ZARA of Japan. They have massive plans for growing out a chain of stores across the US and Europe, currently growing at 50% YoY, and have at the heart of their strategy, to complement their innovative fabric technologies, a Japanese level and style of in-store etiquette to charm their customers.

UNIQLO believes in this as a USP to such an extent that they are flying store managers from Europe and the US back to Japan to be trained in a Japanese store. The idea of handing a customer’s credit card back to them with two hands, a little bow and a “let me return your card madam” may sound old fashioned, but it might just be the next big thing in retailing.

Service brands as Japan’s biggest export

Although manufacturing remains Japan’s biggest export, I expect to see more Japanese service brands picking up the slack. There is a lot of intent out there in M&A space to back this up, with the likes of Softbank, JapanPost, KuroNeko (Black Cat) logistics, RECRUIT and many more buying into foreign markets.

And of course Japan is now getting an influx of tourists like it has never seen before. Although the growth is coming from everywhere, the numbers are dominated by visitors from Taiwan, China, SE Asia and other Asian countries, so it will be challenged to show off its warm hearted neighbourliness like never before.