First of all we’ld like to express our feelings of compassion with the people of Japan being hit by the earthquake and tsunami disaster that has now led to very serious problems with the nuclear facilities of Fukushima. We can hardly imagine how it must be like to be hit by such a disaster that caused so many casualties and homeless people, and growing concerns of the nuclear impact. We can only hope that the consequences of the disaster will soon be contained in some way and that appropriate measure can be taken to prevent the situation from becoming worse.
What I’ld like to discuss here is the way that the Japanese government is communicating about the recent events. There has been some criticism in the last days on this approach as being not transparant and complete enough according to western standards. To be honest, I don’t think there is a perfect way to communicate on a complex disaster of this scale.
Personally however I was positively surprised by the Japanese communication, based on my experience in doing PR for Asian companies. I recall hosting several interviews with local Benelux press and executives from Taiwanese and Korean companies, that in some aspects were quite surreal. The cultural differences between western Europe and Asia are huge and not to be underestimated, and it goes without saying that these differences are reflected in the way that Asian companies and governments tend to communicate. From this background knowledge, I felt that the Japanese were really trying to communicate very clearly, according to their cultural standards, whilst trying to limit an outbreak of panic in the country. But again, my experience with Asian companies is fairly limited. So I thought it would be interesting to get a perspective on the issue from someone who has a lot more experience in this area.
So I asked Eric Dauchy, a seasoned Brussels based PR and communications professional who is the European PR Manager for Japanese company Toshiba TEC Europe for his views by answering a couple of questions.
1. Eric, first of all, can you give us a little background on Toshiba and your role in the organisation?
Eric: Toshiba Corp has a workforce of 200,000 and are active in industries that range from nuclear power stations (yes, there is a Toshiba-built plant at Fukushima and no, the company has not yet communicated about the state of their reactor; see below) over escalators, bullet trains, laptop PCs to Point of Sale systems and industrial label printers. The different divisions of this huge global company operate as independent units.
I for one, am responsible for the European PR of Toshiba TEC, a B2B organisation that works for industries such as retail, transport & logistics, healthcare and government.
Cross-divisional marketing communications is still in the early stages as each division is being considered the realm of one particular business group. So, the exchange of communications between division is limited at the moment and I have not received reports from any other Toshiba division about the the impact of the quake.
2. Can you share some insights into how the Toshiba organisation in Japan doing at the moment and if have you been affected by the recent delepments?
Eric: Considering my remarks above I can only say something about the current situation for the Toshiba TEC division. At the moment things are business as usual. Our manufacturing facilities in Singapore and Indonesia have not been affected by the earthquake and the tsunami and our stock in Europe is sufficient, with additional shipments currently on their way to the port of Rotterdam.
Our manufacturing facilities in Japan are currently being inspected for possible damages but otherwise look in good shape. TTEC serves 50 % of the Japanese retail market – the world’s third-largest – so any catastrophe in the country will surely impact our business. However, please bear in mind that out of a population of 126 million, the northeastern province of Tohoku, which bore the brunt of the quake and the tsunami, has a population of 9.9 million. That is a lot of people for sure but it helps to put things a bit in perspective as to the state of the country as a whole. It’s unclear however how the situation in Japan will unfold in the next days or weeks however with the current situation at the nuclear facility at Fukushima.
On a personal note, I received emails from colleagues in Japan that all their families were safe – one colleague had to walk home last Friday because all public transport in Tokyo had come to a standstill. His 35km trek took him 7.5 hours. I haven’t heard of any injuries from anyone I know, including my PR partners in Japan.
3. What is your opinion on how cultural differences between Asia and western Europe/US are affecting the way that Asian companies communicate? Also, what’s your opinion on how the Japanese government is dealing with communication and providing information to the public in the disaster?
Eric: In general, Asian and Japanese companies are considered to have a bad reputation when it comes to communication – that is, when we talk B2B. For consumer-related products however, marketing is very much a given. Not so for B2B . For anyone interested in the topic, I can highly recommend reading two articles (1, 2) from the PRSA that give an indication of how PR is being perceived in Japan.
As for giving information to the public – that is always a very difficult moment for any Japanese organisation. The highly hierarchical management structure means that top management is often in the dark about issues at hand until the information has been pushed upwards by echelons of lower-ranked management unable to solve the issue at hand.
Toyota is a classic example – the CEO responded only after weeks of US media reports about their cars’ safety problems. Consensus is an essential element in the decision-making process and plenty of time is spent on reaching consensus at each managerial level before it is being passed on to the next level. Quick decisions therefore are never to be expected in terms of communication. Also, there is the crucially important aspect of ‘face’ – in Asian culture, ‘face’ is all. You cannot have your superior lose face because of you, a lower-ranked staff member. That means, everyone will go out of their way to save the ‘face’ of his superior until it’s impossible to ignore the issue and pass the problem upwards.
For PR matters, this is a terrible thing – you see time go by but without the power to take action until senior management gives you the auhthorization (or not) to step in and inform your target audience.
Again, for anyone interested in the topic please please read a quick introduction to this aspect of Asian life.
As for the perceived lack of communications, I think Der Spiegel did a fine piece this week.
The conclusion: we should not be holding up a mirror against Japan and expect our standards to be upheld in all parts of the world. Instead, there is a good reason for every nation or region to have their own cultural identity. So is also the case in Japan. To further dive into this fascinating topic, please read this interesting article that will help to broaden our horizons (I hope).
Disclosure: Toshiba TEC Europe is a client of LVT Benelux PR and we work closely together with Eric and his team.
