What’s Japanese for PR? Nothing

Public relations.

It’s the one U.S. export that Japan needs badly, many observers believe, but they say the Japanese cannot quite understand the concept.

“The concept of public relations came to Japan after the end of the war,” explained Ko Shioya, president of Hill & Knowlton Japan and vice president of the public relations firm’s New York parent, Hill & Knowlton. “It came to Japan with Gen. (Douglas A.) MacArthur, together with notions of freedom and democracy.” However, he added, public relations has not been entirely accepted.

In the United States, public relations involves creating an understanding for or good will toward a firm or person. In Japan, public relations primarily involves promoting or staging product demonstrations. The Japanese do not like the idea of self-promotion, according to Shioya.

Companies in Japan have not been as concerned with their corporate image as are U.S. firms, he said. The Japanese have failed to come up with a translation of “good corporate citizen,” he explained during a recent U.S. visit, because there is so little awareness of the phrase in Japan.

Need to Communicate

He maintains that Japanese companies, in general, have not had to communicate with their markets. They are mostly concerned with taking care of their employees and selling their products without putting a high priority on earning corporate good will.

But the country’s expanding role as a world economic power is putting new demands on Japanese corporations to be world citizens. “If you talk to a lot of Japanese and ask what is their goal, they will say ‘to become a kokusai-jin’-- to become an international person.” However, he added, Japan is widely perceived on the international scene as a “taker,” so Japanese firms are acting to counter that image by giving money to charities, museums and universities. “Leaders of Japanese companies are aware they need to communicate more humbly and more effectively,” Shioya said.

Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller are the two major U.S. public relations firms now operating in Japan. Other major Japan-based firms include Dentsu PR Center, International PR Co. and Osuma PR, according to Shioya.

“It’s a competitive business in Japan with about 100 large and small companies,” he said. The firms deal with media relations and marketing--”we call them ‘event makers.’ They are good at coming up with product demonstrations, etc.”

Shioya says the public relations industry in Japan is expected to gross $200 million this year, up 3% from last year.

No Outside Help

He said one major difference in the use of public relations in the United States is in “crisis management, which is not done in Japan at all.” U.S. firms, Shioya said, are likely to seek an outside public relations consultant to help when a crisis hits a company. But that remains a foreign concept for Japanese firms, according to Shioya.

For example, when a Japan Air Lines jet crashed near Tokyo in August, 1985, the carrier did not seek any outside help. Shioya said that, in the aftermath of the accident, JAL was criticized heavily, partly because it did not respond to the many inquiries from the press and from passengers’ loved ones quickly enough. The criticism intensified the pressure on the company’s president, who later resigned.

To explain to Japanese clients that they can build a new image by using a consultant, Shioya draws an analogy to golf, a highly popular game among Japanese business executives. “It’s like learning to play golf,” he says. “You turn to a consultancy like you would turn to a golf pro. It may be expensive, but you learn faster and better in the end.”

Ironically, when Japanese firms need the expertise of U.S. public relations, they seek out firms in America. A company such as Mazda, for example, uses the Los Angeles office of Hill & Knowlton to gather information on the political and economic climate in the United States.

“Ideally, they should come to us in Japan,” Shioya said.