Asia-Pacific Power List 2023: Hikaru Adachi, FamilyMart

Hikaru Adachi

Chief marketing officer, Asia
FamilyMart
Japan
Member since 2021

Despite being appointed chief marketing officer of major Japanese convenience store operator FamilyMart, in October 2020, at the height of the global pandemic, it has not proven to be too much of an obstacle for Hikaru Adachi.

A veteran in the marketing industry, Adachi has seen record high sales of several of FamilyMart's products since taking up the mantle as CMO. This includes record beating sales of new chicken product "Fami-Kara" and new bread product "Famima The Cream Bread". Due, in part, to these successful product launch campaigns, FamilyMart was the top convenience store chain in Japan by guest count for 21 consecutive months (Apr 2021 - Dec. 2022).

Adachi has frequently used fun as part of his winning strategy. A playful campaign to advertise FamilyMart's popular boneless Famichiki proved a hit over the festive period last year when chicken, particularly KFC chicken, sees 10 times the popularity with Japanese consumers as the most popular choice for Christmas dinner.

FamilyMart played on this competition with KFC and launched its "2nd Most Popular Chicken in Japan” campaign which created a lot of buzz as selling "No. 2 (not No. 1)" proved quite a unique and eye-catching ploy.  

When he's not masterminding buzzworthy campaigns for FamilyMart that lead to record breaking sales, Adachi is a regular contributor to Marketing Agenda, the largest marketing conference in Japan, both as a council member and in terms of planning and booking speakers. He has also been instrumental in leading industry support for the LGBT+ community.

During Tokyo Pride Week, FamilyMart added rainbow packaging to a number of its products and donated a portion of the revenue to various LGBTQ advocacy groups. It was also the only campaign supporting the LGBT+ community by a Japanese convenience store. 

In the past year, Adachi has also provided volunteer based marketing sessions to several major universities across Japan, including Hitotsubashi Univ., Waseda Univ., and Housei Univ.

Prior to joining FamilyMart, Adachi was best known for turning around the fortunes of McDonald's in Japan where he was CMO from 2015 to 2018. Following McDonald's, Adachi took on the role of senior product marketing for APAC at Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go and other games.

However, he left the company after just two years, telling an interviewer that because the pandemic postponed a big project he was meant to work on, he felt he would not be able to make a contribution commensurate with his salary.