TOKYO: Troubled Japanese electronics maker Hitachi will launch a
global brand campaign - dubbed "Inspire the Next" - this month to
bolster overseas revenues and reduce the sting of its expected US$1 billion loss this year.
Blaming the global downturn for it cutting 14,700 jobs, Hitachi is
banking on the global brand drive to achieve a 50 per cent rise in
overseas earnings.
It expects to double corporate advertising expenditure outside Japan for
the brand exercise, which has been assigned to McCann-Erickson. The
appointment of a single agency was made "to ensure uniformity and
effectiveness" and marked a departure from Hitachi's previous practice
of using a different agency for each region.
Hitachi's corporate advertising outside of Japan has focused on the
principal business areas of each region, with the format and message
changing from region-to-region. However, the new campaign uses "Inspire
the Next" as the basis for a series of advertisements, which will have a
uniform format and messages. Hitachi will use print, TV and the web,
with the main focus given to its information systems, and telecom and
electronics businesses.
A campaign website has been launched at
hepp://global.Hitachi.com/inspire/ (see media-i, p12), while the TV
campaign will kick off later this month.
