Hasta La Creative!

The management consultant Peter Drucker once wrote, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two — and only these two — basic functions: marketing and innovation.” This would be a surprise to most Japanese CEOs. They would replace the word “marketing” with “engineering” and “manufacturing.”

During my 31 years in Japan as an advertising executive and marketing consultant, I have seen many businesspeople acknowledge that Japanese companies do not understand marketing. As a result, marketing does not have a core function in the Japanese business model.But unless Japanese companies urgently embrace marketing they risk becoming (even) less competitive in the global marketplace.

There are three reasons Japanese companies struggle with marketing:

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