Marketing is communication. Yet Japanese companies are concentrating on operations to the neglect of communications. This is not only a question of linguistic (in)ability. It is more an interpersonal issue, for there can be no real communication in the absence of respect for the other person as a human being. The companies that do not respect people as people end up focusing not on people but on operational aspects. They end up concentrating on ways and means -- on methodology. They divide  marketing into functions and processes.
  
A Chinese friend recently told me, "The trouble with Japanese is that they have forgotten Confucius." I suspect he meant that Japanese have forgotten the Confucian teaching that there can be no entrusting where there is no trusting -- if you are going to ask someone to do something, you have to trust him to do it. This same Confucian philosophy pervades the thinking of Samsung Chairman Lee Hun-hee. In trust there is strength. Trust yourself as well as others.
  
By and large, Japanese can trust their art and aesthetics -- like the blacksmiths who made fine swords or the artisans working in back-street shops who are able to grind and polish metal parts to micron-level precision and "know" it is right even before they measure it. These are such refined skills they qualify as art. And as such, they speak to -- communicate with -- global markets.  It is what we should all be striving for: artful marketing that has such intrinsic power that it resonates with would-be customers and draws them in.
  
Takasu Shunpei

Marketing Space