Japan has given the world a great many marvellous things. Cutting-edge technology, reliable cars, bullet trains, cup noodles and Pokémon…
Tom Richards, director of automotive at Elan, explores how Japanese businesses and manufacturers have also globalised several enviable business practices. Not only have they improved the way organisations operate around the world, but they may also create the conditions for success in our new AI reality.
As AI changes how people find information, how can Japanese business principles offer a way forward?
‘Kaizen’ is the concept that most people have heard of. It’s the idea of continuous, incremental improvements which look tiny in the moment, but lead to huge, compound developments over time.
Kaizen, combined with Just-in-Time manufacturing (another Japanese innovation), is what led Toyota to becoming one of the biggest and most successful vehicle manufacturers in the world.
There’s ‘omotenashi’, too – Japan’s famous philosophy of hospitality and making visitors or customers feel like the most important person in the moment.
I’d like to throw ‘nemawashi’ into the ring. Nemawashi is the informal practice of building consensus around a big change or a new idea. It means talking through a project with individuals and teams across a business and ensuring it works for everyone before taking a decision.
And for many businesses, nemawashi may just hold the key to ‘generative engine optimisation’ (GEO) success.
Don’t panic: AI has only changed everything
The narrative in the media and in organisations worldwide is that AI is changing everything. It is the very antithesis to kaizen.
The way that businesses operate, the way individuals work, the way people discover things on the internet. There are daily headlines, in almost every media outlet, highlighting how AI has moved the game on, for better or for worse.
And reading those headlines day after day, it’s easy to panic about being left behind.
Any company with half an eye on the future will be considering how it shows up in AI responses, whether in a Google AI overview, a ChatGPT or Claude conversation, or elsewhere.
It might all be rosy. You may be happy with how often ChatGPT surfaces your company in its responses, and appreciate the picture it paints about your products.
Or perhaps the responses are mostly okay, but somehow it just keeps getting certain key facts wrong.
Maybe your organisation, brand or product doesn’t appear at all. Or responses keep bringing up bad news and reviews from media and customers.
PR has an opportunity – but it can’t ‘go it alone’
Many commentators remark that this is a generational opportunity for PR teams, in-house or agency-side, to prove their worth. The data suggests, correctly, that earned media coverage often plays an outsized role in ‘creating’ AI responses.
But this headline assumption fails to recognise that PR departments rarely operate entirely on their own.
Whether PR stands apart within a corporate structure, comes under the wider marketing and communications umbrella, or is handled – wholly or in-part – by an external agency, there are always other stakeholders to keep in mind. No PR professional is an island.
This is where nemawashi comes in; a blueprint for engaging with others to build a stronger case for AI visibility.
Nemawashi’s moment
Nemawashi is all about laying foundations and building consensus. It’s ensuring that all angles are considered and agreed on before proceeding, hammering an idea into a workable strategy that can be adopted across a business.
A company looking to build its AI visibility in the right way will likely need buy-in from several different teams and suppliers. Clear and accurate information from engineers, product experts, sales departments or dealers; web teams delivering effective, structured schema mark-up; social agencies and community managers working in lockstep with marketing and content teams.
And, yes, an effective PR operation – whether in-house, handled by an agency, or a blend of the two. One that can bring approved messages to life, land authoritative third-party mentions (read: earned media coverage) and consult on effectively managing crises and issues.
For a business looking to improve how it shows up in AI responses, a bit of calm reflection and consensus-building may be the best course of action.
AI search is here to stay. And with it, nemawashi is long overdue its moment.
A version of Tom’s article first appeared in PR Moment, the UK PR industry’s go-to resource for PR Insights, PR Data, PR Analysis and PR Events. Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash
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