Boeing: Telling the Japanese story

The story:
In 2014, Next Inc. was invited to pitch for the Boeing PR account in Japan, which includes both commercial airplanes and defense products.

Our competitors were three global giants, with names that would be familiar to most. It was not an everyday situation for us.

The client briefly explained that while traditional PR would continue to be a cornerstone, Boeing Japan wanted to slightly shift the focus from traditional PR towards storytelling, social media, and richer web content. And, most specifically, it wanted to more actively tell the story of Boeing in Japan.

Now that made sense.

Next Inc is not a traditional PR company that can arrange content through partners. We are a content company that also offers PR services. Telling stories is what we do; how we distribute them varies from case to case.

And what a story there was to tell! An estimated 25,000-30,000 Japanese work indirectly for Boeing in Japan manufacturing, say, 35% of every 787 Dreamliner. The cooperation between Boeing and Japanese suppliers and vendors, as well as university and military organizations, for more than 60 years has been overwhelmingly important to the whole Japanese aerospace industry.

We have several different channels to tell the story – first of all the Boeing Japan web site. We also publish 2-3 blog posts per month, as well as 8-10 Twitter posts monthly.

Another important channel is video. We localize relevant videos from Boeing’s vast archive of highly fascinating videos, but we also produce original videos here in Japan. And then there are print productions of various kinds.

In addition, we localize and distribute 3-5 press releases during a typical month. We also provide additional support in the form of organizing press conferences and other media events.