• Conversations with People and Topics of Focus

  Creating an Entirely New Brand for an Entirely New Company: Nissan-Mitsubishi Motors Joint-Venture, NMKV

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  Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors have made history by establishing the first joint-investment joint-venture in the Japanese automotive industry with NMKV Co., Ltd., a company specializing in the planning and development of minicars. Thanks to the success of the Nissan DAYZ and the Mitsubishi eK Wagon, NMKV is now expected to create outside of its original scope. With the launch of this new company, we were chosen as partners to create the official website which opened in 2013.
  For this edition of funNOTE, we interviewed NMKV Corporate Planning Group’s Mr. Noriyuki Nakazawa (formerly with Mitsubishi Motors) and Mr. Yoshihiro Tanahama (formerly with Nissan). Mr. Nakazawa and Mr. Tanahama both played crucial roles in developing the business of this fascinating endeavor and were also the key driving force behind the creation of the NMKV website. Let us share with you what we learned about their work and the efforts that went into creating NMKV’s official website.

  
  【Profile】

  Mr. Noriyuki Nakazawa
  NMKV Co., Ltd. Corporate Planning Group, HR and General Administration Group Affairs Team, General Manager
  
  

  Mr. Yoshihiro Takahama
  NMKV Co., Ltd. Corporate Planning Group, HR and General Administration Group HR Team, Manager
  
  

  Mariko Ohsato
  Arc Communications CEO & President

  
  

  Yoshihiro Sato

  Web Executive Manager, Arc Communications

  
  
  

  Models of First Cars Produced: A Big Success

  Ohsato：I would like to start by congratulating you on the big success of the Nissan DAYZ and the Mitsubishi eK Wagon. First of all, how did you come to grips with this huge success?

  Nakazawa：It was the first time Nissan and Mitsubishi worked as one and tackled manufacturing. So there were various hardships, but all in all, I believe we managed to produce the results expected of us. The parent companies issued official comments that included words like "the success of the joint-venture" and "further enhance and bolster NMKV", which were very much of a relief.

  Takahama：While working in domestic sales at Nissan, I was particularly attracted by the idea of working on the promotion of minicars. And I thought that, from a sales perspective, the teaming up of Nissan and Mitsubishi would undoubtedly produce hits, and this thought turned into belief when I got to see the actual vehicles. The result brought a sense of relief, but it also gave me confidence in the idea that with such potential, we would be able to set our sights even higher and aim for a mega success on the next project.

  Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and NMKV: Working Together to Create a Structure and Generate Added Value

  Ohsato：So, the cars were off to a good start, but how about NMKV as a joint-venture company? Despite being actors in the same industry, the two parent companies had no particular connections up to that point. Therefore, I imagine that reconciling both working methods must have been difficult at times?

  Nakazawa：I very much hoped that working at NMKV would be a way for me to learn about companies other than Mitsubishi, and that it would also give me the rare opportunity to see Mitsubishi from a different perspective, a view from the outside. NMKV allowed me to do exactly that. The main premise thought by Nissan and Mitsubishi was to build a win-win partnership, and decisions had to be made in order to attain and sustain such a relationship. We also knew that the parent companies, looking to generate added value they couldn't achieve independently, put high hopes on NMKV. This type of expectation is a lot of pressure, but we enjoy the challenge and the sense of mission we face each day. NMKV is still writing the first page of its history, so striving to build a fruitful structure while coordinating the relationship and its two large decision-making processes was an extremely tough job.

  Ohsato：So how did you tackle this challenge?

  Nakazawa：We started by presenting the three main purposes behind establishing NMKV to our employees and the media: "thinking outside of the box", "making sure that 1+1 always equals 2 or more" and "speedy decision-making". Then, based on this, we thoroughly considered what to do next and put them into practice. We set up a meeting board and implemented a firm decision-making system after clearly determining our respective views and positions. Indeed, working in an environment where we have to temperate in two multinational companies, we need our own perspective as NMKV or else we will always end up going back and forth between their diverging opinions without ever coming to any conclusions. As a result of creating such structure, we were able to clearly define our own guidelines and make decisions. This led to smooth execution of operations and, at the same time, we managed to build a framework which generates high added value. Our website shows a picture of a small cog-wheel in between two larger gears, and I think that this cog-wheel perfectly summarizes and symbolizes our role as NMKV. I dare say that we managed to demonstrate the importance of NMKV’s role in taking on tasks that couldn't have been achieved by our parent companies otherwise.

  • 2. Choosing the Partner Who Best Understands NMKV

  Choosing the Partner Who Best Understands NMKV

  Sato： It feels like the question of NMKV's role took up more than half of the time during our meetings for the creation of the website.

  Nakazawa：We were so overwhelmed with the tasks at hand that we did not have the opportunity to discuss our branding strategy. So we decided to put emphasis on the web creation project, and put things in order to understand NMKV’s role while requiring the help of an outside company. Therefore, the criteria for choosing our partner were their ability to understand the nature of our work, think along with us, and concretely express our ideas both visually and textually.

  Sato：During the orientation meeting, your concept of wanting to emphasize your qualities as an automotive company without displaying a single image of a car made quite an impression. To be perfectly honest, I thought that this would be a tough one (laughs). I was very perplexed, but I was also excited to take on the challenges it presented.

  Takahama：We met with quite a few companies and thought you were the one that best understood the nuances of our requests for our website we had expressed during the orientation meeting as well as the one who best expressed them. Some of the companies took the "we will do as you say and accommodate your every need" kind of approach to the job, but that wasn't what we were looking for. On the contrary, Arc Communications had an approach which consisted in honestly telling us what was right and wrong about our requests so that we could pursue the best path. I instinctively felt we could communicate efficiently and effectively.

  Ohsato：Did this project meet your expectations and requests?

  Takahama：Yes, it turned out as we had hoped. We would go to meetings with a vague idea in mind and come out with a clear vision. The following week, you would put that into form and we would have a visual presentation, which would bring up another topic. And the process repeated, but we fully realized the importance of those discussions for the project.

  Nakazawa：The website was very well received by many people amongst which were our own employees and those of the parent companies. Also, you handled all the offline aspects of the project, with the translation of media sessions and so forth. Actually, after reading the final documents the CEO said "It’s a good thing we went with Arc Communications." I think you are probably the partner that best understands NMKV outside of NMKV itself.

  NMKV's Future: Minicars and Beyond

  Ohsato：Lastly, I would like to ask about NMKV's plans for the future.

  Nakazawa：First of all, we have our sights set on establishing ourselves and being recognized in the Japanese market, but we feel there are many objectives to seek. Many people have expectations for electric vehicles when they hear the names of Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors. With minicars, people tend to ask for better gas mileage, but there's a limit to what minicars can accomplish. Electric vehicles have the potential to solve various problems, including the reduction of environmental burden in particular. So that’s something I would like to try my hands at. And at the same time, globalization is another important issue. Minicars are a very Japanese concept, so it might sound strange to talk about them on a global scale but we are thinking about it.

  Sato：I’m no expert, but generally when it comes to creating good minicars, the concept is to make them high-quality. However, through interviews and meetings, I had the impression that NMKV had a radically different approach: you started by making a high-quality registered vehicle as small as possible and it happened to fall under the minicar standard.

  Takahama：Indeed. We have a strong conviction that the national specifications we used to design and develop our cars are not limited to Japan’s domestic market. We also strongly believe that with Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors' resources and technical expertise, we can expand our products to the global market.

  Nakazawa：Currently, NMKV is still at the dawn of its existence and its period of maturity is a long way off, so we wish to continue taking on a variety of challenges, and I believe our parent companies expect no less from us.

  Ohsato, Sato：Thank you very much for your time today.

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• Conversations with People and Topics of Focus

  Back Numbers

  • Creating an Entirely New Brand for an Entirely New Company: Nissan-Mitsubishi Motors Joint-Venture, NMKV
  • Striving to Become the No.1 Business School in Asia: Graduate School of Management, GLOBIS University (Summer Greeting 2013)
  • Conversation with a Professional Translator of Business Bookss (Winter Greeting 2012)
  • Abitus thinks ahead, Globalized Human Resources (Summer Greeting 2012)
  • The Publishing Platform Business Rolled Out by Six Apart, Ltd. (Winter Greeting 2011)
  • The Internal Communication Strategies of Multinational Japanese Companies (Summer Greeting 2011)
  • Foreign-language Website Production/Website Translation (Spring Greeting 2011)
  • Global/Multilingual Website Solutions (Winter Greeting 2010)
  • Market Development through Global Websites (Summer Greeting 2010)

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