YDC Visit

 

Jeunesse Coffe Shop

June 12, 2017 (16:21)

Visited YDC today with my coworker. In the end, we didn't actually go to the client's site. Our "professor" insisted that we visit YDC and do a kind of follow-up sales pitch. However, my colleague and I are well aware that the information provided in the official pamphlets is completely useless and counterproductive when trying to make a sales pitch to our targeted market.

It is often the case that the original marketing materials are developed in-house by Japanese staff with an aim for increasing sales within the Japanese market place. Problems arise when material that is targeted for Japanese users gets translated literally into English without any context or consideration what is considered appealing to non-Japanese clientele.

If you factor in the point that more than half of our clients are not native English speakers, it becomes even more imperative that our material be as upfront, clear, and simple as possible.

In my personal experience, Japanese business materials tend to be dense; use a wild range of colors, fonts, and styles; and are inadvertently produced to provide the details and information that only the author and his colleagues are able comprehend. Very little effort is made to approach a presentation from the end-user's point of view.

My coworker and I gave up in frustration and out of a desire to avoid embarrassing ourselves just to meet the short-sighted and ignorant directives given to us by our Japanese superiors who have no idea how to market and appeal to a non-Japanese clientele, and are too proud and over confident to ask their non-Japanese staff for advice, direction, and input.

This situation is a bit frustrating because it could be easily remedied, but working in small, family-run Japanese company requires that I keep my thoughts to myself and simply do as I am told in order to keep my job.

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