By Kosuke Jimbo
In the last few years, SDGs have stolen the spotlight, not only in global society, but also in PR industries around the world. According to a report from the Japanese government (*1), 88.4% of Japan’s local municipalities were interested in the campaign. On the other hand, only 19.5% of them had taken tangible measures to contribute to this global goal.
Moreover, although the majority of them have a strong interest in the subject, many have struggled to find means to communicate the message to the public, or do not know how to get media coverage from it. However there is no doubt that SDGs will be the main subject in the PR world for years to come.
So, here are some tips on communicating your clients’ SDGs in Japan.
*1:https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/tiiki/kankyo/kaigi/dai20/sdgs_hyoka20_shiryo6-1.pdf
Sustainable Cities, Health, and Education– BIG3 remain king
SDGs are a collection of 17 goals designed to end poverty, protect the planet and that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. Needless to say, all of these goals are equally as important in the global society, however, the truth is, different countries have different values, problems, and concerns. Thus, some goals are more important than others depending on the country. This is perfectly fine, as SDGs are interlinked, which means that a progress in one field would affect the outcomes in others.
In the same report from the Japanese government, when asked which of the 17 goals they will commit to in the near future, “I do not know” topped the list, showing just how much people are struggling to tackle this global phenomenon.
However, when asked which of the 17 goals they have been working on, sustainable cities and communities, good health and well-being, and quality of education outranked the others as the top three areas for many Japanese municipalities. This isn’t a huge surprise if you have prior knowledge of Japanese politics, as these three points have been the biggest issue in Japan for many years.
Sustainable cities and communities, not surprisingly, came first as the survey was answered by representatives of local municipalities. Since the economic miracle of the 1970s, a great portion of the rural population migrated to urban areas like Tokyo or Osaka, causing a drastic inflation in these two megalopolises. Thus, the nation and its local governments have long been working on ways to diffuse the concentrated population to neighboring areas and trying to attract more people to live and stay in the region.
In this dangerously aging society, good-health and wellbeing has been the go-to manifesto for many politicians, not a huge surprise given that the majority of voters are over 60 years old. In fact, many local municipalities use the majority of their budget for healthcare, and healthcare related-goods make up a good percentage of the Japanese market with more than 5 trillion yen (about 50billion USD). The only problem here is that Japan’s health issues are very minor compared to other countries, and the only way Japan would contribute to SDGs is by exporting their healthcare products, not necessarily in importing. That being said, given the huge healthcare market in Japan, there is always space for a better product even from overseas.
Education is another huge issue in Japan. Japan has prided itself for their educational system since they started westernizing in the late 19th century, and very much willing to keep it that way. Although it has fallen behind in university rankings, Japan still keeps a great educational standard, however, the nation is now making a huge shift towards global education by focusing more on English language education more than ever. More so, many universities have established new departments for bilingual education in an effort to nurture global talents.
The Up-and-coming– Gender, Clean Energy, and Innovation
With the emergence of SDGs, the biggest paradigm shift could be seen in three areas: gender equality, affordable and clean energy, and innovation. Sure, these issues have been discussed in many fields before, but recent affairs led to the public talking about these issues more seriously than ever.
Japan has long been criticized for being one of the most sexist societies where female employees aren’t treated equally. And although the government and corporations have taken some measures to solve the issue, many would agree that these were minor changes that, surprisingly, still hasn’t been infiltrated in many old-fashioned companies.
However, a nationwide debate came to light when an university student was raped by a TV journalist. The incident was picked up by every major media, and became so huge that the victim, Shiori Ito, was included in Time 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Since then, the Japanese society has been in a huge debate about gender equality, what it means, and how the society as a whole should solve the issue. This has affected the PR landscape drastically, as creative works now need to be reviewed by specialists and lawyers to determine whether there are any inferred sexisms in the work. It also shed light to old-fashioned targeting strategies, as it may be considered sexist to appeal to a certain gender and exclude the others.
Clean energy is an issue that Japan was forced to face after the great earthquake in 2011 which saw the disaster of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Since then, the term “ecology” (usually abbreviated as “eco”) was included in the Japanese everyday vocabulary, and people became conscious of their energy usage more than ever. Many Nuclear Plants were stopped and people started to seek for alternative energy resources. This movement went on as then Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, proclaimed that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be an “Eco-Olympic” where renewable energy and low emission vehicles would be used.
Skip forward to 2020, where the Olympic Games were postponed due to the covid pandemic, nuclear plants have resumed operation, and the nation is divided on energy issues. In PR, “eco” is still a killer word that gets the attention of many consumers, and any eco-related activity still gets great reception from the public.
In the corporate world, the word “innovation” has been overused, it is almost a cliche. Yet, as the nation struggled to keep up with the tech revolution in the last three decades, Japan is desperate to make the next breakthrough innovation that would keep them in the realm of leading economic movements. Thus, Japan has spent years inventing the world’s greatest supercomputer Fugaku, which sadly isn’t much of an impact in the industry where tech giants such as Google are busy inventing quantum computers. Still, Japan’s thirst for innovation is real, and most press releases would include words like innovative, revolutionary, “first of its kind”, something along those lines.
Although SDGs are set to be achieved by 2030, it would most definitely shape our values for more years to come. In fact, it is highly likely that we start to interpret the terms differently, or maybe the list of goals would expand to 30, who knows. What is for sure, is that the PR world has to cope with these changes.
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