TOKYO, Japan, August 29, 2001 -- Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT/TSE:6501), headquartered in Tokyo, today announced that in September, as part of a brand management program introduced in April 2000, it will launch a global brand campaign based on the value commitment of the “Inspire the Next” corporate statement. One of the Hitachi's targets is to increase the ratio of its overseas business to at least 50%. The new campaign will double corporate advertising expenditures outside of Japan and speed up the enhancement of Hitachi's brand value globally, helping the company to achieve its target at an early stage.
     To get ahead in a management climate shaped by the ongoing globalization of business management and the evolution towards a knowledge-based society, enterprises have to make every effort to utilize their competitive superiority and maximize their company value. For this, brands, which symbolize a corporate vision, are becoming increasingly important as a management resource for winning out in a time of megacompetition.
     Against this business backdrop, in April 2000, Hitachi introduced a brand management program and defined “Inspire the Next” as its corporate statement of value that is the promise of the Hitachi brand. “Inspire the Next” contains Hitachi's intention and commitment to continue to breathe new life into the next era. The aim is to use a shared understanding by Hitachi's employees of the value promised by the Hitachi brand as a basis for conducting corporate activities in a consistent, integrated way, and to use a sharing of the brand value among outside stakeholders to make Hitachi a company people choose by brand.
     Since April last year, in countries outside of Japan, Hitachi has relied mostly on internal communications to achieve a shared understanding among employees of the value commitment of “Inspire the Next”. The upcoming global brand campaign will be used to also communicate the value promised by the Hitachi brand to stakeholders outside the company. In the past, corporate advertising outside of Japan has focused on the principal business areas of each region, with the format and message changing from region to region. In the new campaign, however, the corporate intent of “Inspire the Next” will be used as the basis for a series of advertisements with uniform formats and messages. Along with the implementation of the campaign, expenditures for overseas corporate advertising will be doubled, and to further ensure uniformity and effectiveness, the campaign will be handled by a single advertising agency, McCann-Erickson, instead of the previous practice of using a different agency for each region.
     In terms of content, to get across Hitachi's corporate intention of continuing to “Inspire the Next”, the main focus of the advertisements will be information systems, telecommunications and electronics, based on Hitachi's wide range of business operations and high technological capabilities. The campaign will target top and middle management in the United States, Europe and Asia, and will be implemented from early September, using various media including business magazines, cable TV and the Web. Campaign site at http://global.hitachi.com/inspire/, will be launched on September 1^st, 2001.
     Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended March 31, 2001) consolidated sales of 8,417 billion yen ($67.9 billion*). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.