The world's easiest "management strategy" planning course Chapter 9

In the final chapter, I would like to talk about how I chose my current job and how I will work on future corporate strategies.
As I mentioned at the beginning, my academic background when I got a job is a high school graduate. The deviation value in high school was in the first half of 40, I didn’t go on to university, and after graduating I didn’t even get a job aiming for the best karate in Japan. I was spending days that had nothing to do with the world of business strategy, which is the core of this book.
However, Karate, who decided to pursue it, was frustrated at the age of 20 when he realized that he had no qualities. In my early twenties, I didn’t even get a job and worked part-time.
I finally got a job at a commercial production company when I was in my late twenties.
Until my thirties, I worked as an advertising producer including commercial production, but in 2005 I read the translated book “TV commercial collapse-the end of mass advertising and marketing 2.0 that began to move”, and I felt a strong sense of crisis. I did. In a situation where I was relying on the sales of TV commercials, I felt that I would eventually run out of work.
The book states that the rapidly developing Internet at that time will drive out advertisements such as commercials, and it has been taken up as a negative topic not only by the company I worked for but also by the entire advertising industry. Was there. I attended a week-long marketing seminar held overseas in 2007 so that I could be rushed by this sense of crisis.

At that time, it was not clear whether marketing was advertising for sale or market research. However, I was aware that marketing was an activity that included advertising, and I was only thinking about reconfirming the position of advertising. However, this marketing seminar will give you a big hint.
The instructor was a world-famous marketer and his lecture style was unique. It is not a listening format that only listens to the lecturer, but a work format in which the manager of the company goes up to the stage to define the problem and the marketer solves it. Students can’t just focus on their own challenges, they have to think about the marketing strategies of other companies. I’ve never been so exhausted.
However, by listening to the issues of the company and learning how to solve the marketers, I was able to outline the future strategy of the company.

Nowadays, it is common knowledge in the advertising industry, but it is a service called “communication design” that organically combines all of PR, CM, WEB contents, events, etc., instead of developing them individually. I thought that it would be easier to obtain synergistic effects than a one-off means of just hitting an advertisement, and for example, the response of commercials should be high.
I immediately returned to my company, devised a scheme to integrate all divisions, and developed an integrated solution. As a result, even if each business does not operate individually, the sales team can move to receive orders for various advertising products.
Sales have improved dramatically, but on the other hand, new problems have emerged.
Even if the effects of advertising activities appear temporarily, there are many cases in which the opportunity to generate long-term benefits is impaired due to problems with the quality of products and services of client companies and management (organization, finance, etc.).
No matter how good your advertising strategy is, there is no point in providing a service unless you sell things. So, once again, I decided to learn marketing strategy methods and even more advanced ideas, and review my services.
In 2008, I enrolled in MBA School to learn management from scratch. At the Japanese branch of an overseas business school, you can take classes only on Saturdays. However, since many tasks are given every week, I study hard on weekdays after returning home late at night. It was not uncommon to go to bed around 4-5 in the morning.

However, in September of the same year, the Lehman shock that had a great impact on the world economy occurred, and from the following year, the aftermath began to cast a shadow on the company. Until then, the company had been growing steadily, and sales plummeted in 2009, just as it was preparing to go public.
Advertising is the first thing that shrinks in a recession. A dark cloud spilled over the industry and many of its peers went bankrupt. I worked hard to rebuild, but I realized that the advertising industry was too fragile in a recession. I was reminded that fundamental measures are needed to survive.
However, I found one solution from the sense of urgency of the recession and studying MBA.
That is the fusion of strategic consulting and advertising companies. I thought that the company could be activated by unifying the strategy to win and the tactics to put into practice. First, develop a basic strategic scheme and formulate a management strategy. Next, we will create products (WEB, commercials, recruitment videos, events, sales promotion tools, in-house tools, etc.) to execute that strategy.
If you compare it to a battle, a product is like a weapon. Advertising production like before will be inherited as a communication design that connects people, and will be transformed into a comprehensive service as a marketing strategy and management strategy.

In 2010, I completed my MBA while the economy was unable to recover from the shock of the Lehman shock. Then I consulted with the president at the time to test the service I had warmed up. However, the president did not understand my proposal at all. The president originally liked commercials that were entertaining, and seemed to dislike management strategies.
There were some employees who agreed with me, but the creators at the site said, “I don’t want to be a consulting company.” The decline in sales does not stop at all, and new services cannot be accepted. At the same time, many of the employees who were worried about the future of the company due to sluggish sales retired.
Generally, we try to reduce our business and return to the starting point, but as the market itself narrows, only companies that can afford it will survive.
I decided to become independent. When I left the company, I proposed a financial solution called “business transfer” to the company, assuming that some employees and customers would come to me. In other words, it buys part of the company’s business. Customers and employees are part of the company’s assets, so if I took them on my own, I could violate the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.
In 2012, we founded Strategic Partners Co., Ltd. with only two employees who followed us. Most of the capital was lost to the funds for business transfer, and it was poor, but in this way, Japan’s first “company that fused an advertising company and a consulting company” was born.

Currently, we are in charge of strategic support for many companies, from listed companies to small and medium-sized enterprises. Recalling that, in 2005, the encounter with the book “TV Commercial Collapse” has led to the present. After reading this book, I learned a lot, made many discoveries and encounters, and repeatedly developed new schemes and services.
I’m neither a well-known business owner nor a successful person, nor from a well-known consulting firm. I am worried that I, who was only able to start a business in my late 40s, is qualified to discuss corporate strategy.
However, if there is one thing I can be proud of, I think that I have always looked at the management strategy at the “edge” of marketing called CM production. When I was at a commercial production company, I was exactly “I don’t know the frog in the well, the ocean”. I had the opportunity to work on commercials for major companies and receive international advertising awards, but it only satisfied a small sense of accomplishment.

Still, there is a view that “I do not know the frog ocean in the well, but I know the blueness of the sky.” This is a word taught by an acquaintance poet a few years ago, and I think it means “even if you are in a small place, you can understand a part of the world.” I am proud that I was able to know the wonderfulness of management strategy because I was involved in commercial production, and at the same time, I was able to notice the “uncomfortable feeling” in the world of management strategy.

Currently, there is no job as a “strategic”. Zhuge Liang, who made a name for himself from the end of the late Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms period, and Kansuke Yamamoto, who served as a warrior of Shingen Takeda during the Warring States period, were the “strategicists” in history. Today is an era in which business wars are constantly repeated. That’s why you need a strategist to support your business.
You can think of a consultant as a strategist, but the consultants and strategists who support a company are different. The consultant’s job is to solve the client’s management issues and devise a strategy for how to increase the client’s sales. Strategists, on the other hand, think about how to win, not just strategy but also tactics.
I am doing martial arts, but if I compare this world to martial arts, I think it is “Mixed Martial Arts”. Boxing and judo have limited rules. However, when it comes to practice, there are no rules. No matter how much you become a boxing world champion, you can lose if you are brought into a ground fight.
In that sense, consultants don’t know tactics, and ad creators don’t know strategies. In that respect, strategists need comprehensive abilities.
However, in “Mixed Martial Arts” as well, we make full use of the martial arts from which each player came from, and face the fight to win. Since I myself am from video production, I have often solved strategic issues through video production.
In the future, I think that people who have been active in various fields, such as consultants, advertising creators, and managers, will come up to the ring of management strategy to test their own abilities and fully demonstrate their abilities. I’m expecting it.

It’s a little derailed, but let’s talk about my dad in thinking about the role of a strategist.
Thirty years ago, my dad ran an ironworks after getting rid of sala. The ironworks at that time were all busy, and his father’s ironworks made money by making balconies and stairs for buildings and houses. The management was going well, and my house gradually became wealthy.
However, as the times progressed, major building material manufacturers began mass-producing such equipment in their factories. At the small ironworks in town, there is no way to compete with mass-produced and cheaply made products. Thus many ironworks disappeared from the town.
My father’s ironworks was no exception, and he quickly fell into a slump.
He was a father who tried various ways to rebuild, but he suffered from stomach cancer and died at the young age of 46. I was 16 years old, just before I entered high school. I enrolled in an industrial high school to take over my father’s ironworks, but the ironworks were soon closed and my wishes remained unfulfilled.
“Slumping business also affects people’s lives.” This is what I learned from the death of his father. I imagine that there are many managers, like my father, who get sick enough to die from the hard work of management.

I entered the world of advertising at the age of 25, and after many twists and turns, my job is business strategy. Did the desire to save his father unknowingly let him choose this job, or did he lead him? There is no confirmation, but it cannot be said that it has nothing to do with the death of my father.
Today, business owners are facing various challenges. I believe that solving that problem is to improve society. My father’s appearance is overwhelming with the owners of client companies, and I get very hot, but at the root of me is the idea that “no company will ever lose.” I think this is the mission of the strategist.