Why you cannot simply
say yes to Japan

Overseas marketing agencies and production studios bring me the same question. An existing client has asked them to run Japan as well. They do not want to refuse, and they are not confident taking it on.

That hesitation is correct. I have seen studios take a Japan brief in-house and damage the client relationship itself in the process. The failures divide into three.

1. The channel mix does not transfer

The combination of channels that has worked for you across Western or other Asian markets will not reliably map onto Japan. Search and social usage splits differently, trade press retains more influence, and in B2B there are still segments where exhibitions and industry publications are what feed a purchasing decision.

This is not a claim that Japan is behind. It is a difference in who reads what. The contact may well research on social platforms — and the material they attach when escalating internally can still be a trade-press article or a card collected at a show. Allocate budget without knowing that structure and the metrics move while the pipeline does not.

The impressions are being delivered.
They are not landing on the person who decides.

2. You cannot judge the Japanese you commissioned

Of the three, this is the most overlooked and the most expensive.

You can commission translation. You can receive the delivery. What nobody in your organisation can do is say whether it is any good.

Japanese copy delivered to a client can read unnaturally, use terms the industry does not use, or be so formal that it carries no weight. And the dangerous part: this failure does not come back as a complaint. Japanese users leave quietly. You find out years later, when the client has opened a Japanese office and local staff mention that the site copy was unreadable.

3. You cannot rank local partners

The Japanese execution will end up with somebody in Japan: a production company, a PR firm, a research agency, an interpreter. The problem arrives when three candidates come back and you have no basis for choosing.

All three proposals look competent. Prices vary widely. The client lists contain company names that mean nothing to you. Choose under those conditions and you will usually pick whichever firm has the best English. English fluency and execution capability in the Japanese market are unrelated skills.

Hold it, hand it over, or sit in the middle

• Hold it. Run the Japanese execution internally. The best margin, if you can solve the three points above yourself — which means hiring or developing someone who can judge. Not a part-time undertaking
• Refer it and step out. Honest, and it removes you from that client's international picture. The next country's brief will not come to you either
• Sit in the middle. Subcontract the Japanese execution, and keep the client relationship and the responsibility for quality judgement yourself. This is usually the realistic answer — but it only works if you have secured someone who can make that judgement. Without it you are a relay, and when something goes wrong you cannot explain any of it

The one thing to establish first

Before you quote on a Japan brief, ask the client a single question. Do you intend to put a person in Japan?

If yes, the work you are doing now is ground preparation for that person's arrival. If no, then who answers a Japanese-language enquiry has to be decided now. A brief where that is unresolved breaks at the moment it succeeds, because the enquiries arrive and nobody can reply to them.

Asking that one question changes the shape of the proposal, and it gives you a defensible basis for the quote.