Hitachi Unveils Online North America Branding Campaign to Boost Awareness, Connections

BRISBANE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hitachi America, Ltd., and its parent company Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) (TOKYO:6501), today announced the company’s largest-ever North America brand campaign, entitled “Hitachi | True Stories,” designed to help grow Hitachi’s awareness, understanding and connections with customers, prospects and other constituencies. The new multi-year, multi-million dollar campaign is part of the company’s overall drive to boost Hitachi revenues to more than 50 percent outside its traditional Japanese base.

Set in real-life towns with real people from across North America, “Hitachi | True Stories” campaign consists of a series of documentary short films – and related online and print components – that showcase how Hitachi is affecting and enhancing the lives of everyday people in the Americas. The compelling, five-minute movies were developed to show Hitachi in a genre of cinema verite, a major departure from previous brand efforts. The campaign also reflects the human impact that Hitachi’s brand represents, including the “harmony, sincerity and pioneering spirit” that drove Hitachi’s founders nearly 100 years ago.

“In the past, Hitachi North America has primarily focused on products, innovation and technology, and we are proud of all that we have accomplished,” said Hiroaki Nakanishi, Chief Executive for North America. “But what sometimes gets overlooked is the way Hitachi has become very much a part of this area of the world and the daily lives of people in the Americas. Our ‘True Stories’ series illustrates – in the words of customers and end users – how Hitachi is transforming their lives across a variety of industries, including advanced medical technology, information and telecommunications systems, power and industrial infrastructure and consumer electronics technologies.”

According to Gerard F. Corbett, vice president of the Branding and Corporate Communications Group at Hitachi America and deputy of its North America Brand Committee: “Hitachi’s ‘True Stories’ short films are part of a sustainable campaign that was conceived and developed with McCann-Erickson, our North America advertising firm. The stories themselves are primarily people and story driven, rather than focused strictly on the company’s core products and services. Our goal was to begin communicating the effect of Hitachi’s products and services on people. Because so much of what the company does is largely hidden from the public, this style of communications represents an out-of-the-box strategy to better connect with the company’s many constituencies.”

Five films designed for the web will be available to the public when the campaign launches on November 9. The online films will be supported by advertising and media placements including online, print and out-of-home venues. The films’ themes and subject matter all focus on the net effect of Hitachi’s technologies on people. For example, in the first film, “Small Town Oregon Logs On,” we see what happens when Hitachi fiber-to-the-home technology is used to connect a remote coastal town to the country’s fastest communications network. The filmmaker interviews a number of people whose lives are transformed for the better.

The second film, A New Breed of Bloodhound, explains how Hitachi storage systems are helping the South Carolina Computer Crime Center keep the Internet safe for everyone. The filmmaker interviews a number of law enforcement officials as they explain how Hitachi storage technology is used to catch predators who employ the Internet in sinister ways.

Additional films in the series include a documentary about a cancer patient who flies himself to Houston for treatment sessions involving Hitachi’s new proton beam therapy system installed at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; a power plant that uses the company’s supercritical coal-fired technology to produce clean energy from coal; and a story about how Hitachi’s plasma screen technology migrated from college laboratories to family living rooms.

“’True Stories’ represents an innovative and timely approach to advertising,” said Andrew Scott, vice president and group account director at McCann-Erickson. “In a world dominated by digital recorders, social networking sites and user-generated video, Hitachi and other leading brands are boldly stepping forward to re-evaluate their approach to traditional advertising. With ‘True Stories,’ Hitachi is able to break through the clutter of sound-bites and 30-second spots to share the types of rich interactive stories that attract consumers looking for a more meaningful engagement – which just so happens to reflect the true spirit of Hitachi.”

For more information, please visit www.hitachi.com/truestories.

About Hitachi

Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, and consumer electronics, and provides industrial equipment and services throughout North America. For more information, visit www.hitachi.us.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE:HIT) (TOKYO:6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 356,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2005 (ended March 31, 2006) consolidated sales totaled 9,464 billion yen ($80.9 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company’s website at www.hitachi.com.