Global Growth, Local Voice: Are Japanese Corporate Taglines on Point?

What does your corporate tagline really say about your global ambition? For Japan’s multinational giants, taglines are often poetic, future-oriented, and values-driven. But in an era of rapid global growth, are these messages hitting the mark?

Back in 2021, word clouds were having a moment. They offered a quick, visual way to spot themes in brand language, and we used one to collectively visualize the short taglines of Japan’s largest globalized companies. An example would be Hitachi’s enduring tagline “Inspire the Next”. Across the 70 companies included in our study, about 20 didn’t have short taglines for global use, and for those that did, words like dreams, better, future, world, innovation, and trust were most common. We observed at the time that these phrases were broad and aspirational, aiming to unify diverse business portfolios under a single message. Some of those without a corporate tagline at the HQ/holding company level had more localized or divisional taglines instead – these were not analyzed but are increasingly tolerated by the more progressive global branding teams.

Now in 2025, the moment belongs to LLMs and so I’ve updated and rerun the analysis using generative AI to go beyond a simple word cloud. For the same set of globalized Japanese companies with taglines, I classified each into a thematic cluster using AI-assisted topic modeling. The table summarizes the five thematic clusters, how much of the total dataset that theme represents, and finally compares each theme to branding practices in the United States:

As a caveat we should note is that there’s no global standard around taglines, so there could be some blurring of taglines with mission, vision, etc in our analysis. However, to the extent that we could categorize these short branding statements as taglines, Japanese companies tended to anchor them in shared aspirations and long-term responsibility. That Innovation & Value isn’t a more dominant theme may surprise Western observers, but it reflects a deeper cultural emphasis on harmony, trust, and shared struggles over attributes like competitiveness. In this context, the Japanese corporate tagline isn’t a sales pitch—it’s a signal of purpose, internally and externally.

We compared the 2021 versions to updated 2024 taglines to see what’s changed. Despite minor shifts, the dominant themes have remained remarkably consistent.

Here’s what stood out:

• Dominant themes such as “Dreams, Tomorrow & Nature” and “Innovation & Value” still define most corporate taglines from the sample.

• Few companies changed their taglines—and when they did, they often stayed in the same thematic lane.

• Japanese companies refresh strategic themes regularly in 3 or 5 year management plans which are generally for internal use, often leaving the externally facing tagline unchanged. 

Final Thought:

This kind of consistency—across planning horizons, language, and business units—fits Japan’s diversified global firms. Their taglines, although often vague, serve as statements of philosophy rather than sharp strategic positioning.

But for companies with global growth ambitions, a key question remains: Should a corporate tagline at a company aspiring to grow internationally be more attuned to global best practices such as clarity, emotional resonance, differentiation, and strategic alignment? Or are these global branding practices out of touch with the enduring values expressed by Japanese firms, such as future, trust, commitment, and connectivity? A hybrid approach is what's called for here - stick to your values and your tagline because it works in Japan, but also be in-tune with global branding practices by delegating additional, localized branding to experts in the markets being served.