Ad giant Dentsu declared Most Evil Corporation of the Year

by Daisuke Kikuchi December 23 2016

It’s another prize . . . but maybe not one that the management at Dentsu Inc. will be proud of.

The major ad agency has been awarded this year’s Most Evil Corporation of the Year Award, also known as the Black Company Award, a corporate raspberry prize given to companies with a culture of overwork, discrimination and harassment, a group of journalists and rights activists announced Friday.

The suicide of one of its workers, Matsuri Takahashi, 24, was recognized as work-related in October. After pushing more than 100 hours of overtime per month, she committed suicide in her company dorm on Christmas Day last year.

“Dear Dentsu Inc., your 24-year-old new employee, Matsuri Takahashi, committed suicide on Dec. 25, 2015. She worked 105 hours of overtime, which is extremely long. In addition, she was suffering from power harassment from her bosses, and was mentally pressured,” said Tokachi Tsuchiya, a film director who is a member of the selection committee.

“On Twitter, she wrote, ‘I don’t want to work,’ and ‘two hours of sleep everyday is extreme.’ Several days before her death, she retweeted a post about the 2015 Black Company Award. She retweeted about this moment right now. It’s regrettable,” he said.

Before her death, Takahashi sent a message to her mother saying: “Goodbye, my lovely mother.”… More on Link ;

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/12/23/national/social-issues/ad-giant-dentsu-declared-evil-corporation-year/#.WGSDJ2ebxz0

Dentsu and information on nuclear power…..

In a book published in 2012, Honma Ryu looked into some of Dentsu’s backstage, and its tight control over the media, especially on behalf of one of its major clients: Tokyo Electric Power Company, Tepco. …… 1 June 2016

n 2012, his book Dentsu and Nuclear Coverage became a bestseller within a few months, despite almost universal media blackout.

Honma meticulously described the mechanisms by which Dentsu, the inevitable intermediary, implicitly imposes on media what can or cannot be written on nuclear power, and under what conditions. “Dentsu occupies a special position since the agency holds 80% of the market for nuclear advertising in Japan,” he reminded us during an interview in a coffee shop at Ueno Station. In 2010, in this huge advertising market, Tepco, a regional firm, indeed ranked 10th in terms of advertising expenses, next to power plant manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. That year, on the eve of the Fukushima accident, Tepco had spent more than 2 million euros on advertising. The overall advertising expenses of the 10 regional electrical power companies amounted to 7 million euros…. More on link