Episode 1: “Stay at Shadow” (Part 1) *Our president is the CEO of a listed company, but she does not allow her face to be shown…
Thank you for waiting, everyone!
We are pleased to bring you the first installment of “The President’s Blog the President Doesn’t Write.”
Normally, a “President’s Blog” would be written by the president. However, for various reasons, “Rory”—one of the people who has known the president well since the days in a small multi-tenant building in Nakano—will write it instead. By bringing the president’s feelings and journey into sharper relief, this all-out project (!) aims to convey the present reality of both the president and the company even more vividly than she could herself.
Who is “Rory”?
“If a couple kisses at the entrance gate, they get into the baseball game for free!”
Rory joined SUNNY SIDE UP after a certain baseball team’s promotion—one that, in the history of the baseball world, has effectively been treated as if it never happened. Since then, while repeatedly engaging in unwinnable verbal sparring with the current president, Rory has been involved in a wide range of PR initiatives as well as the company’s branding, including the tagline “Let’s Have Fun!”
Episode 1: “Stay at Shadow” (Part 1)
In the President’s Office
“I’m the supporting player—stay at shadow…”
This is a favorite phrase of SUNNY SIDE UP’s president, Etsuko Tsugihara—and, of course, it is also her creed.
For 29 years as a PR agency, we have launched all kinds of movements into the world. Among the countless projects we have been involved in, there are those we can say we did, those we still cannot say, and those we simply never want to remember again.
However, that success is owed entirely to the client’s decision to give the plan the green light, and it is not something we—who are meant to be behind the scenes—should be saying “we did.”
That said, when introducing the company for new business, if we hide our track record too thoroughly, people understandably have no idea what kind of company we are. So we do explain things on a case-by-case basis, but even then, there are situations where confidentiality obligations continue after the work is completed, or where we cannot name the client specifically.
That is the fate of work like ours.
As for the president, for the reasons described above, she has always been thoroughly “stay at shadow” when it comes to not wanting to show her face.
At times, her thoroughness can even seem almost excessive.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Act was enacted in 1985—the same year SUNNY SIDE UP was founded.
With a seller’s market, female students, fired up to ask, “Please tell us your policies in light of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act,” took over company information sessions. As the bubble-era women’s fervor intensified into the early 1990s, women’s magazines began focusing en masse on working women.
Whether it was the demand of the times or simply because it sold, I do not know, but if you were a woman doing reasonably well at work,
you were praised left and right as a “darling of the times.”
Perhaps short on story ideas, the media frequently came to SUNNY SIDE UP as well, which at the time was still holed up in a small office in Nakano—led by a woman, with a workforce that was mostly women.
But Tsugihara would say,
“What’s the point of me standing out? Absolutely not.”
She refused so consistently that it left media outlets—who likely thought “this would be great publicity”—taken aback.
She must have found it truly unbearable to see articles circulating that lumped her under such obvious headlines as “The Super PR Woman Shining Now,” before she was even anyone in particular.
Even while doing this work professionally, she must have felt a strong contradiction about stepping into the spotlight and making it her banner.
That said, building relationships with the media is also an important part of the job, so when it was a situation where she could not be discourteous and simply could not refuse, she would immediately offer up a human sacrifice—handing over her colleague M, who was a single mother at the time—to get through it. She never hesitated in moments like these.
Her “no face” stance remains unchanged even now: even when accepting speaking engagements, a face photo is not allowed.
Even when publishing a digest of a sports management lecture she gave at a university, despite the publisher’s pleas, she was the only one among the speakers whose photo was taken from the very back row of a large lecture hall—so small that you could not make out her face at all.
And yet—
“If I never show my face, won’t people think there’s some other reason?”
“Hey, it’s like everyone who came today is mistaking ○○○ (a person’s name) for me.”
As she worked in sports management and the athletes’ names gained recognition, people began speculating about her to the point that you almost felt sorry for her, and her convictions wavered at times. But for the most part, “stay at shadow” has been upheld to this day.
Hearing only this, you might picture a very humble woman with a professional mindset that “finding fulfillment in supporting the star is what it’s all about.”
However, whether the president’s personality—or her life—truly embodies “stay at shadow” is another matter.
“Let’s Have Fun!”
was the first tagline written to symbolize this company, and that spirit continues today. Yet there were many times when I felt that the phrase itself ultimately described about half of her life.
