The Mitsubishi Electric Group celebrated its 90th anniversary on February 1, 2011. We will take the occasion of this anniversary as an opportunity to engage in various communication activities inside and outside the company over the year ahead, and widely disseminate the future direction of the Group as it looks toward its 100th anniversary in 2021. With an emphasis on "Group" and "global," we will work together with all relevant departments to promote understanding of Mitsubishi Electric's corporate activities and foster a sense of expectation. To kick off the campaign, we ran thirteen different types of 90th anniversary corporate advertisements in the February 2 issue of various newspapers, including the Asahi Shimbun for national reach, and twelve other major regional newspapers throughout Japan.

In the national edition of Asahi Shimbun, we used a two-page spread to powerfully communicate Mitsubishi Electric's wide range of activities, interaction with society, and future direction, by highlighting the four key concepts of the president's 90th anniversary message issued on February 1—society, technology, the world, and the environment. The keyphrase, "The Mitsubishi Electric Group will aim to become a global, leading green company, enriching society with technology," will be used consistently throughout our communication activities. We laid out a time-line of Mitsubishi Electric's 90-year history at the bottom of the advertisement.

For the twelve regional newspapers in Japan, respective regional branch offices selected themes and topics of relevance to each region, and the Group's activities and contributions in each region were arranged into local newspaper-like advertisements with the cooperation of local newspaper companies. Moreover, the locations of Mitsubishi Electric sales offices and production centers in the respective region were printed at the bottom of each advertisement. Newspapers with the largest circulation in each of the locations of our branch offices were selected as the advertisement media.

* We selected Niigata because it is the location of our Niigata branch office, and selected Kobe because a large number of production centers are located there.

Separate prints of these advertisements were also prepared for customer communication activities and other secondary purposes.

For more information on the Mitsubishi Electric Group's 90th Anniversary, contact:
adv.90th@mb.MitsubishiElectric.co.jp.

90th Anniversary Logo

This logo embodies Mitsubishi Electric's aim to be "a global, leading green company, contributing to society through technology" as we move toward our 100th anniversary. The color green expresses our continuing commitment to creating an earth-friendly and people-friendly society as a leading green company, and the figure 90 was combined with an image that stands for both a leaf, which symbolizes the environment, and a wing, which characterizes the company's leap towards the next ten years.

Asahi Shimbun

The basic principle of contributing to society through technology, which the Mitsubishi Electric Group has continued to pursue since its establishment, is expressed by numerous pictures of products that support society behind the scenes, to illustrate the Group's future direction.

Front cover

Inside spread

Back cover
(regional advertisement)

Separate-print advertisement

A full-size, four-page advertisement, composed of a cover, the Asahi Shimbun advertisement, and a regional newspaper advertisement, was printed separately for each region (additional copies are being printed due to the large number of orders). We are also planning to print a "complete" edition containing all regions.

Recent years have seen frequent occurrences of local sudden downpours, which bring serious disaster at times. As forecasting this type of rain requires high-precision rain cloud monitoring, Mitsubishi Electric developed an original radar technology that has increased the accuracy of forecasting such rainstorms by making it possible to monitor even the sizes of raindrops and ice grains in the clouds, which were unable to be monitored fully before.

By producing an advertisement that features this technology, we aimed to promote awareness of Mitsubishi Electric's efforts and technical capability in contributing to ensuring daily safety.

Overview

• An image that appears to show the inside of a cloud is used to directly express the technology's ability to monitor even the sizes and shapes of raindrops in the clouds.
• The catchphrase, "The key to forecasting sudden downpours lay in the shapes of raindrops" conveys the characteristic of the technology and the role it plays, in a simple and straightforward manner.
• Brief descriptions are given of the latest "dual polarization" weather radar technology, which makes it possible to assess even the shapes of raindrops, and details of the technology that allows real-time monitoring at high resolution. The advertisement also communicates Mitsubishi Electric's history and corporate commitment to radar technology, which have produced numerous achievements since the completion of the Mr. Fuji weather radar in 1964.

Media/Date

• Nikkei Shimbun, national morning edition, January 31 (Monday),
  1 page, color

Corporate advertisement
"MP Weather Radar Technology"

The "Kounotori2" cargo transporter (HTV2) was launched at 2:37 p.m. on January 22 after a postponement caused by poor weather, and successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on the 27th.

DSPACE, Mitsubishi Electric's science website not only covered the launching of the H-IIB rocket from Tanegashima Space Center, but also continued to tweet (post messages) over a period of five days before, during, and after the launch on its official Twitter account @twitDSPACE.

Twitter now boasts more than 10 million users in Japan alone. @twitDSPACE has attracted 575 followers (as of February 3) since the account was opened in August 2010, and is still expanding at an average rate of 3.7 followers per day.

The launch of the rocket received large coverage, with NHK news programs repeatedly broadcasting the moment and national newspapers carrying articles about it. However, by providing, from the Tanegashima Press Center, real-time local information not available from conventional media sources, @twitDSPACE gained increasing attention, and appeared on users' screens with great frequency.