Why Your Sales Deck Doesn't Work for Japanese Media

A line that works well in a B2B sales deck often doesn't work the same way in a B2C ad. And neither one works well in front of media — for a reason that's easy to miss.

Different Readers, Different Questions

Most B2B materials are written for people already inside the industry. They know the terminology, the context, the stakes.

Journalists usually don't come from inside that industry. And more importantly, they're not evaluating whether to do business with you. They're thinking about their own readers — what will make this worth reading for someone who has no reason to care yet.

That's a different job than the sales deck was written to do.

Rebuild, Don't Translate

So when I build media materials, I don't translate the sales deck. I rebuild it, sentence by sentence, around a different question: not "why should you choose us," but "why would a reader want to know this."

This is also where automated translation tends to fall short in PR work. It moves the words accurately. It doesn't know which question the reader is actually asking.

Natsuki Suzuki is the founder of BANTO, which provides back-office support — accounting, HR and payroll, and administration — to overseas companies and their Japan entities. She spent 15 years in Europe and brings both sides of the cultural equation to every engagement.