Asia-Pacific Power List 2020: Naomi Yamamoto, Shiseido

Naomi Yamamoto

Chief creative officer
Shiseido
Japan
Returning member

Shiseido continues to keep a more adventurous edge than your average beauty brand, but few might guess that much of that credit goes to a century-old in-house creative department with a leader who has been with the company for more than 30 years. But Naomi Yamamoto, from her posts in Tokyo, New York and China, has an innate ability to evolve, keeping Shiseido at the forefront of brand communications.

From Shiseido’s experimental in-house Cannes Lion-winning film ‘High School Girl?’ to work exploring LGBTQ romance, Shiseido has unabashedly championed work that is visually arresting and challenging, helped by a state-of-the-art content studio. This past year, Shiseido took experiential marketing to another level with ‘Beyond Time’, an installation at the brand's Global Innovation Centre in Yokohama. The experiential work, which allowed two people to have an intimate encounter with images of their future or past selves, became a popular sensation, attracting long lineups to participate in the exhibit. Yamamoto, a tireless advocate for reinvention, has been a guiding force through it all.

While her creative contributions alone warrant a return to our marketing power list, her value extends well beyond the work. Recently, Yamamoto was appointed to be deputy social value creation officer in charge of shaping and communicating the company’s social value and responsibility programs. With the theme ‘Women of the New Age Take on the World’, her goal is to place beauty within a new value system. She sees a future where brands embrace communities beyond the use of their products and the value chain becomes a new circle involving communities and the environment. Customers of the future will be conscious of everything, she says, and in turn, brands have to be more conscious of the greater good.