Imagine you are a marketing mogul at one of Japan's big carmakers. Your job is to get the world's motoring press driving your cars, generate international exposure and spread the word about your company's products. And right now car sales are plummeting in many countries as rising oil prices hit consumers in the pocket. What would you do?
The standard approach in Japan is to gather about 10 of your latest cars at a hotel in the countryside near Tokyo, invite a couple of dozen journalists to test drive the vehicles, and then hope against hope that they write something positive about your products.
Nissan, however, is thinking outside the box. The company may lag behind America's Big Three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) and Toyota, who sold 9.3 million vehicles worldwide last year compared with Nissan's 3.7 million, but bold thinking about car design, and risk-taking, pulled the company back from the brink of bankruptcy after Carlos Ghosn took the helm in 1999.