Branded Asset Management Group Partners With Technology Pioneer Dr. Masahiro Kawahata

TOKYO - New York-based Branded Asset Management Group (BAM), specialist in optimizing the economic value of brands, has opened a full-service office here under the leadership of Partner and Chairman Dr. Masahiro Kawahata, the renowned fiber optic networking pioneer, former Director of the Fujitsu Research Institute and former Stanford Professor. BAM Japan has already been engaged by a Japanese global leader in the Personal Luxury Goods category, and a US-based Media brand owner.

Founded in 2003 and owned by Partners John Englehart, Michael Laskoff and Jack McCauley, BAM provides strategic marketing innovation to leaders in the Automotive, Financial Services, Foods, Lighting, Pharmaceutical, Technology, and Telecommunication industries in the US. In 2006 it launched BAM Ventures LLC, an incubator for companies with unique technologies and other applications for increasing brand value, under the leadership of Partner and Chairman Dr. William E. Gordon III. BAM Ventures’ current asset portfolio includes a Brand Security (anti-counterfeit technology) joint venture with Visualant, Inc., the Brand Media Consultancy afterTV LLC, and the Beijing-based Viral Branding and Media Operator CooL8.tv.

“As the world’s second-biggest advertising market, Japan is an obvious priority for BAM to help brand owners to think and act in new ways to grow more efficiently,” said Englehart, the firm’s managing partner who spent 15 years outside his native US, most of that time working with advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather. “We are honored and delighted to be doing this in partnership with Dr. Kawahata, whose perspective, insights and relationships position us extraordinarily well to create strategic value for brand owners seeking new ways to grow.”

“I was introduced to BAM when they presented to a Board on which I am a Director, and I immediately saw the potential for such a fresh, strategic approach to brand management among leading companies in Japan, which today own only eight of the top 100 brands in the world,” said Dr. Kawahata. “We have been working toward this launch for many months with a keen sense of the challenges as well as the opportunities, and I am very optimistic for our success.”