Governor Saito’s Team Denies PR Company Misconduct in Hyogo Election Campaign

Governor Saito Motohiko was elected in the Hyogo Prefectural gubernatorial election held on the 17th. It has been pointed out that if Orita Kaede, CEO of Hyogo Prefecture PR and public relations company Merchu Inc., announced on the website “Note” that he was responsible for planning and operating the SNS strategy for Governor Saito’s election campaign and that compensation was received from Saito’s camp, this could be a violation of the Public Offices Election Act. In an interview with Business Journal on the 25th, Governor Saito’s lawyer explained that there was no fact that he commissioned the operation or planning of SNS. The 700,000 yen paid to Melchu comprises items that are legally permitted to be commissioned for a fee, such as poster design and production, and the breakdown of these items, a total of five items, will be made public in the near future. The following is a question-and-answer session with Governor Saito’s lawyer. –Regarding payments to Merchu. Agent: “There is a payment. Our view is that this is legally permitted.”
–Does this mean that you are not outsourcing any SNS management operations to Melchu? Agent: “Yes.”
— So that means Melchu is giving false information on their website. Representative: “As for why it has come to this, since it has come to this, there is no way to contact them (Melchu), and there is probably no reason to.”
— Will the contents of the invoice be made public? Representative: “Invoices that show they have been paid are those that appear on the income and expenditure report, but because of the situation, we are considering submitting them ahead of time (as the deadline for submission to the Hyogo Prefectural Election Administration Commission is December 2nd). Is there a breakdown of costs? Agent: “There are five items in total, but they don’t appear on the transfer statement. (The items listed on the invoice are all together) “Design production costs.”
–So SNS operation isn’t mentioned in that statement? Agent: “No.”
–Will the details be made public? Agent: “They wanted to get it out quickly and without dragging it out (until the financial statement is submitted to the election commission).” If we send it out to each individual reporter, there will be no end to it, so we are considering whether we can send it out somewhere else.”
–So, all of the SNS operations were handled by Saito’s camp. Agent: “That’s right.”
— So you’re saying you don’t really understand why Merche is saying this? Representative: “Yes.”

One of them is giving a false explanation.
On the 20th of this month, Orita Kaede, CEO of Melchu, claimed on “Note” that his company was in charge of the overall PR for Governor Saito’s election campaign, and that as a supervisor, he was responsible for planning the SNS operation strategy, setting up accounts, creating profiles, planning content, designing text formats, selecting information, etc., and specifically, he was in charge of the following: ・Creating copy, creating main visuals, and creating design guidebooks (used in the production of campaign cars, billboards, posters, flyers, election bulletins, and campaign pledge slides)
・Unifying social media hashtags to “#GoForItGovernorSaito”
・Managing, supervising, and operating X’s (formerly Twitter) account, X’s official support account, his Instagram account, and his official YouTube channel
He also wrote that he was involved in the following company duties: “I would also like to emphasize that this work was undertaken by a company based in Hyogo Prefecture, and not by a major agency in Tokyo,”
“I hope this will help people to gain a deeper understanding of the strength of the work known as ‘public relations,’ and the difficulty and importance of consistently disseminating accurate information in an accurate manner.”
(omitted)

PR会社側が虚偽説明？斎藤知事側、証拠を公表へ「費用明細にSNS運用ない」

斎藤知事の代理人弁護士は、SNSの運用や企画立案を委託した事実はないと説明した。メルチュ社に支払った70万円はポスターのデザイン制作など法的に有償での委託が認められた項目であり、その内訳である計5項目を近日中に公表するとしている。

biz-journal.jp