Asia-Pacific Power List 2024: Hikaru Adachi, FamilyMart

Hikaru Adachi  

Chief marketing officer and chief creative officer
FamilyMart
Japan
Member since 2021

Overseeing the marketing arm of major Japanese convenience store operator FamilyMart, Hikaru Adachi has steered the chain towards record breaking success. Since taking the helm as chief marketing officer in 2020, revenue has consistently risen; profits reached their highest in the brand's history for the 2023- 2024 fiscal year. Meanwhile, visitor count for Familymart's convenience stores has remained above previous industry leader 7-Eleven for 35 consecutive months. 

A series of successful seasonal campaigns have contributed to the strong results, including the ‘Strawberry Fair’, ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Green Tea Fair’ campaigns, as well as launching the first ever ‘Family Nya-to’ campaign, a lineup of 19 original cat-themed sweet products, which resulted in the most successful sweets campaign in 2023. Popular collaborations with Nintendo for the first time in FamilyMart's history have also delivered solid dividends. 

In the past year, communicating FamlyMart's various sustainable development goals externally has been a key priority for Adachi. With a particular focus on diversity, Adachi staged the first-ever fashion show by CVS store called "FAMI-FEST", featuring models from diverse backgrounds across age, race, LGBTQ, and disability. This achieved significant media coverage and social buzz, and helped improve FamilyMart's image as cool and innovative while being serious about improving diversity. 

When he's not masterminding buzzworthy campaigns for FamilyMart that lead to record profits, Adachi is a regular contributor to Marketing Agenda, the largest marketing conference in Japan, both as a council member and in terms of planning and booking speakers. 

He has also represented Asia Pacific at conferences internationally, speaking at POSSIBLE 2023 (largest marketing conference in North America, conducted in Miami), as the first and only presenter from this region.

In the past year, Adachi has also provided volunteer based marketing sessions to several major universities across Japan, including Hitotsubashi Univ., Waseda Univ., and Housei Univ. 

Prior to joining FamilyMart, Adachi was best known for turning around the fortunes of McDonald's in Japan where he was CMO from 2015 to 2018. Following McDonald's, Adachi took on the role of senior product marketing for APAC at Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go and other games. However, he left the company after just two years in a self-sacrificial move, telling an interviewer that because the pandemic postponed a big project he was meant to work on, he felt he would not be able to make a contribution commensurate with his salary.