About Us
After 27 years in Japan, Media Tectonics has moved offices to the Mighty Waikato region of New Zealand, but our professional networks still extend across the globe. We bring you access to a wide range of publishing and communications professionals whose main goal is to help you succeed in all your publishing, public relations, investor relations, advertising, and social media endeavors. The digital universe of options is expanding everyday. Our job is to simplify the complex choices companies have to make to extend their brands and amplify their voices in an information-rich world. By working collaboratively, we are able to pool numerous best-practice tools and methods in order to save our clients’ valuable time and help avoid costly mistakes. Get in touch today to find out how we can help. Some surprising solutions may be a phone call away.
CINDY MULLINS – Founder, Publisher and PR Consultant
Cindy Mullins has loved books ever since her mom began dropping her off on Saturdays for “Story Hour” at the Carnegie-built library of the small southern U.S. town she grew up in. She came to Tokyo in 1985 to study Japanese and to teach in universities. She taught English for a time on Shikoku Island before returning to Tokyo in 1989, and still calls Japan home. A respected member of Japan’s publishing industry for over two decades, Cindy has done everything from producing and running magazines and journals to acquiring titles for major publishers like Charles E. Tuttle and John Wiley & Sons and shepherding them into print.
Cindy left Japan to pursue a master’s degree in publishing studies at Scotland’s University of Stirling in 1997, focusing on Internet publishing. She returned during the dot-com boom years and later became the associate publisher of J@pan Inc., a high-tech magazine covering business, technology and entrepreneurship. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, John Wiley & Sons’ Global Scientific, Technical and Medical Division retained Cindy as an editorial and business development consultant. Her duties included liaising with publishers and editors in Wiley’s U.S., U.K., Germany, and Singapore offices, visiting top research institutes and universities in Japan, and overseeing local editorial matters related to Wiley’s numerous scientific journals.
4M Associates, the Tokyo-based literary agency and publishing consultancy Cindy started in 1994, has handled clients such as The Asia Foundation, Cosmo PR, Dentsu Casting & Entertainment, The Economist, Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Harlequin, H&M, Hitachi, InTecur K.K., International Monetary Fund, The Japan Times, Kikkoman, Kodansha International, McKinsey & Company, ToysRUs and the University of Tokyo, among others. Besides guiding Media Tectonics, Cindy is now serving as the literary agent for several upcoming titles and has published several titles under her new online imprint—with an eye to helping others do the latter. She loves to follow trends in mobile Internet technology, parse how social media are affecting the way we communicate and do business, and assess how new technologies are irrevocably altering the dead tree industries of newspapers and book publishing.
TIM BURLAND – Publishing Sales Specialist
Tim came to Japan in 1990 with plans to stay only one year, and he’s still here. He now has 18 years of experience in trading between Japan and overseas, in both exports and imports. Eight of those years have been in the English book industry in Japan, building upon his broad network and experiences working at both Amazon Japan and Yohan. Tim maintains a wide range of contacts with online stores, Trade (real Book Stores), Pro-STM/Academic, ELT and magazines.
Tim offers his services to publishers who are looking to expand their presence in the Japanese and wider Asian markets. With his unique experience and contacts in both the Trade and Pro-STM markets in Japan, his knowledge is of value to a wide range of publishers. Among others, he currently represents the following: Lonely Planet (in Japan & Korea), Sterling Publishing, Earthscan (the world’s leading publisher on Climate Change), CABI, Verso, Pluto Press and Eurospan. Tim also works with Jennifer Nelson LLC to supply overseas books and other educational materials to International Schools all over Asia.
Tim has passed Level 1 of the Japanese Proficiency Test and is able to conduct business meetings and correspondence at near native level. He is also fluent in French. Under his direction, Media Tectonics now represents over 90 publishers in the Asian markets.
DAVID RUSSELL – Professional Writer & IR Specialist
David Russell is a professional writer, with a specialty in Japanese business. He has worked in a Japanese securities company and as a business journalist with Nikkei (the Nihon Keizai Shimbun) and Toyo Keizai. He has published in numerous magazines (including The Harvard Business Review), and is the author of 10 books dealing with Japan or Japanese business. One of them was named “Best Business Book of the Year” in the U.S., an award never before given to a book about Japan. In addition to his original works, he has written several sponsored books on behalf of both corporate and individual clients.
David has also written speeches for world-famous CEOs, advertising and marketing materials for several major corporations, and uncountable reams of PR and IR text for nearly 100 top companies, including Toyota, Sony, Sharp, Ricoh, SMFG, Fast Retailing, Tokyo Gas, JR East, Canon, TEPCO, NTT Docomo, Mitsubishi Chemical, Toshiba, and many more.
He has worked as an interviewer for NHK-TV, taught in the Economics Dept. of Sophia University, and lectured to hundreds of corporate executives about stakeholder communications. In 2010, he gave an SRO presentation on behalf of the Japan IR Association about social media and proactive corporate messaging, and in 2011 addressed 130 members of the Osaka Stock Exchange about how to improve investor communications. Currently, David is developing a global branding campaign for one of Japan’s top consumer products firms, writing another book, and teaching a course on wine.
RICHARD KIPNIS – Broadcast Production Director
The master eye, executive producer and CEO of Japan’s oldest, most respected foreign-run TV and film production company—virgin earth, inc.—Richard Kipnis has had a lens trained on the TV production world in Japan since 1977. As videotape editor for ABC News Tokyo and editor/producer at NBC’s Tokyo bureau and then director of network operations in Asia for Reuters Financial Television, he filmed some of the biggest news stories in recent history, including the Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing, an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in Manila and the Kobe earthquake. At virgin earth, he and his expert crew have filmed artists like Coldplay, Yo Yo Ma and Beyonce, shows like “The Next Iron Chef America” and “The Amazing Race” in 2005, 2007, and 2009. They have also produced documentaries such as “Explorer 24 hours after Hiroshima” and “Tokyo: Living Small in the Big City” for National Geographic TV and the Lucy Blackman murder case for Discovery Channel, amongst many others. Adding IR and PR broadcast services, Richard and his team webcast Nissan’s 112th Shareholders Annual Meeting and the Salesforce & Toyota Press Conference with Mr. Akio Toyoda.
CHRISTOPHER DELCOURT – Advertising Director
Christopher Delcourt majored in Marketing and International Business at the Queensland University of Technology. He served as Vice President at an Education Management company in Japan before co-founding BRANDPOINT Advertising, a specialist advertising company in out-of-home media.
In 2010, BRANDPOINT Advertising received the Global Entrepreneur Award (Japan-Open Category) sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce Japan, United Airlines and Ernst & Young (www.eoy-forum.com). More recently, the company was awarded the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in Dubai. Christopher was recently a guest speaker at the American Chamber of Commerce Japan for their “Entrepreneurship Talking Series” and a guest media partner for the 2011 FujiFilm Media Exhibition. BRANDPOINT Advertising brings cutting-edge, best-practice technologies to our clients.
