Adland

  Advertising spend slowed during the harsh inter-war years. In 1936 Dentsu’s news service was nationalized and the company now concentrated exclusively on advertising. Although the industry assumed its inevitable wartime role as a diffuser of propaganda, its income was severely restricted. At the end of what must have been the most sombre period for the company, Dentsu founder Hoshiro Mitsunaga died in 1945.

  The arrival of Hideo Yoshida as the company’s fourth president in 1947 was a turning point for Dentsu. It coincided with the rise of the Japanese middle class and the emergence of mass consumption, eagerly supported by advertising. Yoshida became known as ‘the big demon’ and his hardworking staff as ‘little demons’. He took advantage of the post-war period by recruiting former army officers and bureaucrats with useful government connections. Senior executives were expected to report for duty an hour earlier than the rest of the staff – and to provide daily reports on the progress of their departments. The annual teambuilding trip was a bracing climb up Mount Fuji.

  Seeing the future and liking the look of it, in the 1950s Yoshida became Japan’s greatest advocate for the launch of commercial broadcasting. After investing in radio, Dentsu practically underwrote the introduction of television, as well as guaranteeing advertising support. The very first TV spot broadcast in Japan was a time check sponsored by Seiko watches. It was, naturally, a Dentsu creation. The agency’s symbiotic relationship with the media meant it was soon able to grab the lion’s share of television advertising space – up to 60 per cent of primetime – making it impossible to ignore for the country’s largest advertisers. Dentsu had also invested heavily in the press and forged agreements to buy newspaper space in bulk. By the 1960s Dentsu pretty much had the lock on media in Japan. In 1974 it was named the largest advertising agency in the world by Advertising Age.

  Although the Japanese economy experienced severe dips in the seventies – the fallout of the Vietnam War and two oil crises – advertising expenditure continued to rise. A trade imbalance caused by the growth of exports to the United States caused further economic instability in the early 1980s. By the middle of the decade, however, driven by the development of satellite TV, advertising spend was climbing again. During a 10-year period from 1981, total expenditure more than doubled.

  Dentsu has remained reliant on Japanese billings for much of its history, but it has also acknowledged that this is a potential weakness and has fought insularity. In 1981 it established a joint venture with Young & Rubicam called DYR. This allowed the US agency to enter the Japanese market while giving Dentsu access to the United States and Europe. Dentsu also showed considerable foresight by opening a branch in Shanghai that same year. It has since become one of the most prominent overseas agencies in China. It has a strong network of subsidiaries throughout Asia, with a more muted presence in Europe and North America. It acquired the UK’s Collett Dickenson Pearce in 1990.

  The collapse of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ in 1991 and the subsequent lapse in consumer spending heralded a change in the way that Japanese agencies did business. At that point they were essentially media brokers. Although they developed creative product, the spots were compressed to 15 seconds in order to cram as many as possible into a break. But Japan’s newly cash-strapped consumers now required a bit more persuasion before they reached for their wallets. In order to convince them, advertisers would have to build attractive brands, which meant paying more attention to creativity – an area in which the agencies were weak. Their evolution from commodity providers to creative resources is still ongoing. In addition, the arrival of satellite TV and the internet threatened Dentsu’s dominance of the media market and offered new avenues for advertisers – as well as a way for smaller, nimbler agencies to break through the blockade.

  Dentsu established partnerships to accelerate its advance into overseas markets. In 2000 it invested in the Bcom3 group of agencies, which included Leo Burnett. The following year it went public, with a listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The acquisition of Bcom3 by Publicis gave Dentsu a 15 per cent stake in the French advertising group. That relationship ended in 2012 – when Publicis bought back its stake – and Dentsu shocked the industry by then announcing a £3.2 billion cash deal to buy UK-based group Aegis, owner of media buying and planning entity Carat, along with several other operations. This consolidated Dentsu’s status as a member of the Big Five and put it more squarely in competition with Omnicom, WPP and Interpublic.

  Dentsu is the world’s largest single advertising agency, with more than 20,000 employees worldwide. Far larger than its closest rivals in Japan, it dominates advertising spend in the country, particularly on television where it is responsible for almost a third of all spending.

  Advertising haiku-style

  Slashed to only a few seconds, Japanese ads blurt from the screen like noisy, incandescent fireworks. But while Western creatives reared on ‘mini movie’ commercials might sneer at this pared-down format, it slots perfectly into Japanese culture.

  Dentsu chief creative officer Kunihiko Tainaka says, ‘TV commercials in Japan try to place an emphasis on fast, emotional impact. You’ll often find simple words and phrases, songs, jingles and highly memorable characters. The aim is to stand out from the other commercials. We have the feeling that Western advertising is very rational: it’s marketing oriented and strategic. Our advertising is media oriented and instinctive.’

  The compressed format springs partly from tradition. In the early days, running a TV ad conveyed such high status on a brand that 15 seconds sufficed to make the point. But it transpired that viewers were predisposed to swallow these bite-sized spots. Tainaka explains that Japanese advertising has clear links with another, much older aspect of the country’s culture: haiku, the beautiful one-line poetry whose best-known proponent among Westerners is probably Bashō. ‘This is an art form entirely based on symbolism. The Japanese are skilled at reading between the lines so the audience can extrapolate from a single image.’

  The ability to appreciate a self-contained world without insisting on narrative may explain Japan’s pre-eminence in the field of video games. Even its famous Manga comics demonstrate a non-linear approach to storytelling. Executive creative director Akira Kagami says, ‘Outside Japan, comic books are generally story oriented. Manga tend to be situation oriented. Once again, the approach is more abstract. You can see Manga strips with just four panels. Even two is occasionally enough.’

  He points out that accusations of lack of creativity based on the brevity of Japanese commercials is unfair. Selling a product in 15 seconds is a skill in itself – and when you have only a few words to play with, precision is everything.

  ‘Strangely enough,’ he adds, ‘as digital media take hold and attention spans become shorter, I have the feeling that advertising in other markets is becoming more like our own. In the seventies and eighties, there was a much bigger gap in comprehension between Western and Asian audiences, which was reflected in our performance at international creative competitions. But since the 1990s, Asian creativity has been welcomed and admired.’

  In any case, Japanese advertising cannot be approached in a simplistic, catch-all fashion. There are regional styles. Advertising for a metropolitan, Tokyoite audience – the heartland of the Kantō region – is glossy and modern. But there’s also work aimed at the south-central Kansai region, whose capital is Osaka. The region is considered more cultural and idiosyncratic than businesslike Tokyo. The advertising crafted for its citizens is more cynical – and often does better at Cannes.

  The need to make an instant impact explains another well-known aspect of Japanese advertising: the use of Hollywood stars to sell beer, whisky, soft drinks and cars. But Kagami suggests this kind of advertising might be evolving. ‘Japanese audiences are becoming far more sophisticated and well travelled – and Western stars don’t have the exotic appeal they once did. In fact, I’d say there’s a swing towards Japanese icons. When you only have 15 seconds to play with, celebrities make
an instant connection. Their background is established. You don’t have to develop the character.’

  Not surprisingly, given its past, Dentsu has never given a moment’s thought to separating media from creative. Indeed, the media drives the creative, not the other way around. The agency says this has made it easier to devise ‘through the line’ campaigns, with a single idea developed for several different media, especially the internet and mobile phones. ‘The line has vanished. We believe that you may have made a big mistake by unbundling media from creative in the West,’ says Kagami. ‘Our creatives can consider different media choices right from the start of the process.’

  A unique employee within Dentsu is the TVC planner, also known as the ‘TV specialist’. This discipline is not analogous with media planning. The TV specialist’s role involves coming up with the original idea for a TV commercial and overseeing the entire production process.

  At Dentsu it doesn’t matter where a creative comes from. People from a wide variety of backgrounds are recruited because the agency has a sophisticated internal education system to support their development.

  So what’s it like to be a creative at a Japanese giant?

  Soccer and Shiseido

  As well as being one of Japan’s creative stars, Masako Okamura was one of the first female creative directors at Dentsu. ‘Maybe that’s why people sometimes mistook me for a boy,’ jokes this willowy, gamine woman. It could also have something to do with the fact that she is a devoted soccer fan, and is often clad in Chelsea or Real Madrid team shirts. (She even admits to watching tapes of spectacular soccer goals to ease stress.) ‘When I have an important meeting I change into a Prada dress and people say, “Oh, she’s a girl after all!”’

  After starting out in the PR division, Okamura became a copywriter in 1992. She is proud to have worked with Akira Odagiri, considered one of the masters of Japanese creativity, who now heads the creative department at Ogilvy & Mather Japan. She was promoted to creative director in 2001, making her one of the most senior members of Dentsu’s approximately 800-strong creative staff. Although Dentsu politely declines to name its clients, a little research reveals that its biggest accounts include Shiseido cosmetics and Toyota.

  Okamura’s working day begins at around nine and can end at any time from four in the afternoon to four in the morning, ‘as is the case for most creative people around the world’. Although the agency’s creative directors are assigned identical booths, she has a view of Mount Fuji from her desk. ‘On the desk are all kinds of funny toys from around the world, as well as various stock images sent from overseas production companies, so the younger staff members often drop by to see if anything inspires them.’

  The creative process is a team effort that requires regular brainstorming sessions. ‘In my team the one hard and fast rule is that meetings are limited to 90 minutes – just like soccer games.’

  Okamura acknowledges that some aspects of Japanese advertising may appear to be barriers to creativity – for instance, the reliance on celebrities. Yet she feels there are ways of being creative within these constraints. For example, in the middle of a recent stand-up comedy boom, a campaign for Shiseido’s male grooming range Uno featured 50 hip young comedians in individual 15-second spots – a feat that got the brand into the Guinness Book of Records. As for the brevity of Japanese spots, she points out, ‘Young people in their teens and twenties can grasp a visual idea in a few seconds. This kind of advertising works very well on mobile phones. It is now being adopted in the West, but it was pioneered here.’

  But as the drive towards creativity continues, an alternative approach is emerging. A 2005 spot called ‘Husky Girl’ might be considered something of a pivotal work. The ad promoting the giant Ajinomoto Stadium in the suburbs of Tokyo was no less than 90 seconds long. It featured a series of beautiful young girls – with the voices of chain-smoking truck drivers. The payoff shot revealed that their vocal cords had been shredded by all the shouting and cheering they’d been doing at the stadium’s football matches. The gently humorous ad hinted at a new direction in Japanese advertising.

  Although longer spots and Western-style, story-driven ads are beginning to make an appearance, the more caustic tone of British advertising is unlikely to reach Japanese screens. Sex, politics and religion are strictly taboo. Political correctness is the rule.

  The spots that survive are greatly appreciated. Okamura observes that while in other markets consumers might be suspicious of advertising, the Japanese are fans. There’s even a consumer magazine devoted to the subject, called CM Now (CM being shorthand for ‘commercial’). To an Anglo-Saxon viewer the ads have an optimism and exuberance – an almost childlike innocence – that our own irony-heavy, ‘seen it all before, wasn’t impressed the first time’, media culture seems to have lost.

  Japanese society is changing – and consumer responses along with it. As a woman in a predominantly male environment, Okamura is aware of the progress that is being made. ‘After the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s, the modes of behaviour that defined men and women became blurred. Men have become less career-obsessed, more spiritual. And women have become more independent. They have their own money and they spend it more freely. So women in advertising are portrayed as independent, both emotionally and economically.’

  Viewing habits in Japan are also changing. Almost everyone has internet access and a fully interactive mobile phone. Understandably, although TV is still the leading medium, the grip of the home screen has slackened slightly. ‘Over the past 10 years, I think there’s been a decrease in the tendency to watch TV every evening,’ says Okamura. ‘But that’s because the nature of TV has changed. Now you can watch TV on your laptop or on your mobile phone. So we have seen the shift of commercials onto these new media.’

  And Japanese consumers don’t feel hunted by the agencies, Okamura insists. ‘Advertising is a form of culture among the younger generation. Today, they barely differentiate it from any other form of entertainment.’

  The challenger agency

  Dentsu’s dominance of the Japanese media has made life difficult for other agencies. The second largest agency is Hakuhodo, with revenues of some US $1.4 billion. It was founded in 1895 by an entrepreneur called Hironao Seki as a provider of advertising space in educational publications. There was a glut of these during the Meiji period as the country rushed to modernize, slavering for knowledge. Soon Hakuhodo became the exclusive provider of book advertisements for leading newspapers, which made it the country’s biggest agency. But the publishing sector declined with the arrival of television after the Second World War, allowing Dentsu to stride into first place. The organizations have remained arch rivals ever since.

  Nonetheless, Hakuhodo has pressed a couple of advantages. It was the first agency in Japan to develop US-style research techniques, which led in 1981 to the creation of the Hakuhodo Institute of Life & Living, which provides in-depth insights into Japanese consumer trends. It was also swifter than its rival to explore opportunities abroad, forming an alliance with McCann Erickson in 1960. Although McCann bought its way out of the agreement in the early nineties, Hakuhodo formed another joint venture, this time with TBWA, which handled the Nissan account outside Japan. The alliance was formalized under the name G1 Worldwide in 2000.

  Although a number of Western agencies have entered Japan – either as joint ventures or, more recently, solo entities – they’ve generally had a tough time of it. They bring clients with them into the market, but they struggle to win significant Japanese accounts and their billings remain unimpressive compared to those of Hakuhodo and Dentsu. Most sources agree that the top 10 agencies in the country remain Japanese. Small, switched-on Western networks like Fallon, Wieden & Kennedy and BBH are present, however, and have a subtle influence on the creative output of the domestic giants.

  Japanese-owned independent boutiques are few and far between. But one that’s worth taking a closer look at is called Tugboat.

  There c
ould not be a greater contrast between Dentsu and this tiny creative agency of half-a-dozen people. Its small but cool offices are located on the ground floor of a discreet building in Omotesando – one of the hippest districts in the city, where young Japanese preen on café terraces before strolling along to the distorted glass Rubik’s cube that is the local Prada store.

  Ironically, Tugboat boss Yasumichi Oka learned his trade at Dentsu, which he left in 1999 after 19 years to start his fledgling agency – taking three members of his creative team with him. ‘To say that Dentsu were annoyed is not entirely accurate,’ says Oka today. ‘They were perplexed. Nobody leaves their job in Japan, especially if they work at the country’s biggest advertising agency.’

  But Dentsu itself had lit the fuse that sparked Oka’s departure. The agency sent him to Britain and Sweden with a brief to see how small creative hot shops worked and come back with a full report. Instead, he returned to Japan with a new vision of how advertising could be done. ‘The very fact that Dentsu sent me on the trip indicates that it is tentatively exploring new forms of creativity. But I wanted to be a pioneer.’

  The agency’s name is a reflection of his philosophy: like the country, Japanese advertising is an island. Oka wants to haul it towards new ideas and influences.

  ‘The main danger was that clients would not support our philosophy,’ he admits. ‘But in fact, our clients are self-selecting. Those that seek a traditional approach go to the big agencies. Those that are willing to take risks and explore new avenues come to us.’