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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 could 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.'

Since its launch, the agency has worked for advertisers such as telecoms giant NTT, beverage behemoth Suntory, Japanese Railways, Fuji Xerox, Sky PerfecTV! and even Burberry. It has made pop promos, designed packaging and organized events. It has also racked up a stack of awards at international advertising competitions. And it does not hesitate to make TV ads that are 30 seconds or even one minute long. (One ad, for the TV station Star Channel, weighed in at a colossal two minutes.)

Oka believes advertising should stir viewers' emotions and cling to their brains for hours after the spot has screened. The Tugboat style is bold, optimistic and often faintly trashy, mashing Manga elements with surreal Anglo-Saxon humour. For instance, an ad to promote Japanese Railways' express service to the ski slopes featured a skiing ostrich. And the agency's visceral ‘Ronin Pitcher' spot, to promote baseball coverage on PerfecTV!, was a John Woo-like explosion of slow motion violence. Viewers got a gory close-up of the pitcher's fingernail shredding as he hurled the ball at supersonic speed. To promote Fuji Xerox photocopiers, a series of ads depicted a pushy salesman surprising people in their baths or accosting them outside public toilets. All this is risky stuff for taboo-ridden Japan.

‘You can tell how straight-laced clients are by looking at how many agencies have followed in our footsteps,' says Oka. ‘The sum total is zero. We're the only ones doing the kind of advertising we do. I expected to start a revolution, but so far it hasn't happened.'

Because of this, the agency has turned its attention abroad. It has begun pitching seriously for business outside Japan and building informal links with other hot shops in Europe and the United States. ‘My goal now is to be the first small Japanese agency to have a credible international reputation,' Oka says. ‘I want to be mentioned alongside agencies like [the UK's] Mother or [Amsterdam agency] 180.'

Oka may just have the talent and determination to succeed. Forget the
ronin
pitcher – meet the
ronin
ad man.

13

The alternatives

‘Exiles from the mainstream'

T
he tall narrow building on Herengracht in Amsterdam may once have been the home of a wealthy merchant. Like many of the houses along this picturesque canal-side street, it is approached via an imposing stone staircase. On entering, you half expect a butler to materialize and take your coat before ushering you into a book-lined room, perhaps with a fire blazing in the grate. But this is a 21st-century advertising agency: the butler has been replaced by a brisk receptionist; the fire with a plasma screen and a crescent-shaped leather sofa.

Welcome to the headquarters of 180, one of the most successful of a group of super-hip agencies that have clustered in Amsterdam. Some, like KesselsKramer, have Dutch roots; others, like 180, Wieden & Kennedy, BSUR and Amsterdam Worldwide, are tribes of expatriates who have deliberately exiled themselves from the mainstream.

On the metaphorical map of advertising, the Amsterdam crowd is out on the edge. But it also forms part of a larger grouping that might be referred to as ‘the alternatives'. These are the boutiques, the micro-networks – the agencies that offer a divergent path to the big global ideas factories. Some of them emerged in the eighties, still more in the nineties. Armed with an enviable reputation for creativity, they are also known for their early adoption of the internet. A few of them even managed to drop the surnames and think up brand names for themselves.

One of the peculiarities of the Amsterdam clique is that it tends to specialize in sports shoe brands. 180 handles Adidas, Wieden & Kennedy works for Nike and Amsterdam Worldwide is contracted by Asics. This partly relates to the old axiom about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer: the European headquarters of Nike had been located near Amsterdam for some time before Adidas moved its
communications department into the same orbit; a trick it had also pulled on Nike's home turf in Portland, Oregon.

But the links between the agencies are even closer than that.

Amsterbrand

Back in 1992, Scottish adman Alex Melvin had spent 10 years working as a strategic planner for various London ad agencies. He'd handled big accounts such as Guinness, British Rail and Midland Bank. But Melvin was also a sportsman with two great passions: soccer and sailing. That year he decided to devote more time to the latter – a lot more time. He left advertising to set up a racing team in Stockholm with round-the-world yachtsman Ludde Ingvall.

That took care of the sailing. Soccer was next on the agenda.

The following year, Melvin wasn't expecting much when he took a call from a headhunter. But his attention snapped into focus when he heard that the post in question was with the agency Wieden & Kennedy, which had set up shop in Amsterdam to service the Nike account. ‘They need someone who knows a bit about football,' the headhunter told him.

Based in Portland, Oregon, Wieden & Kennedy had been founded 10 years earlier by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. The pair had worked together at McCann Erickson's Portland office, but it was during a stint at a smaller agency called William Cain that they met Phil Knight, owner of an obscure sports shoe brand called Nike. He became the duo's first client when they decided to go it alone. The agency thrived on the back of its close partnership with Nike, for whom Wieden penned the ‘Just Do It' slogan. It helped that Knight disapproved of most advertising. Innovative and exigent, he challenged the agency to impress him. ‘Nike constantly wants us to surprise and amaze them,' Wieden said, defining in fewer than 10 words the only client relationship that can lead to great advertising (‘What makes Nike's advertising tick',
The Guardian
, 17 June 2003).

The ads ranged from gritty and dramatic to elemental and human. A spot for Nike's Air Revolution shoe featured muddy Super 8 images of athletes, both professional and amateur, over the Beatles song ‘Revolution'. The Beatles took legal action over the use of the track, resulting in some useful additional press coverage. But even without the surrounding furore, it was one of the most effective uses of rock music in advertising.
Another commercial, for the ‘Just Do It' campaign in 1988, starred an 80-year-old San Francisco runner, who said, ‘I run 17 miles every morning. People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime. I leave them in my locker.'

Wieden & Kennedy was the first agency to challenge the hegemony of Madison Avenue. And now it was moving into Europe.

Alex Melvin thought he'd better just do it.

He joined W&K in 1993 as its first European planning director. He then embarked on what he describes as ‘the best five years of my life, personally and professionally'. As well as being a key figure in the development of Nike's global football strategy, he worked with Microsoft (on the launch of Windows 95) and Coca-Cola. He also found himself surrounded by a highly unusual group of people: ‘The agency was populated by creative refugees from all over the world of advertising. In my opinion, that one office of Wieden & Kennedy changed the way international advertising was done. Micro-networks, the use of digital media – we were experimenting with all that stuff.'

But the problem with the overseas branches of US agencies, in Melvin's view, is that they can't help importing an American style of advertising, ‘in this case, West Coast cool'. With a couple of colleagues – Guy Hayward and Chris Mendola – he began wondering what a purely international agency would look like. After all, global brands required advertising with no cultural baggage. ‘This would be an agency with absolutely no affiliation – zero cultural heritage. And as none of us spoke Dutch, it might as well be based in Amsterdam.'

Unfortunately, Wieden & Kennedy got wind of the fact that the three were planning to leave – as well as a scurrilous rumour that they were pitching for the Adidas account. Melvin insists that, although they were aware of the Adidas pitch, they were innocent of contacting the company. (They were later officially cleared of the charge after a legal wrangle.) Nevertheless, they were tossed out on their ears. The intensity of the rivalry between Nike and Adidas can scarcely be imagined. ‘Since we found ourselves on the street in a strange city where we didn't speak the language, the decision was made for us. We decided we'd pitch for Adidas anyway.'

A brief phone call to Adidas turned up the helpful information that one of the agencies on the pitch-list had dropped out – as well as the slightly less encouraging news that the embryonic 180 had only 48 hours
to convince Adidas that it deserved to be heard. Enlisting the help of creative director Larry Frey, who had worked with Wieden & Kennedy in the United States and Japan, they ‘sat in a small apartment and plastered the walls with ideas,' says Melvin.

An analysis of the Adidas brand revealed that it was undergoing a major resurgence thanks to two things: the introduction of the Predator football boot and the growing street-wear phenomenon driven by Adidas Originals. Partly as a result of the latter, a whole generation of young consumers regarded Adidas as much as a street fashion brand as a performance sports brand. ‘Our pitch to Adidas,' Melvin continues, ‘involved an approach that clearly grounded Adidas in the world of performance sport, to avoid it becoming subject to the fickleness of fashion. We distilled our thinking down to two words: “Forever Sport”. That line ran on all Adidas communication for four years until the job was done in consumers' minds.'

The pitch took place in London. Obviously they won the business – that much you know – but it was a slight case of ‘be careful what you wish for'. Melvin says, ‘[Adidas] wanted a commercial on the air in 35 countries within three months – when we didn't even have an agency.'

180 went on to produce years of eye-popping advertising. And unlike many of the traditional agencies, it had a handle on the digital environment from the very start. In 1999, in the run-up to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the agency hired comedian Lee Evans for a series of short films. The 12 two-minute vignettes showed Evans visiting various athletes, trying out their equipment and generally playing the clown. The athletes were all sponsored by Adidas and the films were lightly but noticeably branded. They were designed to be shown on the internet – but TV stations demanded to air them and the vignettes even ended up getting screened in the UK on the BBC, a resolutely commercial-free environment. ‘We got in a bit of trouble for that one,' chuckles Melvin. ‘The spots were so entertaining that they just didn't look like advertising.'

A highlight of the ‘Impossible is Nothing' campaign in 2004 was a special effects extravaganza that depicted a miraculously rejuvenated Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring with his
daughter
, Laila.

‘There's no magic formula for making great advertising,' says Melvin, ‘but the first ingredient is world-class talent. And that's the great thing about Amsterdam: it's a city that's easy to attract talent to. It's
easygoing, it's multicultural, it has a reputation for creativity and it is at the heart of Europe.'

There are many parallels between 180 and another Amsterdam agency: StrawberryFrog. The agency rebranded itself Amsterdam Worldwide in 2008 when its founders parted ways, but it remains historically important as one of the agencies that put the city on the international advertising map.

Born on Valentine's Day 1999, the agency fitted into a late nineties context in which the ‘virtual network' suddenly became possible. Globalization was proceeding apace, the European telecommunications industry was deregulating, internet penetration was rising and mobile phones were about to become ubiquitous.

Founders Scott Goodson and Brian Elliott were both nomadic Canadians. Goodson saw the potential of the wired world in Sweden, where he initially went to visit his future wife – and ended up co-owner of a creative agency called Welinder, whose biggest account was Ericsson. The Swedes being the most techno-literate people in Europe, Goodson had a mobile phone in 1989 and was developing internet advertising in 1992. He met Elliott, a strategic planner, at the same agency.

A couple of years later, Welinder was bought by Publicis and Goodson moved on, accepting a job with J Walter Thompson in Toronto. The atmosphere wasn't quite the same, as he related in telephone conversations with Elliott, who had moved to a small agency in Amsterdam. Elliott recalls, ‘The problem was that, at Welinder, we'd seen that a different kind of agency was do-able. Scott was frustrated because… well, you know what it's like at a big international agency: a conference call can never involve too many people. But the web had made size irrelevant. A small number of people could communicate with the world. So we thought, “Enough – we can do this.” '

Amsterdam was chosen because it was cheap, groovy and connected. Apart from the tax advantages, it was a mercantile city and a cultural crossroads. Goodson stumbled on the name StrawberryFrog when he was looking for the opposite of a ‘dinosaur', which is how he'd begun to view the traditional Madison Avenue agencies. He started out with ‘lizard', but then somebody suggested the amphibian. ‘But we didn't want to just call ourselves “Frog” because that's kind of boring. So we did some research and found… the strawberry frog, which is from the
Amazon. It's actually red with blue legs. It's kind of a funky little red, blue-jeaned frog… I also think it does a good job of explaining what we do. We're a small, highly-focused, passionate group of people that moves very fast and efficiently' (‘Ready, set, leap!',
Reveries
magazine, October 2002).

At the beginning, the agency was viewed as intriguing but quirky. Elliott says, ‘We'd get invited to big pitches as the wild card. It was, “Let's get those crazy StrawberryFrog guys in here.” We were the comic relief. But then we would win the pitch.'

Professional radicals

At the end of the 1990s,
Campaign
chose an outfit called Howell Henry Chaldecott & Lury as its Agency of the Decade. Founded in 1987, HHCL was the British template for the alternative agency – the hot shop that everyone else wanted to emulate. For a while, it seemed as revolutionary in nineties London as Doyle Dane Bernbach had been in fifties New York.

The founders of HHCL were Robert Howell, Steve Henry, Axel Chaldecott and Adam Lury. Howell had been an account handler at Young & Rubicam's London office, Lury a planner at BMP and Henry and Chaldecott a respected creative team at WCRS.

The agency's opening salvo was to run a trade press ad showing a couple making love on a sofa in front of the telly. Aimed at clients, it read: ‘According to current audience research, this couple are watching your ad. So who's really getting screwed?' As a result, the agency got sacked by one of its first clients, Thames Television. But it was a hell of a debut.

HHCL staff carried business cards identifying themselves as ‘professional radicals'. The agency scrapped the old-fashioned advertising notions of ‘creatives' and ‘suits' and challenged everyone in the agency to come up with ideas. It encouraged clients to become involved in the creative process during ‘tissue meetings' (in which the agency presented them with rough drafts, or ‘tissues', of potential solutions).

HHCL made fresh, funny, low-budget TV spots that were a marked contrast to the overblown epics of the eighties. Although the agency came up with many innovative campaigns, its most enduring contribution to
the TV advertising archives was probably its work for Tango, the fizzy drink. The first spots were simple: somebody would take a sip of Tango and a fat, bald man, entirely painted orange, would spring out of nowhere and slap their face. It was surprising, absurd and very English.

But HHCL was not just about absurdist humour. Its ads for Fuji camera film were black-and-white portraits of people excluded from mainstream society owing to race, disability or age. And the multiracial cast of the agency's TV commercials – black and Asian actors with regional accents – showed a realistic Britain for perhaps the first time in advertising.