Japan is popularly known for a lot of things – bullet trains, manga, instagrammable sakura watching spots, delicious sushi, and rich and unique culture. But aside from being well-known, economically and technologically speaking, the country has been continuously gaining popularity with its advertisements – particularly its wacky, weird, yet cool commercials that are noticeably totally different from the Westerners’, leaving people around the world often mystified.
However, while these TV advertisements (which often last for 15 seconds) might have had many people weirded out because of their unusual but wonderful concepts, much oddity might have come from the country’s advertisement industry itself.
Japan is the world’s third largest advertising market in the world (including disciplines such as creative, media, public relations, digital, and etcetera) with 42, 972 billion-dollars-worth of spending in 2017 (as reported by Statista – an online statistics, market research, and business intelligence portal) dominated by Dentsu –Japan’s top ad agency, ranking 5th among the world’s largest advertising companies, and which happen to own half of the Japanese advertising industry as well.
The oddity (or the mystery), however, lies in the fact that Japanese ad agencies (most particularly Dentsu) managed to succeed to hold on to such a dominant position despite the efforts of the global agency networks.
So, what is so unique about the Japanese ad industry that makes this happen? And what can you (specifically the ones hoping to unlock the secrets to the Japanese advertisement market) learn from it?
The Japanese put so much value on relationships. The longer, the better.
Rather than the black and white letters of a contract and more than anything else, personal relations in Japanese businesses are of utmost importance.
Dentsu, as the best example, has a relationship with the media that is not just strong but almighty.
Starting as a newswire agency like Reuters or AP, the agency shifted more of its focus on advertising when the government separated news and advertising functions during the World War II. The agency helped the government as propaganda and intelligence arm and hired many ex-politicians rather than ad-men to act as “fixers” to reinforce relationships. Because of these, it succeeded to maintain strong influence and relations both in the radio and TV industry. In addition, Dentsu was chosen as the agency of record for the Liberal Democratic Party – giving them the “license to rule”.
Furthermore, strong ties had also helped the agency to handle competing advertisers such as Toyota, Mazda, Honda, and Nissan – all at the same time.
When strengthening ties with clients, any information should not be leaked. So, as long as there is no information breach; working with competing brands will never be a problem. Therefore, agencies hire multiple teams: more staff equals more competitors that they can handle. This also explains the size of the industry – Dentsu, with 57 elevator shafts to avoid competing teams bumping into each other.
Japanese audience is wired a little differently.
According to James Hollow in his blog “The Japanese advertising industry in a nutshell”, the Japanese culture “is deep in a different way: aesthetically.” That is, aesthetics for advertising comprising of copy, celebrity, visual execution, and music.
Because the Japanese brought up an educational paradigm that promotes and provides detailed knowledge as opposed to conceptual originality, communications (i.e., advertisements) that are designed in conceptual terms will not gain notoriety in Japan.
In other words, Japanese advertising aims more to fit the feel of “of the now” rather than making commercials stand out in a conceptual way – which of course, different from the Westerners’, are found by foreign creative judging panels to be odd, mostly struggled to be appreciated.
The Japanese advertising market might be difficult for foreign agencies to make a typically strong presence primarily because of Japanese ad agencies’ unique and strong ties with the government. And not to mention that Dentsu has a growing network across 145 countries including Australia, Singapore, the US, the UK, Canada, and China (which, however, was overshadowed by American ad agencies probably because of political rivalries (i.e. Nanking massacre and territorial disputes). However, staying ahead of the game can give international agencies the chance of growing in Japan – no matter how odd the market is.
