If the Japanese agency approach is more about process than creativity, then Kunihiko Tainaka is — albeit guardedly — setting out to reinvent it. “There was a different point of view when our clients’ markets were just local,” says the chief creative officer at Dentsu, choosing his words carefully. “Now our clients are expanding into overseas areas and, for us, that means international experience is more important.”
The 62-year-old Tainaka is a reserved man. It’s perhaps this quality that has, for much of his 40 years at the Japanese agency, kept him out of the foreign media spotlight. Even now, as he prepares Dentsu for its most crucial mission yet — to haul Japanese brands into international markets — coaxing details from him isn’t easy, not least because his manner is self-effacing to the extreme.
But it is also this apparent modesty and ability to tread with the utmost care that explains why Tainaka was chosen to lead the creative output of Japan’s largest advertising agency.
Indeed, there are perhaps few things as impressive, and intimidating, as Dentsu’s headquarters in Tokyo — a glass fortress with a subdued colour scheme, bare walls and closely-packed office cubicles that belie its creative authority. The well-organised, 48-storey building houses more than 6,000 employees across five ‘account management companies’ including 800 creatives and several creative boutiques such as Shingata — all of whom report to Tainaka.
But if it’s tough at the top, Tainaka doen’t show it. As he describes the transformation taking place at Dentsu as a “fascinating and exciting phenomenon”, he presents an almost calm assurance and stresses that building a convincing global offering will take time. After all, as he notes, he is only here to “sow the seeds of something new”.
Be that as it may, just how Tainaka steers the Dentsu giant into international markets could define the future of Japanese creativity. “What we want is to create a Japanese style that is polished in an international way to (develop) a new style of Japanese advertising. How we do that is through learning and experience. Some of our good creators have integrated into foreign agencies to see work and to study abroad, at agencies like Crispin Porter and Matching Studio in Thailand for instance.
“Within our network, there are seminars organised to exchange ideas. There is a programme called Creative Link that links Asian creative teams and work is judged by a jury at our headquarters.”
This new creative structuring, perhaps in a reflection of the economic buoyancy the country is experiencing, is already seeing more Western humour injected into television spots and new concepts emerge in a bid to break away from a long-established way of doing things.
Tainaka points to the Ask Milk and All Nippon Airways campaigns that are helping connect Japanese brands with consumers beyond the 15-second burst on television, through trends that are seeing advertisers develop television commercial “series” to engage viewers.
Change at Dentsu is on the horizon, as the agency turns a corner to challenge traditional ways of doing things and sets its eyes on ground-breaking work that will continue to see it recognised at global and regional award shows. Tainaka adds: “Award shows are very important, especially international ones, as they show clients our reach and international understanding.”
