There is more selling done inside an agency than outside.

Sorry, I meant a Japanese-owned agency in Singapore.
But I’ve had friends who worked in Japan.
All depends what you want.
One of the bigger Japanese agencies occupies 2 skyscrapers.
They have more than 500 copywriters.
So at any one time, it’s a fair bet that the teams will have similar ideas.

I once pitched on a Japanese copier in Singapore.
The Japanese office insisted on sending a team over to help.
Yeah, sure.

Anyway, from Jap to Sin, they did 5 campaigns!
That scared the livin’ daylights out of us.

So we asked them to show the work.
They proudly said, “Ok, the first concept uses ET to sell the copier, the 2nd has Don Johnson, the 3rd has Ava Gardner”. You get the idea.

We said as politely as we could that what they had done was one idea with 5 celebs.

They disagreed even more politely.

You probably know this.
Many celebs are paied very handsomely to appear in TV spots than can only appear in Japan.

But it’s not all bad.
Folks have done good stuff there.
Think TBWA did some great work for Volvo recently.
Dentsu did the safety pin Volvo.
And there was a Nissin Cup Noodle bit of cartoon that won a Grand Prix Lion.

Vik, could tell you more about Japan - maybe you email vvc…@hotmail.com? Don’t want to impose too much on Trott-san’s blog.

I remember hitting something of a brick wall when I was at Art College needing to come up with a justification for everything. Why paint the sky blue rather than pink? Why paint the sky? Why paint? Why do anything? That type of thing.

Later when I was doing animation a tutor said to me “The best animation is the animation that gets done” and to basically get over myself.

I once wanted to get a scholaship to study at Tamabi but gave up after 3 years of trying. How is Japan in regards of advertising, culture etc?

Reminds me of a Japanese agency I was once at.
The clients pretty much bought whatever crap we showed them. And it was really crap.
MD wasn’t much involved as most of the time, he was at the Jap Ass (Japanese Association as he called it).
Yet, the staff got at least 5 months bonus and company trips to Hawaii, Japan and London! (Not in the same year, of course.)
Think what great ads could be done if said agency had some suits and creatives with ambition.

At another Jap agency, the management insisted on hiring rich kids as suits.
The thinking was the 90210-type brats would introduce rich clients to the agency.
Never happened.
And these kids sucked.
They had little passion.
And firing them was pointless:
a. they didn’t need the money.
b. they might sue the agency. (And why not? Some of these kid’s personal income far exceeded the Agency’s Group combined billings.)

What upsets me is, so many people want to get into advertising and don’t get the chance.
Then we get people who do get the break and make nothing out of it.

Have you read “The Cult of the Amateurs”? It’s about ‘how blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values’.
In the past, ad agencies came up with the work.
Now, with Macs, some clients think they can do a better job.
(What’s frightening is, once a in while, they do actually create better work.)

So, these days, it ain’t just selling an idea.
It’s as much about convincing clients to leave the ads to agencies.
Instead of D-I-Y or consultants.