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Breaking work with the Japanese Creative
Creative and customers with the service account caught in the middle. Throughout the world, where the advertising is done, his fights are legendary. Japan is no exception.
On one side are the seers and shamans, whose search for new and original can lead in directions that seem crazy. In its constant search for something new, creative not to investigate the limits of sense and taste are not doing the work of its clients should be demanding. In advertising, job No. 1 is impact and most often is boring, is dead.
Then there are the managers and guardians of the policy corporate. Agents on the client must check and check again to make sure the ads are in line with marketing strategy and in line with the brand and image corporate. Their nightmare is going too far, causing a scandal that damaged the activity for which they are responsible.
The problem in both parties is to keep the dispute figure and taking advantage of the tensions generated by the creation of power of the most effective ads. When the creative and clients share the same language and culture, search a response is quite difficult. When the creative customers are Japanese and they are not, the difficulties can seem overwhelming. My argument is, however, one of hope. With patience, cunning and adequate preparation can be overcome.
In what follows, we will look first in the typical process whereby the creative Japanese and their clients get to know Japanese. (Know where you are in this process is vital to effectively address emerging issues.) Proceed to consider some of the ways that differences of language and culture make the problems worse. Finally, when the outlook is dark indeed, I offer some suggestions for solutions and prevent problems before they occur.
Pass #@!!#%&!! ads to meet
Often starts here. A marketing manager foreigners come to Japan. The agency assigned a creative team to work on your account. It is new to Japan. They're new to working with non-Japanese. If you work for a large corporation, multinational, which is equipped with clear guidelines for good corporate advertising. His new team is eager to demonstrate creative him "How is in Japan." Both are disillusioned quickly.
He is upset by his apparent inability to propose ideas to adapt to business strategies and present them in ways that he (and his bosses back home) is convincing. For its part, the creative team is Japanese fuming. "Does not the stupid gaijin realized this is Japan!"
What foreign manager requested were the creative high flight that left their mark in working with Japanese customers. It may seem rather than what he received was the fans who do not know your business at all. Beside, if are first class, creative and, above all if they work for a great agency, "see themselves, quite properly, as members of the elite. "Is not this stupid gaijin know who is speaking? "If the team members are real Primadonna, its momentum at this point is get out." No I have to put up with this! Find someone else to do it. "And, if high-flying, they can get away with this. First-class creative talent is as rare in Japan and elsewhere, and those what they are pampered. Yes, the administrator can foreign people find that they are easier to work. The results are rarely exciting.
The second stage occurs when the computer is not far away. Instead of their members realize that the gaijin is desperately rikutsuppoi, ie logic in an unpleasant, somewhat rigid, shortsighted step. "OK" they say. "Shiyou Ga Nai" (You can help), we'll do it your way. At this point, beginning, in fact, work regulation. The result is advertising the checklist. Meets the criteria established by corporate guidelines. In a simplistic way, mechanical fits companies strategy. Usually, less exciting, often simply boring.
The ideal, of course, is to reach the third stage. Here the creative team has learned and accepted the limits imposed by corporate strategy, but is shot and the production of great ideas within them. They've learned that working with a foreign customer is remarkably like writing haiku, which have only seventeen syllables, the pattern is fixed and, oh yes, must include proper words for the season. The framework is rigid, obsessive demands, the major challenge. The possibilities are endless.
When ideas and emotions come together in just the right images, the result advertising is exciting. The problem of course is getting there. Language and culture are on the road.
Language is a problem.
When you live and work in Japan, soon realizes the awful truth of Jackson Huddleston introduction to Gaijin Kaisha: Running a foreign company in Japan.
Too Many foreign companies have the attitude, "We're not paying to go there and learn a language. We are paying to do a job." Why do not realize that language is part of a job? Any foreign CEO in the United States go to work without having to read the Wall Street Journal? I doubt it. Every day in Japan, 99 percent of foreign general managers go to work without knowing what is in the current Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the leading financial newspaper Japan. Nor can understand television news, advertisements, or social commentary. Who would run a business in the United States without knowing English, or business in Paris without knowing French, and unable to communicate with employees in their native language? Is it ignorance or arrogance that we believe that successfully conduct business as illiterates the second largest economy in the world?
Huddleston is speaking to the CEOs. For marketing managers, whose job is effective communication Japanese language, the problem is, if anything, worse. Consider some examples:
A manager has finally decided that the only way to get the campaign advertising you want is to inform Japanese creative agency directly. Their material is carefully organized, and your presentation is compelling. Then, ask for questions. If you're lucky you can get one or two. He makes a point of asking "Do you understand?" "Yes" they say. "Yes, we understand" is what he thought he said. "Yes, we are listening", is all they actually said. It is therefore understandably angry when next presentation the agency is wildly off-line with what he believed were the clear instructions he gave them.
Manager B has chosen an indirect method. It has spoken with Japanese staff and given them the task of reporting to the agency. They have met with the agency account service staff who then have returned to the agency to inform creatives. She is also justifiably angry when the presentation of the agency seems far removed from the strategy.
In all my sympathies are with Manager A. The indirect approach adopted by the B Manager ensures that the translation problem is complicated because each of the persons involved in the trafficking chain to communicate what they think they heard. (The Japanese often-stated preference for non-verbal communication often results in missing details, some which are the vital points. To prevent this happening is one of the main functions of what may seem foreign managers endless meetings in which nothing much it only confirms what has been said before.)
I suspect, however, that a manager simply said too much, too fast. His style of presentation was perfect for employers who need to please his home. It was, however, misled by the questions she heard that, not more often, came from executives has chosen to work with him because "speak their language. Had he imagined hearing the same presentation in Japanese, while getting only a rough summary of what you said in your own language, he would have realized that much of what he meant, although it may very well have been said was not heard by those he was speaking. They should also be aware that the way he made his presentation created, in effect, a class situation. And the only Japanese schools which is certainly something to learn not to question the teacher.
C For the director of all this is history. The agency has come up with what appear to be plausible ideas, not perfect perhaps, but possible. His problem now is to choose between them. Since he does not read Japanese himself, is forced to rely on translations in making their trials. But what in fact is the real relation between conversion and the Japanese copy is approved for publication? The copy can be wonderful Japanese, translation inept. The reverse is also possible. If the agency has a translator who is both a language native speaker who is doing the translation and is also a good writer the translation can be more interesting than the Japanese original. It is the brilliant Japanese copywriter? Or has it gone too far? It's what you have written suitable for audience to whom he is talking about? Or boring, offensive, or worse? Who's to say? That is the crisis.
The agency will do everything possible to sell your product creative. Let the buyer beware. It seems logical, then, for the foreign manager to rely on his staff Japanese. But what if your staff and the agency does not agree? What if your staff does not agree with each other? A manager with experience I know that says sadly that, given a degree Japan and Japanese at 10, is 20 views sure to listen. And the knowledge they need to choose between them is more than knowledge of the culture of the language itself.
Culture, what we talking about?
Culture is what we take for granted. Therein lies the problem. Whenever a person makes assumptions not shared by another, the possibility exists of conflict. In the case of the manager of foreign and Japanese creative team, the root of the problem is often what one assumes that the other knows and therefore does not bother to explain, for so the other can understand. Finding that way is the key to working together seamlessly.
On the side of foreign manager, there is nothing more frustrating that hearing people say, "But this is Japan." In a conflict situation "Japan" is a word that literally means, "No understand, can not be understood. Shut up and do what I want to do. 'And no manager worth the name should let anyone go with that.
The question is how to cope with demand without making everyone angry and make the situation worse. The place to begin is to ask, "What is it in Japan," we talking about? What is being taken for granted that I do not understand yet? "
Perhaps the answer lies somewhere of Japanese Studies, the incessant deluge of articles and books that scholars and journalists write about Japan, or in comments that "old Japan hands" to offer to newcomers. There is a lot of value here. Knowing, for example, that the "sauce" is in fried foods, but can not save him from ruin sushi good food and ashamed in front of Japanese colleagues. Knowing that the ascent to kacho (section chief) is a key step up in a Japanese manager career he can help make sense of a recent commercial for beer. Knowing that Japan is a society "vertical" in which group you belong to one person is likely to more important for him to share some professional skills with members of other groups illuminates the Japanese industrial relations. The examples are endless, and precisely because they are so exotic that attract the attention of foreigners as they begin to think of Japan. They are only sometimes relevant to what the creatives are trying do. They are only relevant when someone thinks he has found a new twist on something that it is common sense.
The creative Japanese trial more often reflects a sense of what is fashionable and trendy, not only in Japan, but more often than not, in the worlds of international fashion, film and music to which he or she is very much in tune. As much as other information Japanese, the Japanese creative devour the latest trends. And satisfy your appetite largely by the mass media whose uniformity is surprising.
This last point is vital. The result is a constantly moving wave of knowledge common than is usually months or years before the japonólogos efforts to capture what is happening in Japan. If the foreign manager had the time, and language skills to follow what's going on, he too, would share that knowledge. He, too, would have a sense of what goes in and what is happening outside. Dealing with the fact that he is not one of their most pressing problems.
Your problems may be exacerbated by age of people who are working. In Japan as in other parts of the world, generations are growing. The graying corporate warriors who rebuilt after Japan's World War II grew up in a world different from that of their children and grandchildren. A man of fifty can remember your first sip of Coca-Cola, a gift from a geographical indication. For him, a Coca-Cola is primarily an American drink. A woman in her twenties grew up with vending machines for Coca-Cola through their primary school. She's a nice surprise when he travels abroad to find that Americans drink Coca-Cola, too. That same man remembers when cars Germans were unlikely to reach a peak of perfection of the car. His son has grown into a world where Japanese cars set quality standards, and offer some already lists of features.
"Okay," says the manager of foreigners, "can not be expected to know these things. It depends on you, agency to tell me what is happening here. And your presentations? You call these presentations! "
First, remember what we learned. There are many who assume is common knowledge. It is not common knowledge to you but is, at least we assume it is by another, ie, customers Japanese. It would be worth reflecting, too, what are the effects of the 80 were in Japanese advertising. The economy was booming. Worldwide sales were rising. People touched his heart, trying things, had a great time. The disciplines required to build an image and hold on to market share is not much in evidence. When you to convince people who do not have the liberty to choose what they want, when you need to carefully planned presentations. Who were these people?
Seeking solutions
First, forget about who is to blame. The question is how to reach the third stage and develop a working relationship that produces a lot of publicity for one of the largest markets in the world. Guilt does not help. Ask questions ago.
If you are busy. Yes, it seems that much, much longer to achieve the results you want than it would back home. At least for the first year or two is probably inevitable. The question is how to effectively use the extra time required.
Resign yourself to move slowly, but take every step. If you do not make questions, you can ask questions. Ask about it. Why this word? That color? That gesture? Why a woman rather than a man? Why not younger? Mayor? Bigger? Smaller? You can win a lot of respect for showing the concern of an artisan for more details. In challenging situations, which can find, finally, what they are. You can also train people to offer little by little over the information you need.
Pay attention to phrases Useful Japanese. One of the best, "Mou Sukoshi, nanika … … …," Hoshii is, "I'm not sure what, but I want some more. "It's a gentle but very effective way to indicate dissatisfaction and motivate people to think again.
Above all, be very specific about how presentation to view. Better yet are an example, on paper, the computer model can work with them. These are your assumptions, some of its company that can provide for granted. To them can be foreign. So they not only provide the model. Go over them, step by step. And do not assume that "Yes (we are listening)" means "Yes (we understand)."
Your patience will be sorely tested. The first stage can be horrible, depressing the second phase. Come to The third phase will be much sweeter.
About the Author
John McCreery is an anthropologist who has lived and worked in Japan since 1980. For thirteen of those years, he was a copywriter and creative director for Hakuhodo Incorporated, Japan’s second largest advertising agency. In 1984, he and his wife and business partner Ruth McCreery founded The Word Works, a supplier of fine translation, copywriting, research and consulting services to firms doing business in Japan.
You may also find articles by John at TalentZoo.com.
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