Creativity that survives in the world’s most competitive market



adobo main course with Dentsu’s Akira Kagami

The largely Western influence of local advertising was gently contradicted at last  Thursday’s adobo main course, featuring a presentation by Dentsu’s Executive Officer and Global ECD Akira Kagami.  Kagami is also Jury Chair for the 2009 Outdoor Lions -- the first Japanese to chair a Cannes Lions Jury.

Guests from agencies, marketers and suppliers alike gathered to hear Kagami’s talk, titled “Creativity that survives in the world’s most competitive market.” In it, he showed selected Japanese campaigns, with a brief backgrounder on their market scenarios.  Included here were some classic Japanese TVCs on which Kagami himself was the Creative Director: Wowow’s “Immobile Man” (a version of a Kurosawa epic) and “Running Woman” (a version of candy-colored romantic melodrama), “Ms. Yuko Yamada Looks for Her First Job” (for Recruit), and Imagination “Whale” (for the Japan Advertising Council).

Speaking like the strategist he started out as, Kagami also offered suggestions on how to compete in the Japanese market, and expressed his preference for a more emotional (Asian) than logical (Western) approach for memorable advertising.

adobo thanks our co-presentors Dentsu Philippines, PowerShot and DentsuIndio for making the main course possible. Stay tuned for the main article (and more photos of course!) in our forthcoming print issue.