finding meaning in the muddle

JOHN MCCREERYSophia University

Finding Meaning in the Muddle:Adapting Global Strategies toAdvertising in Japan

WHEN A JAPANESE advertising agency develops campaigns formultinational clients, cultures clash. Conflict, confusion andmisunderstanding complicate the already complex processes involved inthe production of advertising. Can anthropological theory illuminate whatis going on? The answer is "Yes." Concepts of field, habitus and socialdrama developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Victor Turner do shed light onthis highly fraught cross-cultural encounter. Only one critical element ismissing: effective leadership. [Advertising, Japan, leadership,globalization, applied anthropology]

WE LIVE IN A WORLD where advertising is pervasive. In thisproposition, moreover, "world" has a literal referent. Advertising with itsSiamese twin, popular culture,1 is one of the great shapers of the visible andmaterial world of urban life worldwide. It is one of the core elements in the"contemporary culture of consumption" that, says John Sherry, requires both"sensitive anthropological investigation" and "anthropologically sensibleintervention" (1995:3). Advertising is, in particular, one of the major sites ofcultural intersection where human beings from different cultural backgroundsstruggle over how to define and present, not only the objects in which theytrade, but also, therefore, themselves (Appadurai 1990).

These struggles can be especially fierce when multinational corporationsdevelop advertising for "local" markets outside the countries in which theirheadquarters are located. Differences in language, cultural style and businessparadigms complicate relationships already fraught with competing interests. Acritical issue for the author of this essay, an anthropologist who has beeninvolved in advertising for many years, is how to theorize these struggles froman anthropological perspective. It is also an issue with intensely personal andpractical implications.

241

242 City & Society

The Anthropologist and the Adman

I am an anthropologist who has worked for 13 years as a copywriter andcreative director for Hakuhodo Incorporated, the second largest advertisingagency in Japan. I am now a partner and principal in The Word Works, acompany that supplies copywriting, translation and presentation supportservices to Hakuhodo and to other large Japanese and multinationalorganizations doing business in Japan. A large part of our business is helpingour Japanese clients to sell their ideas for domestic advertising in Japan tomultinational corporations.

While working at Hakuhodo I found myself involved in pitches to Coca-Cola and to BMW. In both these instances, a Japanese advertising agency wasasked to handle one of the world's most prestigious multinational brands.Differences in language, cultural style and paradigm aggravated the normallytense relationship between advertiser and agency. The struggles that ensuedwere indeed fierce. The question I pose here is this: Can anthropological theorycontribute to our understanding of these two cases? Or, more generally, to ourunderstanding of the processes involved in transforming global advertisingstrategies into advertising in Japan?

In brief, my answer is, "Yes." I will argue that ideas taken from the work ofVictor Turner and Pierre Bourdieu do shed light on what was going on in thesetwo cases. In the shadows that remain, however, is a subject that anthropologistsrarely touch—the importance of leadership.

Coke and BMW

Both Coca-Cola and BMW are multinationals with very strong, very clearideas about their brands, which are, of course, among the world's most famous.In Japan, however, each faced a serious marketing problem. For Coca-Cola theproblem was demographic. Worldwide, the primary consumers of soft drinksare teenagers. In Japan, where the birthrate has been falling continuously sincethe '70s and this year reached 1.43 (well below the 2.08 required for populationreplacement), the number of teenagers is falling. One strategy for maintainingsales is to use line extensions to appeal to older target segments. Our job was tolaunch Caffeine Free Diet Coke and appeal to diet and fashion-consciouswomen in their 20s and 30s. The commercials we produced feature a slim, sexyyoung woman wearing a red minidress who is busy shopping and trying onclothes. In the final cut she has changed into a white evening gown and meetinga tall handsome man in a black tuxedo. To make a long story short, thecommercials seemed to work. The product enjoyed a tremendous shinhatsubai(new-on-sale) spike. The problem would be repeat sales. Japanese consumers

Advertising in Japan 243

still, it seems, do not like the taste of aspartame, the artificial sweetener used inDiet Coke.

For BMW, the problem was image. During the '70s both BMW and its archrival Mercedes had been seen as the ultimate in luxury cars, representing astandard far surpassing their Japanese competitors. During the late '80s, as thebubble economy expanded, BMW had introduced the 3-series, a compact,relatively inexpensive line that put owning a BMW within reach of manynouveaux-riche Japanese. With sales expanding rapidly, BMW had cut back onbrand advertising, putting its money instead into expanding its dealer networkand building a new corporate headquarters in Makuhari, a "21st centurydevelopment project" located to the east of Tokyo in Chiba prefecture. WhenHakuhodo entered the scene, the bubble had collapsed, sales were down, and the3-series, now the prototypical BMW in the Japanese consumer's mind, hadcome to be regarded as "the Roppongi Corolla." Mercedes had retained itsimage-leader position. The prototypical Mercedes was the chauffeur-driven600-series sedan favored by top executives at major Japanese corporations.Meanwhile, too, Japanese auto makers tempted by the bubble had launchedtheir own luxury lines. Examples included the Toyota Lexus, Nissan Infiniti,and Honda Acura.2 BMW found itself behind its arch rival and increasinglyonly one of the pack of luxury car competitors.

Mercedes had chosen Dentsu, Japan's largest agency, to manage its accountin Japan. BMW had then turned to No. 2 Hakuhodo. The agency's problem wasthat while it had the account (and was thus earning media commissions), it hadbeen unable for more than a year to sell any creative work to BMW Japan. I wasput on a newly formed team whose mission was to turn this situation around.We tried, we sold a few ads. A few even won awards. A little over a year later,BMW Japan, whose sales had continued to deteriorate fired the president andmarketing manager who had chosen Hakuhodo, and the agency lost the account.

What to Make of These Cases?

The immediate temptation is to focus on the ads created for these campaignsand to raise the question my Japanese colleagues at Hakuhodo almost inevitablyraised when their multinational clients asked them to accept the clients' globalstrategies: Are the ideas in question sufficiently Japanese? Shouldn't they bereplaced by ideas that are more Japanese in substance and flavor?

The anthropologist in me notes the implicit appeal to nihonjinron, thenativist theory of Japaneseness that asserts the uniqueness of the Japanese raceand its language and culture. The experienced adman notes more cynically thatNIH (Not Invented Here) is the usual negative response of local agenciesworldwide to global advertising campaigns. The appeal to inerradicable localdifference salves the pride of local creatives who detest the idea of becoming

244 City & Society

mere translators of others' ideas. If effective, it also has the material advantageof generating work for them and their agencies to do—original work, which is,of course, more highly paid than adaptation.

I note, too, that the anthropologist shares with the adman's clients a strongdesire to know what works in Japan and to know in particular what sorts ofimagery and appeals speak most movingly to authentically Japanese emotions.Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. For a sense of the scale andcomplexity of the research needed to articulate the range of possible answers,consider, for a moment, the following remarks from the July 1997 issue ofBrain, one of Japan's leading trade publications for professionals in advertisingand marketing. The issue reports the results of the 35th annual TokyoCopywriters Club awards.

Nakahata Takashi, who chaired the panel of judges, begins his report asfollows:

The total number of works submitted in the regular division was4,198. Of these, 1,395, or 33.2%, passed the first round of screening.After the final screening, 738 remained in contention. There weremore entries than in previous years, and the competition was fierce.

Akiyama Sho, chairman of the Tokyo Copywriter's Club, comments on theshinjin (newcomer) awards.

Advertising is not movies. Nor is it writing fiction. Advertisingprogresses by finding its own modes of expression. One has only 15seconds in which to speak. The message must be spoken in a singleline. Beneath its surface, however, is a huge intention, the product ofplanning, imagination, calculation. Advertising is only the visiblepeak of marketing. Thus, as a form of expression it is different frommovies and fiction. It might be described as "saying through labor inthe middle of the night things which cannot be said in the light ofday."

He continues with an inventory of the types of appeals a young copywritermight want to consider:

Realistic. Psychological. Exciting. True. Humorous. Raw. Gentle.Nagging. Unexpected. Human. Artificial. Factual. Relaxed. InsightfulPoisonous. Helpful. Playful. Despairing. Hopeful. Hilarious. Blindspots. Strange. Mathematical. Revealing. Lonely. Familiar.Manhattan. Each is a possible approach... (1997:33).

We might also note that entries in this contest are divided into thirteencategories by industry.

A. Liquor and tobacco


B. Food and beverageC. Department stores, supermarkets, specialty stores, fabrics and

fashions.D. Cosmetics, Pharmaceuticals, science, personal productsE. Home electronics, AV equipment, computers, communications

equipment, office equipment, telecommunications services.F. Precision machinery, production materials, housing and real estate.G. Shipping, transportation, tourismH. Automobiles, motorcycles, bicycles, motorboats, tires, gasoline, and

other transportation related products and servicesI. Recreation, sports and sports equipment, events, concertsJ. Financial institutions, insurance, government, educationK. Mass media, publishingL. Naming, catalogs, pamphletsM. Others

Professionals will note that a two-fold system of classification is at work here.This list is, on the one hand, a typology of sponsors with distinctcommunication needs and separate regulatory environments. Liquor andtobacco advertising is legally confined to messages to adults. Food andbeverage advertising is often directed at teenagers or at housewives concernedabout what they feed their families. This same list is, on the other hand, atypology of skills. Thus, for example, photographers who specialize in food orfashion are in very different businesses from those who are experts inautomotive or sports photography. Copywriters who write in the high, serioustone preferred by financial institutions are a different breed altogether fromthose who use trendy slang to pitch soft drinks. Both may find themselves at seaif asked to write about high technology.

Focussing on Process

Avoiding, then, the siren call of symbolic analysis, I will throw us into thewhirlpool of the everyday life of advertising. I will focus here on the process bywhich advertising is created in Japan and on the special problems that arisewhen a Japanese agency works with a multinational client. For anthropologicalinspiration I have turned to two authors whose similarities have, I think, beentoo much neglected: Victor Turner and Pierre Bourdieu. Both write with a clearawareness that conflict and contradiction are central components of human life.Both draw our attention to politically structured fields of human activity and tothe processes that take place within them. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is anapt description of the dispositions that shape the behavior of actors involved increating advertising. Turner's social drama provides a useful framework fordescribing what goes on.

246 City & Society

To Turner fields are "the abstract cultural domains where paradigms areformulated, established, and come into conflict" (1974:17). Bourdieu's field ismore concrete, a bundle of relations that is both an objective distribution ofpower and material resources and the momentary configuration of personswithin it as seen from their own phenomenological points of view. It is, insimpler terms, like a soccer field, which can either be seen objectively from thepress box looking down or subjectively by the player s who feel themselvespulled here and there as the game develops (1992:17-20). Both authors drawour attention to processes in which there is genuine drama, both comedy andtragedy, and in which, moreover, actors are not mere automatons, acting outcultural rules.

What, then, of habitus? In Bourdieu's formulation, "habitus consists of a setof historical relations 'deposited' within individual bodies in the form of mentaland corporeal schematics of perception, appreciation, and action" (1992:16).Habitus is not a set of rules to be followed automatically. Nor is it a purelyrational faculty that calculates every decision. It can be described as a set ofdispositions invoked when the actors in a field find themselves in particularpositions. Like soccer players racing for a ball while trying to keep track of bothteammates and opponents, they must act on imperfect information and have notime for protracted calculations.

The operations of habitus amount to a practical rationality in which there isroom for mistakes as well as adaptive response to changing circumstances. Inthe case of advertising the knowledge brought into play is more a collection ofrules-of-thumb than a systematic theory. The habitus in question alwaysincludes a good deal of habit along with clearly thought out ideas. In the endlesssearch for novelty, flexibility is essential (McCreery 1995). Habitus suggestsimportant truths about the ways in which people involved in advertising work.Turner's social drama provides the dynamic framework we need to understandthe competitive presentation—the central and most dramatic of the games theirwork entails.

The Presentation as Social Drama

In Turner's formulation the social drama has four stages. It begins with abreach that disrupts everyday routines and calls into question the central moralprinciples on which social life depends. The breach leads to a mounting crisisduring which the actors in the field take sides and line up with one or anothergroup. The crisis evokes redressive action by those with a stake in keeping thebreach from doing irreparable damage. The last stage is either reintegration orfission. The parallel steps in the world of advertising are orientation that starts aproject, the mobilization and interaction of the staff who will carry it out, the


moves to fix directions that occur as deadlines draw near, and, finally, thepresentation itself.

Strictly speaking, the summons to an orientation that starts a new project isnot a breach of regular, norm-governed social relations.3 It is a normal step inthe business transactions that link the agency and its client. Why then does itfeel like a breach? The answer, I think, is simple: Each and every presentation isa crisis that may either strengthen or destroy that relationship.

A relatively small and routine piece of business can be handled withoutgreat strain. The agency comes up with a few ideas, the client chooses one forimplementation, relations between them continue to be smooth. The larger andmore important the piece of business in question the stronger the feeling ofcrisis becomes. The worst situations are those in which the agency-clientrelationship has already soured to the point that the agency is forced to re-pitchthe account in competition with other agencies.

Account executives move back and forth between the agency and the client,testing the waters, trying to learn more about the client's desires, determiningwho the key people are who will have to be persuaded to let the project goahead. If the situation is serious, senior people are brought into play,demonstrating the agency's commitment and opening the way for changes instaff or direction should these prove necessary. Here is where the multi-agency,multi-client situation that is common in Japan makes things somewhat differentthan they are in other parts of the world.

Everything turns on the presentation. If it goes well, and the client buys oneof the agency's ideas, it functions as a rite of reintegration, reaffirming thesmooth running of the agency-client relationship. If it goes badly, it signals agenuine breach and the cycle repeats until either a solution is found or thebreach becomes irreparable.

Preparing a Presentation

The process described here is the one with which I am familiar fromworking at Hakuhodo. My impression from talking with others involved inadvertising in Japan is that it is, in fact, similar to what goes on in otherJapanese agencies. This impression is confirmed by Brian Moeran's A JapaneseAdvertising Agency (1996), which describes in detail life at one of Hakuhodo'sprincipal competitors.

The curtain on the social drama goes up when the client speaks to theaccount executives in charge of his account and asks that the agency make apresentation. The project in question may be routine: the production of a leaflet.It may also be enormous. It would not be unusual for a major new productlaunch, combining TV with radio, print and promotions, to cost two or threebillion yen (roughly speaking, 20 to 30 million U.S. dollars).4 The annual

248 City & Society

budgets for large accounts range into the hundreds of billions of yen, and whenone of these is at stake the tension levels are high.

The account executives will return to the agency and assemble a projectteam from the agency's marketing, creative, and promotion divisions. A largeproject may also involve staff from the PR and events divisions. If the project inquestion is part of a long-standing and smoothly running relationship, theteam's members will already be assigned to the account. If what is at stake is apitch for new business or an existing team has lost its credibility with the client,it may be necessary to form an entirely new team. Once the team is formed, itsmembers are taken to an orientation meeting with the client. Here the client'srepresentatives attempt to explain what they have in mind.

Following the orientation, the team will meet to confirm what they thinkthey have heard at the orientation, to develop a schedule and to startbrainstorming. It will almost inevitably turn out that the different members ofthe team have heard or noticed different things. Everything thatdeconstructionist critics have said about the plasticity of texts and themultiplicity of possible readings applies in spades to this process.

In the brainstorming phase, the members of different departments tend towork separately. Creatives will be working on ideas, the marketers on themarketing plan, the promotions and PR staff on their own separate projects. Theaccount executives run from one group to another, trying to keep track of whatis going on. They will also be talking to the client, pre-testing rough ideas in aneffort to prevent the project team from heading off in what are plainly wrongdirections. In the brainstorming phase the groups from the various departmentsmay be internally fragmented, as individuals advance ideas and attempt tomobilize support for them. Younger people timidly offer suggestions. Older,more senior people bark, growl, brush them off and, then, sometimes, begin tosmile. At Hakuhodo I have heard senior creatives say to their juniors, hitobanhyakuan (one night, a hundred proposals). The idea is that instead of strugglingto come up with one or two good ideas, they should generate lots of ideas whichcan then be filtered by the group.

Almost all will be rejected. The few that survive will be developed throughfurther discussion, first within the creative group and then with the team as awhole. As deadlines draw near, the various groups involved in the project gatherfor whole-team meetings where everyone participating is present. These oftenbecome marathon sessions in which the various groups struggle to reach aconsensus on which proposals to present and how to structure the presentationitself.

It is frequently early in the wee hours of the morning on the day that thepresentation is made that it all finally comes together. The team then staggersoff red-eyed and adrenalin-hyped to present its work to the client. If the clientbuys what is offered, the day ends tired but happy. More often, however, theclient says, "Well, maybe this...or that..." and it's back to another marathonsession working on the revisions requested.


Alternatively, the client who is seeing presentations from several competingagencies remains stone-faced. The team is left in high anxiety until word of adecision is received. This may take several weeks. Meanwhile there is otherwork to be done. (The members of a team rarely have the luxury of working foronly a single client and always have other projects waiting.)

Language, Culture and Aggravation

Putting together a major presentation is social drama on a large scale. Whenall the parties involved are Japanese, there is still plenty of room for conflict andconfusion. When, moreover, key personnel on the client side are non-Japanesethe potential for muddle rises exponentially. Linguistic and cultural differencesmagnify misunderstandings. There may also be major differences in thebusiness paradigms that the two sides bring to the table.

The Japanese language is notoriously difficult for non-Japanese to learn,and non-Japanese executives rarely have time to learn it well. Even those whoare able to conduct routine business conversations in Japanese may be baffledby the words produced by Japanese copywriters whose business it is, after all, topush the limits of the language in an effort to find something fresh to say.

Typically, the Japanese agency will present its work in Japanese,accompanied by an English translation. The translation may be poor andclumsy, destroying the sense and sensibilities that make the original exciting. Itmay also be too good: more interesting in English than in the original Japanese.The non-Japanese executive will turn to his Japanese staff for advice. Oneexecutive I knew described the result: "If I show it to ten Japanese, what I'll getback is twenty opinions."

Like the dominant symbols described by Turner in his writing on ritual, adcopy is multivocal. Deciding on "the meaning" is often difficult, even for nativeJapanese experts. When large amounts of money are at stake, clients may thenturn to research companies for focus groups or theater tests with subjects fromthe market segment targeted by the advertising. Even then the results are farfrom decisive.

Linguistic difficulties are compounded by cultural expectations. These onlyrarely, however, involve mistakes at the "Don't you realize that Japanese aregroup-oriented?" or "When they say hai they only mean 'I'm listening' notnecessarily 'I agree'" level. Most of the non-Japanese executives with whom Ihave worked are sophisticated international business people. They have read atleast some of the now voluminous literature on doing business in Japan. Theyhave, in addition, had its messages reinforced by interactions at their clubs andchambers of commerce with "old hands" involved in similar types ofbusinesses.

250 City & Society

The more critical difficulty is that, between lack of linguistic facility andtheir being busy people, non-Japanese executives are simply unable to keep upwith the huge standing wave of constantly changing new information that isJapanese popular culture. How do you know which celebrities are in or out, thedetails of political or financial scandals, the latest in teenage fads and jargon,what's hot in cars, computers or mobile phones? If you are Japanese, the answeris simple. You scan the advertising in commuter trains, read newspapers andone or more weekly magazines, listen to radio, watch TV. Critics may complainthat there is too much overlap in stories and the ways in which they are covered,but, as one of my students at Sophia University pointed out to me, the result isthat media function as a kind of "extended neighborhood," where everyoneknows what's going on. Everyone, that is, but the non-Japanese executive whois forced to make decisions without the feel for what is going on that theJapanese from his agency and staff take for granted.

Rephrasing these remarks in Bourdieu's terminology, we see that the non-Japanese executive lacks the habitus his Japanese agency colleagues take forgranted. Not knowing where to look and unable to understand what he sees, hehas no way of grasping the constantly changing structure of the field. He is likea soccer player who not only plays clumsily. While trying to keep his eye on theball, he finds it almost impossible to predict what the other players will do.

When Paradigms Clash

Finally, then, we come to differences in paradigm. Two, I think, areespecially important. The first concerns the form of presentations, the secondthe role of account executives.5

It is, perhaps, a consequence of a Japanese education, with its emphasis oncramming and regurgitating large amounts of information. One should also notethe reading habits cultivated by rapid scanning of comics and weekly magazinesin which layouts are, to Western eyes, extremely busy and invite the eye to darthere and there across a jumble of characters and images instead of readingsmoothly from left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Whatever the cause, the fact is thatmaterials prepared for Japanese-style presentations flagrantly violate the advicefound in Western guidebooks on how to prepare presentations.

The latter remind us that Western executives see themselves as busy peopleand that presentations should, thus, be kept as simple as possible. Charts anddiagrams should be presented individually, each on a separate slide or overhead.Text should, as much as possible, be limited to five lines with no more thanseven words per line. In a Japanese presentation, it is not unusual to find slideswith complex structures of boxes and arrows, multiple charts and masses oftext. When asked why, Japanese planners reply that they want to: 1) allow theclient to see all of the information and logic that goes into a recommendation;


and 2) demonstrate the effort that has gone into its preparation. Both contributeto anshin, a feeling of confidence and security. The impact on Westernexecutives tends to be bafflement, boredom, or rage: "Aren't we paying thesepeople to think? What in the hell do they think they are doing? I don't have timefor this!"

What may, however, be even more disturbing for the non-Japaneseexecutive is the role played by Japanese account executives. The roleexpectations on the side of non-Japanese brand and marketing managers whowork for large multinational corporations are clear. The account executive isexpected to be an active partner, consultant, and leader. In contrast, the Japaneseaccount executive may seem too passive, to lack ideas, to be unable to getthings done. These judgments are confirmed by presentations at which Japaneseaccount executives open the proceedings with formal greetings, then sit backand take no active part as creative, marketing or media staff present their workand respond to the client's questions and critiques. Their behavior contrastssharply with that of Western-agency trained, non-Japanese account executiveswho make their teams' presentations and bear the brunt of discussionsthemselves.

In the process imagined by the non-Japanese manager, the ideal accountexecutive is someone with an insider's knowledge of the client's business aswell as local market conditions. He will be proactive. His services will include aconstant stream of fresh ideas and information that help his client develop theproduct and marketing strategies that the client will present to his own bosses.When these are authorized, they will work together to write the briefs whichspell out the specific tasks assigned to other agency staff to implement.

When, however, a Japanese agency deals with a Japanese client, both theaccount executives involved in day-to-day business and their counterparts onthe client side are likely to be relatively young and inexperienced. Thus, inaddition to basic linguistic and cultural difficulties, the non-Japanese managerwho expects to be dealing with experienced, senior people is likely to findhimself dealing on a daily basis with people who seem amateurish and may not,in fact, know a great deal about his business. They are typically too junior toforce their client's views on senior staff from other agency departments.

Their role in the process, as they see it, is coordinating the efforts of theexperts from other departments whose business it is to prepare plans andpresentations and defend them in discussion with the client. If the client isJapanese and the client's representatives are not happy with what they see, theywill speak to the agency's account executives backstage, after the meeting. Theywill then be able to pass on the client's dissatisfactions in a face-saving manner.In the worst case—when the client is totally disgusted—they can makearrangements to change the other agency staff working on the account, withoutinvolving the client directly in messy confrontations. Faced, then, with non-Japanese clients who are likely to erupt in meetings in a confrontational stylethat erodes agency team morale and presented with direct questions they are

252 City & Society

unequipped to answer, the Japanese account executive is likely to make a poorshowing. Now the deficiency in habitus is on the Japanese side.

Returning once again to Bourdieu's metaphor, here, too, the soccer player isclumsy. But now he is so concerned with keeping an eye on the other playersthat he often loses sight of the ball.

It Takes a Leader

With these thoughts in mind, lets us return, once again, to our cases, startingfirst with the launch of Caffeine Free Diet Coke.

Coca-Cola has been firmly established in Japan since shortly after WorldWar II. Older Japanese may remember being handed their first Coke by anoccupation-era GI. Their children have grown up in a world where there havealways been Coke vending machines on the streets where they live. Moreimportant, for our purposes, is the realization that Coca-Cola advertising is afirmly established and highly regarded genre. It is, in other words, an integralpart of Japanese culture. Coca-Cola campaigns are talked about in the popularas well as trade press and regularly rank high on lists of favorite TVcommercials. In setting out to create a commercial to launch Caffeine Free DietCoke, my Japanese colleagues were playing in a familiar field: their habits andtheir habitus served them well.

In contrast, the team working on BMW found itself in a strange field wheretheir habitus made their play clumsy. They were shocked when the newlyappointed marketing manager at BMW Japan told them that BMW's chairmanhad said flatly that he didn't care if 99% of the public didn't like hisadvertising—they couldn't afford his cars. What value, they asked, could therebe in owning a high-status car if everyone didn't recognize its value? Theywere interested when shown reels of classic BMW advertising produced in theU.K. What they found impossible to duplicate was the in-your-facecompetitiveness tempered with subtle wit that makes the British commercialsdelightful to British viewers. If they tried humor, it came across as crude,vulgar, juvenile. If they focused instead on the core proposition, their workbecame heavy and boring. We needed to find a uniquely BMW voice that wouldwork in Japanese. When we lost the account, we hadn't succeeded.

There was, moreover, another problem: The structure of the team itself andthe lack of effective leadership. When Hakuhodo had won the account it alreadyhad several car accounts: Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Suzuki. In financial terms allbut the last were far larger and more important than BMW. More important still,the agency's top experts in automotive advertising were already committed tothese other accounts. The team assembled for BMW was composed ofindividuals seconded from several different divisions, whose primary loyaltieslay with other teams. We were, also, all of a similar age: in our 30s and 40s. No


one of us was obviously senior to the others. And since all of us had otherdemands on our time, none of us was eager to accept the responsibilitiesattendant on being the leader the group. Personally, I was put off by the constanttension and stress the position would have entailed. To my Japanese colleaguesthe prospects for success seemed low. And none was happy with the prospect ofdaily interaction with the German marketing manager to whom we reported onthe client side. That would have been too hazukashii and muzakashii—tooembarrassing, too difficult. Throughout the time that we worked together on thisaccount, the lack of effective leadership made it much harder than it shouldhave been to reach a consensus on what we were doing.

Leadership is not often mentioned in anthropological analyses, especiallythose which deal with Japan. Its importance was driven home to me bycomparing my experience in working with the BMW team to working with theCoca-Cola team. There we had a very effective leader indeed. His effectivenesswas partly, of course, a matter of what Bourdieu calls social capital. Hispersonality was also important. Where one leaves off and the other begins issomething I cannot say.

Paul Guilfoile is half-Japanese. The son of an American father and aJapanese mother, he grew up in Japan. His father had had a long anddistinguished career in business, and Paul, along with his brothers, seems likelyto match his success. What Paul brought to our business was, on the one hand,the ability to interact comfortably with Coca-Cola's non-Japanese executives,Coca-Cola's Japanese middle management, and Hakuhodo's Japanese staff. Hecombined the ability to think strategically with bulldog-like attention to detailsand—this was most unusual—the willingness to put himself on the line toprotect the other members of his team. "If anything goes wrong," he said, "I'lltake the heat."

When I asked Paul where he had learned his management philosophy, heanswered, "The United States Army." He had joined the army in a fit of Oedipalrebellion and had wound up as the white Sergeant in charge of a mostly blacksquad at Fort Benning in the state of Georgia. It was there, he said, that helearned about cross-cultural communication, learned to think strategically, andinternalized the military ethic that assigns priority to mission, unit, and self inthat order.

What I do know is that Paul's habitus/personality served us well. Wesurvived the confusion that followed the orientation. We pulled together ontime, and this particular presentation strengthened the agency's relationshipwith its client. Paul knew the field; he kept his eye on the ball and respondedwith great agility to the changing state of the game. With the right leader inplace, the process worked—just the way that Victor Turner said it should.

254 City & Society

Notes1 The concept evoked here in which advertising and popular culture are linked,

complementary, but distinct domains is taken from Fowles (1996).2 For ease of reference all are mentioned here using their overseas names.3 Here I must thank Ruth McCreery, who pointed this out to me.4 Assuming an exchange rate in the neighborhood of 100 yen/U.S. dollar.5 For an earlier version of this argument which addresses what to do about the

problems, see McCreery (1994).

References Cited

Appadurai, Arjun1990 Disjunctive and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Public

Culture 2(2): 1-24.Bourdieu, Pierre and Loi'c J.D. Wacquant

1992 An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Fowles, Jib1996 Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

McCreery, John L.1994 Der Durchbruch—die Arbeit mit japanischen Kunden [Breaking

Through—Working with Japanese Creatives]. In Marketing undKommunikation in Japan. Peter Biieger and Kathanna von Zitzewitz(eds.). Pp. 203-209. Tokyo: Deutsche Industrie-und Handelskammer inJapan.

1995 Malinowski, Magic, and Advertising: On Choosing Metaphors. InContemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior: An AnthropologicalSourcebook. John Sherry, ed. Pp.309-329. Thousand Oaks: SagePublications.

Moeran, Brian1996 A Japanese Advertising Agency: An Anthropology of Media and

Markets. Richmond: The Curzon Press.Sherry, John F.

1995 Marketing and Consumer Behavior: Into the Field. In ContemporaryMarketing and Consumer Behavior: An Anthropological Sourcebook.John F. Sherry, ed. Pp. 3-49. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Turner, Victor1974 Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

finding meaning in the muddle

Education