Japan: Digital visionaries

Ahead of the game in adapting to the new digital and mobile platforms of 21st century branding, Japanese shops have proved adept at employing top-flight animation, Flash and interactive know-how in a range of stunning campaigns. Andy Thomas discovers a new way of doing business in the Far East.

WOW

Visual design studio WOW has recently emerged as one of the more creatively sophisticated companies on the Japanese scene. They are primarily known for their high-end CG animation and motion design work, a range of innovative interfaces and applications for mobile and web devices, and for conceiving installations for product promotions at exhibitions and public spaces in Japan and internationally.

Over the past decade WOW has grown from its roots in the port city of Sendai, expanding to studios in Tokyo, and most recently a European branch in Florence. Many of their branded short films, including Infinity and Circle for Citizen watches, were first conceived through the evolution of in-house personal works, which were then presented for clients to utilise for cross-media and niche marketing campaigns.

In expanding the range of their creative projects, chief creative director Kosuke Oho notes: “Developments that weren’t really tangible a couple of years ago are now possible through the development of our ideas and digital technologies, so it’s a really exciting and challenging time for us. We’re interested in doing more projects that can take Japanese visual design to a new level, into other spaces and areas, like windows that become screens for projections or visual installations. We’re aiming to develop futuristic visions for urban environments, where touch-screen interfaces are embedded within daily life, spaces where you can explore new forms of interaction and integrated media.”

WOW have also established a new digital distribution label, id, for downloadable clips and short films, with the intention of nurturing new animation talents and encouraging collaborations between visual and sound artists.

http://wwww.w0w.co.jp

http://wwww.wowid.jp

THA LTD

Art director Yugo Nakamura formed tha ltd in 2004, having established his reputation with many innovative projects on his personal MONOcrafts site, which led to him being hailed as one of the world’s most respected Flash and interactive artists.

With an impressive line-up of clients including multiple projects for Uniqlo and Muji, Sony’s dot port campaign, as well as portfolio sites for friends and artistic collaborators Masamichi Katayama (WonderWall), Kashiwa Sato (Samurai), and DJ Tomoyuki Tanaka (Fantastic Plastic Machine), tha’s works represent the visual joy of digital interfaces and emotionally pleasing contemporary online design.

Nakamura and team continue to work between commissions on developing their own personal projects, though they approach each one with the challenge to bridge and balance their output between the advertising and art worlds. “I really enjoy doing commercial work. It’s often like a game to me in some ways, throwing up challenges that need to be solved.” he states. “The context of our work is constantly changing with technological developments, so I’ll continue to evolve and develop and continue searching for new ways to utilise the web, based on the requests we have from our clients.”

Dropclock is one of the projects available for download via tha’s creative label SCR, intended to serve as a platform for artworks and projects emerging from the recent digital and networked media scene. “We’re interested in realising what can be possible using screen media,” Nakamura observes, “in ways similar to how a painter would use a fresh canvas.”

http://www.tha.jp

http://www.scr.sc

TAG TOKYO

As Japanese clients and agencies were relatively slow on the uptake to adequately fund viral and integrated campaigns, the creatives at McCann Erickson’s tag tokyo team faced a major challenge to launch operations and carve out a niche in a somewhat conservative and risk-averse market. However, tag’s unique and vaguely absurd projects for the likes of Coca-Cola, Audi, So-net and Cadbury’s have created significant media buzz, with promotional value well beyond initial expectations.

Working within minimal budgets, though with unlimited freedom to experiment, the core collaborating members of the tag tokyo team, creative director Seiji Shiramizu, art director Naoto Nishio and producer Tetsuya Kinouchi have developed campaigns combining ironic humour with occasionally subversive and surprising public happenings to establish alternative means of brand awareness, alongside the associated interactions and experiences with members of the public.

Having grown relatively tired of the stilted demands and patterns of regular TV ad production, the team were more inspired by the broader potential and opportunities of emerging social media. They’ve energetically created campaigns that draw on diverse influences. They parodied 70s Japanese science-fiction TV dramas for the Vending Machine Red campaign; dressed crowds of volunteer students as fireflies who then arranged themselves to spell out words and messages on night-time streets for So-net; let loose body-popping costumed apes in major cities across Japan for chewing gum brand Stride; and a campaign for Sprite involved a three-month walk across the breadth of the Japanese islands featuring a costumed character performing various crazy stunts along the way, with clips uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis.

Their success in taking brand promotions back onto the streets, in a way that puts a smile on your face, provides a breath of fresh air and pushes the boundaries of what had previously been thought possible for Japanese outdoor advertising and guerilla-style production.

http://www.mccann.co.jp/tagtokyo/

GT INC

Creative director Koshi Uchiyama formed GT Inc as a hybrid boutique agency to work across campaigns in traditional media, and to encourage new modes of online advertising. Most recently he has joined in on multiple branding projects for Sony as well as other major clients including Volkswagen, with the aim of facilitating emotional experiences and interactions between their products and Japanese consumers.

Having been an early pioneer of web-based production, with the vision to realise its future potential, and the proactive nature and relationships between fans and brands, Uchiyama’s projects have served as an inspiration for a new wave of cyber, cross-media and integrated creativity in Japan. “User experiences are one of the main important factors in contemporary advertising,” says Uchiyama, “where the cyber and real worlds connect through using innovative technologies and platform design. In future, the walls between creative services and media buying agencies in the Japanese industry will be broken down even further.”

For Sony’s recent make.believe tagline campaigns, Uchiyama delivered on the brief with a film that communicated that by having the power to believe, you can make anything happen, and that through discovering your own curiosity, and by nurturing it, one’s creativity and imagination can expand. The core target was focused on younger, next-generation creative minds. “Originally advertising was about education, though the most important keyword now is ‘learning’,” says Uchiyama, “Rather than educating consumers we have to make something to stimulate the consumer to want to be curious about Sony. Our commercial dot film not only conveys that message; it was designed as a catalyst for people who see the film to awaken their own personal curiosity about the Sony brand.”

http://www.gtinc.jp