Some of the early team
Mayu wearing condom
Christmas Party
My office
Mayu Graham Kevin
The Gallery
Saatchi & Saatchi Tokyo
We wanted to be the coolest, most exhilarating agency in Tokyo, an agency with an idea behind it: the way of operating, the space we were working in and the energy, pace and passion of the people. Exhilarating because this would be the hottest shop in Tokyo.
'Walk in to the office - although I don’t call it an office, I call it a Centre of Inspiration,' I said somewhat pretensiously when we opened in 2000 'and first you walk in to an art gallery showing the work of young artists who are on the edge but who may not have the opportunity to exhibit in a normal commercial gallery. The role of the gallery is to act as a catalyst to inspire our team, clients and all visitors when they come in to the Agency.'
The Agency opened its doors on 1st January 2000. Five clients joined us on that opening day: Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Hewlett-Packard and Du Pont. Shortly thereafter, we won Wild Turkey, Dita and Havana Club from Pernod Ricard; Transitions Optical, who manufacture the world's most advanced Variable Tint lens, and Jubilee 2000. In 2001, we won Discovery Channel, Mercian, Robert Mondavi, adidas, Virgin Atlantic and United Airlines. An amazing new business record for a young agency. Importantly, every single client was bowled over by the space; they wanted to visit us; they saw it as being radically different and better than any other agency.
But most importantly the creative work and our ideas were streets ahead of what other agencies were producing in Japan.
Creativity in Japan was at rock bottom. This was (still is) the second largest advertising market in the world and yet international creative competitions were rarely won. Almost all the advertising was formulaic and relied on the use of celebrities endorsing the product; there was little attempt to build long-term brand values and much of the advertising was so similar it was impossible to identify the brand from the campaign.
Every client and Agency copied what the other was doing as if they were too scared to do something different.
'We are saying that to be different is to be good. We want to be the nail that sticks up. It’s the only way of ensuring that the advertising cuts through the morass of meaningless messages,' was my mantra at the time.
This was no meaningless talk. Within its first year of life, Saatchi & Saatchi was in the top three creative agencies in Japan, winning a Finalist at Cannes and at AWARD in Australia as well as numerous awards in Asia and Japan. Thereafter, awards were dropping in our laps.
We had no receptionist in the Agency. Greeting you with a kiss and a hug was Mayu, a DJ and Muse; a spunky girl dressed is if she had just come from a night out in Shinjuku. She DJ'd the music that pounded through the agency. Her task was to make everyone happy. All day she walked around the agency, wandering into meetings, sitting at someone's desk, showing visitors around the gallery. There was no receptionist’s desk. Her cordless switchboard could work even when she was outside the building. On more than one occasion a new business prospect has come in because they have been inspired by the way Mayu had answered the phone.
But this wasn’t her only job. When MTV started broadcasting in January 2001 they signed Mayu up as a VJ to host a weekly request show. She became one of the stars of the channel.
The gallery set the tone acting as a creative stimulus to everyone who worked at Saatchi & Saatchi, providing a constant source of inspiration, both from the work and the artists who exhibited there.
As the Gallery was open to the public, it meant that the agency wasn’t isolated.
'Isn’t remarkable?' I said in an interview. 'Here we are, attempting to connect and communicate with the consumer every day, yet we close ourselves off behind concrete walls. We want to be an open space that everyone can come in to?'
To show this was no empty rhetoric my office was part of the gallery. Some people walked in believing I was an exhibit heightened because, in the most minimalist office in the world, there was no desk, only an aluminium pole with a small work surface and two stools. On the work surface was a phone and a laptop.
'We allow ourselves and our thinking to be cluttered by our environment. I hate that,' I said.
And my door to the gallery was a single piece of pivoted glass, making up one wall that swung open to allow access.
'I want this space to be one of the most talked about in the world. Within Saatchi & Saatchi, we are one of the spiritual leaders, embodying all the values that the Agency holds dearest.'
But I also wanted us to act as a catalyst to move the advertising industry forward in Japan. Whilst knowing we couldn’t create a revolution but we could show that there was a better way of doing things. Better for clients, better for our people and better for the industry.
'Japan has been paralysed by companies doing the same old thing. In part, I think that the dinosaurs in the advertising industry have played their part in stopping Japan escape from its ten-year economic downturn. Advertising has done nothing to stimulate demand or build an environment that encourages competition. All it does is reinforce the status quo.'
Did everyone likeit? 'Of course not. If they did, we wouldn’t be making the difference we seeked. I had potential clients walk in, their jaws dropped and you could see they were really uncomfortable and never appeared again.
But it was a one-off. Like a firecracker it exploded on the scene and made a lot of noise. It was unsustainable after I left. And finally was closed down.
My thanks go to everyone, the great team in the Agency, the clients who supported us, the artists and our gallery supporters who made it possible.