Sunday, December 16, 2001
Think of it as a life adventure…
Tom Boatman, who runs a creative commando team called Native with his wife, cut his advertising teeth in New Jersey and honed his talent at Hakuhodo, Japan?s second largest agency. A networker extraordinaire (he literally ?wrote the book on it? ?Networking in Tokyo), Tom knows what it takes to succeed in Japan.
?Don?t think of it as a career move, think of it as a life adventure,? she said.
A few weeks later I was at LAX boarding a Korean Airlines flight to Narita. As I waved good-bye to my parents and my world, I suddenly realized what a big step I was taking. ?She? was Georgia, who had been hired by my prospective employers to interview me in New York for a ?Tokyo copywriter? job advertised in Adweek magazine.
Georgia made Japan seem very enticing, but I was worried about my career. Here I was, after five years in advertising, with no New York City credentials. I had won awards for my copy and worked on some very big accounts in New Jersey, but New Jersey might as well be New Caledonia as far as the gods of advertising are concerned. The thought of going to work for a small PR/production house in Japan was also unsettling because none of the samples Georgia showed me were very exciting.
What attracted me, though, were her stories about drinking cold beer on steamy summer nights, vendors selling noodles from sidewalk carts, and getting lost in Tokyo?s labyrinth of narrow streets. Japan was a mystery to me. A thirst for the unknown and the need for a challenge are what brought me here.
I had decided that I wanted a career in advertising in my sophomore year in college. I kept hearing what a struggle it was to make money as a journalist. When I inquired about a summer job stringing for one of the big daily newspapers, I learned that it was possible but that there would be no pay. Did I really love journalism enough to work all summer just for the experience? The answer was no. Therefore I took as many advertising and PR electives as I could fit into my journalism major. Two weeks after graduation, I was writing 15-second radio tags for car care products advertised in the New York market. Every morning when I drove to the office, I could hear my words on the radio. I?ll never forget that feeling of creating something alive and now.
I wasn?t making much money, but I was in advertising. As an intern copywriter at New Jersey?s largest ad agency, my yearly salary was $9,000. To be fair, I got my foot in the door thanks to my father, who was a marketing director for a racetrack in Jersey. The president of the ad agency wanted the racetrack account and agreed to let me intern for the summer. He never got the account, but I?m still in advertising. Those early days were the most fun of my entire career. It was just like I had always imagined it: banging out headlines on an IBM Selectric; zany characters in a tense, combative office environment; late nights; and meeting celebrities. After five months, I was promoted to junior copywriter and my salary was raised to $15,000.
In my first two and a half years in that agency, I worked under four creative directors, with five copywriters and scores of art directors, and said ?good morning? to dozens of receptionists. Someone was fired every week. The president was a paranoid bully. I learned how transient agency life could be, especially when I followed one of my creative directors to a small package design firm.
I left New Jersey?s largest for one of New Jersey?s smallest. The creative director who became my new boss wanted to expand the design firm into a small agency, and I was hired to start the copy department. I call this phase II of my advertising career. When you?re 24 and the buck stops at your desk, it can be pretty scary, but also very empowering. Lots of responsibility at a young age is what everyone dreams of.
I arrived in Japan with a two-year contract. It didn?t take me long to discover that advertising in Japan was a lot like advertising in the USA. There was always tension in the office, and sometimes there were tears. About two weeks after I arrived, one of the creative directors who had persuaded me to come announced that he was leaving the agency. The copy director who was my immediate supervisor constantly cursed and berated the account people. The account executives cursed the clients. Our president was reactionary, paranoid, and oppressive. I felt right at home.
Although I still wasn?t doing what I?d call ?real? advertising, I was learning a lot of valuable new skills. I learned how to use a Macintosh, edit, put together a magazine, and manage writers. I learned how to discuss English grammar politely with those who could not speak the language. I was adding to my skill set and improving my marketability. It was at that job that I really started to network. I learned how valuable networking would be when I was laid off and found that all the seeds I had unknowingly planted were just waiting to bear fruit. At first, networking was just a way to hang out with my co-workers and meet other foreigners. However, at my first Forum for Corporate Communications (FCC) meeting, I was coerced into writing a story for the FCC newsletter, The Communicator. Soon I was a regular contributor.
I discovered that the FCC sponsored a contest for English-language advertising. However, I found that the contest did not have a category for the kind of work I was doing—brochures, PR magazines, and annual reports, collectively known as collateral. I became involved with the contest because I wanted to change it. Two years later, a collateral category had been established; three years later it was the biggest category in the contest, and I was the president of the FCC.
I?ll never forget the day I was laid off from my first job in Japan. When I asked the company president if I could take a few extra days? vacation for a family event, she said, ?Take all the time you want.? It is a weird feeling when someone pulls the rug out from under you. I was very unhappy in my job, hated the management, and desperately wanted to leave, but I was having trouble finding the ideal position. All of the sudden, I had no position.
But freelancing was very good to me. Almost instantly, work started trickling and then pouring in from all kinds of sources that I had never imagined. When you work for a company, it is as if you wear a cloak of invisibility. But when you are a freelancer, your cloak is removed, more people approach you, and suddenly you are in demand. The only planned self-promotion I did was spending 20,000 yen on business cards.
After I had been freelancing for about a year and a half, I suddenly found myself with two job offers and accepted a position at Hakuhodo. I was exactly where I wanted to be just four years after arriving in Japan. I was working on big accounts (Honda, Mazda, NEC, Konica, Kyocera) doing real ads at a real agency and trading ideas with some of Japan?s best creative minds. I worked at Hakuhodo for five years. I ate a lot of cold o-bento in smoky conference rooms at 10:00 p.m., knowing I still had three hours of work left, sat through five-hour meetings, worked though a lot of lunches and weekends, and took a lot of grief from clients and account executives. I also won a lot of awards and made a lot of money.
When I decided to leave, the decision was not made easily. After spending the better part of a year considering it, I decided that I wanted to prove myself again. I needed a new challenge and wanted to be responsible for the bottom line. I therefore left Hakuhodo to form my own business two years ago and have never regretted it. If anything sums up my career so far, it is movement, in terms of knowing when to move and when to stay put.
A career in advertising is not a 12-step program. It is a winding path paved with relationships, fraught with dead ends and blind alleys, and full of small successes, big compromises, and lots of challenges. Someone you met only briefly 10 years ago may become your new boss tomorrow, while hiring a best friend may become a nightmare. I eventually learned to stop praying to the god of quality and listen more to the god of reason. Most of all, I learned that in the end, it?s only advertising.
Ten Tips for Getting Ahead in Advertising
- Read David Ogilvy.
- Swallow your pride often.
- Follow greatness and learn from it. Find out who is successful in your organization and study them. Spend your free time analyzing great ads. Read trade journals like L?zer?s Archive (the best), Ad Age, and Adweek.
- Romance ideas but don?t fall in love with them.
- Keep your cool (it?s only advertising).
- Value sales and results over accolades and awards.
- Strive for quality, but remember that it never beats the clock or the budget.
- Nurture all relationships, with clients, account executives, secretaries, vendors, and competitors. Sooner or later you will need a friend.
- Advertise yourself. Become involved in professional organizations, participate in awards shows, speak publicly, and send out Christmas or New Year cards.
- Network, network, network.