Once an icon of Japanese ingenuity and design, the Walkman became synonymous with bulky, retro irrelevance after Apple launched the iPod. Last year, Sony sought to make a comeback and reinvented its portable music player as a portable TV with a recordable feature and to hype it, Tokyo-based creative shop GT and digital production company Non-Grid introduced a new tech term into Adland's exploding buzzword lexicon: MotionPortrait.

Developed in Sony's research center, MotionPortrait instantly transforms digital photographs uploaded to a website into moveable 3D characters (those who developed the tech have since created their own company, MotionPortrait Inc.). The Walkman "Rec You" campaign encouraged users to snap self-portraits to be converted and subsumed into an omnipresent advertising network across Japan. Each new portrait was transformed into a head-banging image, and added to a grid of faces on the campaign website, as well as streaming banners, outdoor signage and projections, blog tools, even a TV commercial. Consumers were suitably taken with the campaign, as was the global creative community.

"Japanese people have a very high ability to take new things into their lives," explains Naoki Ito, creative director at GT. "If I were to describe Japan in one word, I would say 'metabolism'. Japan is always 'metabolizing'. All motivations feed into this activity. Japanese consumers' consumption speed is probably the highest in the world and therefore these campaigns always sweep the nation."

Mobile moves
One technology that the Japanese have certainly metabolized into their culture is mobile, as seen in the number of Japanese mobile phone subscribers: more than 100 million. The prevalence of 3G phones and fixed-rate plans, coupled with expansions of mobile search services, social networking and interactive applications means more consumers are bypassing PCs and laptops to access the web via phone. But although Japan is hailed as the most developed mobile market in the world, statistics still show a wide disconnect between consumer behavior and clients' spending.

Last year, Dentsu reported in its annual assessment of Japanese media spending that clients spent a dizzying ¥600.3 billion (US$5.8 trillion) on online advertising, up 24.4% from the year before, while mobile spending jumped by 59.2% - far exceeding expectations - to ¥62.1 billion (US$600.5 million). But as spending on Internet campaigns makes strides and expenditures for TV, radio and print advertising continue to drop slightly, mobile's share of online ad revenue is only 10% and mobile spending amounts to 1% of Japan's overall ad expenditures. In other words, traditional media is still where the money is at in Japan.

In the United States, mobile marketing is still considered Wild West territory, but having access to what's said to be the most developed mobile market in the world doesn't automatically mean the creativity applied in making ads for the market is equally developed. Large Japanese agencies struggle with the same issues as their Western counterparts: conservative clients, a dependence on research, an obsession with celebrities and above all, finding interesting ideas that use emerging technology.

"I think a lot of clients get caught up in the technology in these new gadgets, and they forget about engaging and creative excellence," says Mark Collis, ECD at Ogilvy, Japan and one of the creatives behind Leo Burnett, Sydney's "Earth Hour" campaign for World Wildlife Fund. "The agency structure here is quite similar to the West. Since I've come here, the first thing I've done is integrate the whole creative resource."

New forces in digital
Though Dentsu is unequivocally Japan's dominant market player, all this structural shifting has allowed smaller hot shops to steal the international spotlight with digital work. A flip through the award annuals from the past two years shows Japanese creative directors at boutique agencies are regularly incorporating interactive mobile technology and "interactive architecture" applications into cross-platform campaigns.

Leading the shift is boutique shop Projector, Inc. Its deceptively simple Uniqlock widget for retailer Uniqlo is downloadable as a screensaver and blog tool that updates viewers hourly with clips of seasonally-dressed synchronized dancers. More than 27,000 people worldwide downloaded the Uniqlock, and it stormed the 2008 award circuit, claiming most top prizes including a Black Pencil at D&AD.

Other companies frequently name-checked in Tokyo creative circles are hybrid digital shops such as WOW, GT, Bascule, 777interactive, Non-Grid and net art pioneer Yugo Nakamura's Tha. Each blends creative thinking with hands-on technical savvy and often partner with large agencies to execute digital campaigns. But increasingly clients unfamiliar with new technology trends are approaching them directly.

"A lot of Japanese agencies are driven by media budgets and the creative business kind of developed afterwards, so it's always been secondary service for clients," says Masashi Kawamura, a hybrid creative at 180, Amsterdam and formerly a CD at BBH, Tokyo and Hakuhodo. "That's been changing over the last couple of years. The whole interactive market was really opened in that sense because there are no old rituals there - it's all about pure creativity."

When Axe launched its line of scented body sprays in Japan last year, Kawamura, then at BBH, created the "Wake-Up Service", a fake company that sends teams of women to use ridiculous means to wake up sleeping men. Initially, the campaign featured a toll-free number consumers could dial to speak to a live operator and book a 'morning call' (a double-entendre in Japan for 'morning sex'). Users could access a downloadable mobile application, which turned phones into a sexy 'alarm girl' Tamagochis that wake up their owners at pre-programmed times. "At first, she's kind of cool and not very into you," says Kawamura. "But the more you use her, she becomes more attractive, more attached to you and wakes you up in a sexier way."

The campaign evolved into TV spots and a contest to win a chance to be awoken by real live Axe wake-up girls. BBH partnered with digital production company Bascule, which shot and created the campaign's interactive film and web elements, but outsourced the mobile programming to a third company. In Japan, agencies commonly outsource production and increasingly rely on outside digital producers for integrated web-mobile-TV jobs, such as "Wake-Up Service", thus companies such as Bascule are able to meet that demand.

"When you assign a production company to a job, it's more like you assign an agency producer from the production house," says Kawamura. "Now that there's more demand from the agencies for digital producers, it's much easier for production houses to have them on the inside."

Interactive experimentalists
For the Sony Walkman campaign, GT worked with Non-Grid, a company Naoki Ito cryptically refers to as "an experiment". It is part of a trio of digital design companies - along with IMG SRC and S2Factory - founded 11 years ago to develop new web applications and business models.

Attempting to define what Non-Grid does is difficult. For "Rec You", the company executed all aspects of the web production, from designing an interactive website to copywriting and starring in a web viral. It also worked with MotionPortrait and S2Factory to design a server that could manage individual user IDs and create material in real-time for distribution across websites, mobile phones, blog tools, streaming banners, a TV spot and outdoor screens.

"Non-Grid corresponds to the whole process of building systems, web design or installations, so in most cases we start working with an agency during the first planning stages, rather than joining after the agency has finished a completed plan," says Hiroshi Koike, Non-Grid's owner.

Having a digital creative, a digital producer and a MotionPortrait server programmer convene in the early stages of a campaign is great - assuming the client buys into the idea. A common observation among creatives in Japan is that clients are unwilling to take a chance on new technology without precedent and research.

Akihito Abe, Ogilvy, Japan's senior CD of interactive, faced a big challenge convincing Hairceda, a local hair replacement company devoted to the medium of telemarketing, to go digital. His idea also involved V-Portal, a new, expensive program that allows people to use their phone to control a webpage via voice-activation.

"We convinced the client by telling them that this is not about new technology, this is about supporting their current telemarketing system," Abe says.

Thinning hair is a touchy subject so the agency had to overcome potential callers' shyness. It recruited a popular comedian named Dylan to star in a campaign and programmed him with different talking points based on certain keywords, such as "girlfriend" or "dance". When viewers dialed the number, they entered a PIN number and spoke with Dylan. If they remained silent, he might ask, "What's wrong with you?" Or if they hung up, he'd protest, "Why'd you hang up!" If they wanted product info, live operators were on hand.

More than half of the site's visitors overcame feelings of inadequacy and dialed the number. Abe boils the "Ask Dylan!" campaign's successful integration of untested technology to his innate "creative instinct", but adds, "Our producers verified and tested many things before I could exercise it."

Bright lights, big city
Interactive mobile campaigns such as "Ask Dylan!" are still rare in Japan, as is another Japanese ad genre, "interactive architecture". With all of its bright, neon signage Tokyo seems like a natural place for ad agencies to use interactive outdoor LED lights. Last year, GT won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions for "Big Shadow", an outdoor campaign for Microsoft Xbox in which viewers created giant shadowplays on the side of buildings.

This year's hot Japanese interactive architectural ad campaign is Sony Bravia "Color Tokyo!" by Hakuhodo Kettle and boutique digital shop 777interactive. After two pitches, the agencies thought of giving users the power to control the color of the LED lights on Sony's HQ. Thanks to an interactive optical program created by Semitransparent Design, viewers could choose a color from a TV spot embedded on a website, drag it onto a live webcam image of the Sony building and instantly change the color of its facade.

Though Sony had the equipment and building to pull off the idea, Hakuhodo Kettle's co-CEO/creative director Kentaro Kimura describes Sony's decision as "dramatic". "It's difficult for clients to make decisions without precedents," he says. "So it can only happen if the client is passionate enough to believe in it."

Having sold the idea, rigging the 16 million LED lights on Sony's seven-storey building was the next challenge. The campaign ran three months during summer 2007, meaning a special cooling system had to be installed to protect the server and web camera from the 40-degree heat outside. Also, the city's abundance of glitzy neon signage makes Tokyo a bright place at night, thus it's hard to compete. Aside from its chic, simple design aesthetic, "Color Tokyo!" stands out as a meaningful experience, Kimura says, because it's grounded in the real world, rather than a virtual one.

All of these campaigns received more attention inside and outside of Japan than any TV spot. For directors moving into new platforms, commercials aren't all that exciting, says Andrew Thomas, whose boutique studio Creative Hybrid connects some of Japan's top directors with international work.

"Maybe a new generation of multi-disciplined creatives will emerge - people equally capable of doing Flash animation, photo shoots and getting material to compose a commercial without going to a production company to take care of shooting needs," he says.

BBH, Tokyo http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com
Creative Hybrid http://www.creativehybrid.com
GT, Tokyo http://www.gtinc.jp
Hakuhodo Kettle http://www.hakuhodo.jp
Non-Grid http://www.non-grid.jp
Ogilvy, Japan http://www.ogilvy.co.jp