ジョン・ジェイのユニクロでの仕事
This is Rainomoto's Podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, this is Rainomoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York and Tokyo. Welcome to The Creative Mindset,
a podcast about the art of building a career through conversations with the world's leading
practitioners of creativity. It's an intimate journey on how they got started, their turning
points, failures, and tips on work and life. This is part 2 of my conversation with John Jay,
the creative chairman of Uniqlo, a global Japanese apparel company.
In this episode, John goes into the specifics of the work he has done at Uniqlo. In the 90s,
when he first moved to Japan from the United States, I remember the kind of work that he
started to do for Uniqlo, and the impact and the surprising shock, the work that John and
Wyden Kennedy introduced, not only for Uniqlo, but also to the market in Japan. Beyond that,
he talks about his experience working with Japanese CEOs in the 80s, 90s, and after that,
and the fact that his humble beginning being an immigrant in the United States had later
on his career and how that helped his creativity. So let's get started.
ジョン・ジェイの経験と創造性について
I would imagine nowadays, in 2022, there are a lot of Asians working in the creative industry,
in the design industry, in the technology industry. So Asians have become not a prominent
group of people, but they are more than at least your day. What were, if I may ask,
and to the extent that you feel comfortable sharing, what were some of the challenges
that you faced that were against you? Well, first of all, my parents had felt it all along,
being new to the country and so forth and so on. So I've heard the stories. I've heard about them
trying to rent an apartment and being turned away at the door. And some of the racism was
more benign, perhaps. We've had many kind people who helped us in the family as well,
so that's the first thing I have to say. But to this day, I will give advice to people.
It may not be apparent on the surface, but once you put a dollar on the table and there's a
competition of 50 people, only one person gets that dollar, okay? That's where racism, that's
where bias, that's where bigotry raises its head. Oftentimes it's beneath the surface.
So I have to say that the hurdles I faced were my own hurdles. The day I accepted the job at
Bloomingdale's, and it's good and bad that I remember this tiny little fact.
Another friend of mine was just taking a great job, a Chinese woman, took a job at an architectural
firm. And there's this photographer who knew us all, we're mutual friends. And it got to me
through another party, and she announced she got this job and John Jay was going to go to
Bloomingdale's. He said, damn it, those fucking Chinese are getting all the good jobs.
There's two of us out of the entire city of New York City. So that little thing,
incident, just raises its head above. And so don't be so naive. Don't be so naive.
ワイデン+ケネディの転機
You know, people have these different turning points to take their career to the next level.
And in this conversation, I'm learning that you've had multiple turning points. But you've spent
two decades, over two decades as such an influential company, not just an agency,
but a company, an organization that influenced many things outside of advertising culture and
other things. I would imagine there were certain turning points that took either you as an
individual to the next level, or that took Wyden Kennedy as an organization to the next level,
to the territory that he hadn't been. Can you think of a couple of episodes or examples of
those turning points? Turning point was when we decided to open our own office in Tokyo.
And I surprised everyone by saying, I'm going to go do it. They thought I would just come for the
transition and they'll hire someone and so forth. I said, no, no, I'm going to go do it.
That surprised Dan. And on the day that I was leaving for Japan, Dan said,
let me ask a favor, John. I want you to make this office in Tokyo the hothouse of the agency.
And I said, what do you mean? I want you to make this office in Tokyo able to do creative work
that none of my offices can do. He wanted to make sure I seized the opportunity by opening this
little office in Tokyo to use it as an advantage to make great creative work.
日本への移住と視点の変化
Are there examples of a situation that forced you to change your perspective?
Despite my great admiration for Japanese culture,
moving Japan forced me to change my perspective because I'm American.
Today, I still say to anyone that joins us, the first thing I suggest, please unlearn so that you
can learn again. So please open your brain, drop all that stuff that you think are truths, and be
open that there may be other truths through the lens of someone else's culture. So I think moving
So I think moving to Japan forced me to rethink what I thought were truths through marketing and
so forth. So truths such as what? Individualism is always the way. No, there's a collective way too.
And we're certainly the world is seeing that right now, the value of that, having consensus
on the collective way and mutual respect, right? Huge lesson for the world right now.
Huge lesson for America. What do you do to encourage and instill creativity? And what can
Japanese executives, what can they do to teach creativity or to learn creativity?
I had the great fortune working at Bloomingdales to be involved with Japanese designers.
My first friend in Japan was Issei. God bless his soul. And he opened the doors for me there.
But remember, it was the bubble years. The creativity was flowing like crazy. It was
like just flowing on the streets, like unbelievable, unbelievable. This kid from Columbus,
Ohio, dropped out of the sky into that culture. And it was unbelievable. Unbelievable, the
creativity at that time. And new friends that I had, Sai Chen in Tokyo, who was in the 90s,
a concepter. Remember that word in Japan, concepter, which meant you come up with a concept,
we'll get the money, we can do anything. We're Japan. That was the mood. That was the mood. And
I had the great pleasure of entering Japan at that time. So it was on a high at that time, before
the crash. During that time, of course, I had this amazing admiration for Mr. Morita of Sony.
And I read everything in English, anything written in English, I would read about Morita. I had such
admiration. So I'm saying this, because think about those days, about the brand of Sony at that
time. What's one of the greatest taglines ever? Just do it, of course, is one. But the other one is,
it's a Sony. It's a Sony, meaning you don't need to think about it. It's a Sony. It's obviously,
it's good. What confidence. But they could back it up, because their product was pre-Apple, right?
Their product could speak to that sense of confidence. And what else did Mr. Morita do?
He became global CEO. He moved to New York with Mrs. Morita, took an apartment on Fifth Avenue,
and learned how to engage with the important influencers of Hollywood and New York City.
No Japanese executive did that then, right? I heard a story that he even learned how to dance
in order to be social at Western parties, even. So he became this kind of the glue between Hollywood
and New York and Tokyo. I'm telling these stories because this is what we need in Japan today.
Now, I'm great fortunate of working with a visionary man, Mr. Tadashi and I, of course.
So that's my background to Japan. I come with huge admiration, huge experience of seeing the
best and giants of the business and the industry. So fast forward to what you're saying today,
I think that that magic can be had again. And why do I say that? Because people like Mr. Morita
and Mr. Miyake, they're human beings. They're just people. And one of the things I learned in New York
City when I came from Columbus, Ohio, I was so intimidated by everyone. You know, in the first
year, I didn't even speak in meetings because I was too intimidated. I thought, well, my ideas
can't be any good. I can't speak up, you know? And then in English, we have this saying. Then I
slowly learned, wait a minute, that famous guy, that smart guy, that genius, wait a minute, he
puts on his pants one leg at a time, just like me. We're all equal. That's what we have to remember.
Fundamentally, we're all equal.
日本の創造性と成功事例
Something that you mentioned about confidence, confidence of the Japanese people at the time,
in the 80s, when you went there for the first time, Mr. Morita of Sony,
Issey Miyake, one of the greatest fashion designers, not of just Japan, but in the world,
who recently passed away. But at the time, in the 80s, there was a lot of money, for better or worse,
right? And the Japanese companies and Japanese people were able to spend more, and that gave
them room, and perhaps, confidence, or overconfidence. But was it money that was
driving it, or was it something else that gave them that kind of bravado, so to speak?
Well, I have to think money is part of it. Yeah, that money helped them to go outside of that island
and experience the world. That's what it gave them, the confidence to go outside and learn. Their eyes
popped open to go, oh my god, the world looks like this! So I've always said that traveling is one of
the secrets here. It's both humbling and educational. It's humbling because it teaches you, you don't
know anything. When you travel, you learn that. So in terms of what gave Japan that confidence,
so did money have something to do with it? Of course it does, of course it does. But I'll
change it slightly. My creativity grew because I came from small companies with no money.
My creativity grew because I came from this immigrant family with no money. That makes me
better as a creative person, and to this day, I will judge someone by how creative they can be
with limited money. So not having money is something I love as a way of testing the true
creative chops of someone. Now you have to be ingenious. Now you have to network. So one of the
tests I always talk is a metaphor, but it's actually true. I want to give you a piece of blank paper,
a problem to solve, and a pencil. That's all you got. But if you have an idea, and you have words,
and you do typography, and you have conceptual thinking, and so forth, you could create magic
out of just that piece of paper and a pencil. Not having money is a great, great opportunity
to hone your creative skills. What would be the piece of work that, if you had to pick one,
ウニクロのフリースキャンペーン
that you would take to your graveyard? The fleece campaign for Uniqlo, because it changed everything.
It changed everything for me, for Wieden, for Uniqlo, because the impact of that campaign
still exists today. We allowed, and we demonstrated by showing different types of people within
Japanese society equally. A 14-year-old teenage girl, a professor, a construction worker, a singer,
and basically with no celebrities. That's the other thing that was important about that.
So basically, there's a relationship between the work. Locked off camera, no movement,
no fancy camera movement, no music. Basically, the question opens on the screen.
Tell me, this is my life. Basically, it's about, this is my life. And then we have people from
all different strata of society, of Japanese society, from, again, a teenage girl, to an
up-and-coming singer, to a professor, all given equal time to talk about their life.
And as we think now, today, how localization is so important, that local is global,
that localization, respect, demonstrating, before you start selling people stuff, before you start
putting images in their neighborhood, show them that you respect them. Prove it, that you respect
them. And then at the end, the product shows up on the screen, and the price. But for 27 seconds
of that commercial, it never talked about the product. It never talked about, this fleece sure
is warm. Wow, this fleece sure is affordable. Hey, man, isn't this fleece really colorful?
Nothing. And nor did it have celebrities, and nor did it have fancy camera movement.
It was a sign of intelligence and respect. If you look at that fleece campaign, what it achieved
was remarkable, because it exceeded all the sales goals, but it did not really focus on the product.
It focused on something higher, and they, we didn't speak about it. First thing, this company,
Uniqlo, the values and the principles of this company is based on equality, made for all,
and a sense of democracy. The commercial never said, we are a democratic company. We never said,
we respect everyone. We didn't need to. We demonstrated it intuitively through the commercials
themselves. So I think that campaign has a lot to do with where I am today at the company.
It started with a series of television commercials, 30 seconds, although the smart
media people said 15 is better. And I said, why is 15 better? Because you can run it twice.
I said, why would I want to run? If someone told you something and repeated himself again,
wouldn't you think that person is stupid? What kind of advice is that, so I can run it twice?
Why don't you give me enough time to tell a story with some depth, and why don't we show
these people respect? First step, first requirement for me, we must always respect
the intelligence of the consumer, always. Not all marketers do. Many marketers think they're
smarter than the client. Many marketers make dumb commercials because they think the consumers are
dumb. That is a problem today. Show them that you respect them. That was the second part of
my conversation with John Jay, the creative chairman of Uniqlo. Three key takeaways from
this part of my conversation. Number one, respect the audience. Number two, we are all equal. And
number three, not having money is a great opportunity to hone your creative skills.
ユニクロの最初の仕事
Key takeaway number one, respect the audience. This is when he was talking about the first
piece of work that he did for Uniqlo, and this was actually before he joined Uniqlo in the 90s.
He was the executive creative director at Wyden Kennedy in Tokyo, and he was contacted by
to start doing advertising for Uniqlo in Japan. At that time, Uniqlo was a relatively
mediocre, if I may say so, apparel brand in Japan, but it was the work that he and his team did for
the introduction of fleece collection, and that had an enormous impact, not only for just Uniqlo,
but also in the way brands advertising their point of view to the audience. And in that
conversation, he specifically talked about respecting the audience. You can't treat the
audience without that kind of respect. You know, you shouldn't assume that the audience doesn't know
a lot of things around them. You should pay that respect and give the benefit of the doubt
that they might know more than you might. So key takeaway number one, respect the audience.
Number two, we are all equal. And I thought the way he expressed this was quite
interesting. And he said, wait a minute, you know what, even the people around me who might be more
talented and who might have more money than me, but even the most respected or most famous
individual puts on their pants one leg at a time. And I do the same, they do the same. So yeah,
sure, they might have more talent and more money than me, but we are all equal. Well, that was,
I have to say I was a little surprised to hear that from John, you know, who is now one of the
most established creative leaders around the world. But I appreciate the fact that he had that kind of
humility. And that might be due to the fact that he had a humble beginning when he was growing up.
And even when he started his career in New York, you know, he didn't have a lot of money
and the places that he worked didn't have a lot of money. And that gave him that kind of view
where he views everybody as his equal. And even to this day, he might be quite technically
more established than a lot of other people. He sort of sees everybody as equal. So key takeaway
number two, he puts on his pants one leg at a time, just like me, we're all equal. And key takeaway
貧困からの創造力
number three, which is related to this point is not having money is a great opportunity to hone
your creative skills. These two points, key takeaway number two and number three might be a
little bit contradictory to the point that John Maeda, another guest that I had earlier in this
series. John Maeda said that you have to be wealthy in order to be creative. And there
were reasons why he said that. And John Jay, who also is an immigrant to the United States,
you know, John Maeda's parents moved to the United States and John grew up in Seattle.
And John Jay, his parents, and when I think when he was in kindergarten, moved to the United States
and grew up as an immigrant in, in, in Ohio. So they may have similar backgrounds, but I found
them quite interesting that they had different things to say about creativity. John Jay's point
was that not having money, that kind of constraint gives you a great opportunity to hone your
creative skills. When he was growing up, you know, he didn't, you know, he talked about the fact that
they didn't live in their own house until when he was 14. And even when he graduated from college,
when he first moved to New York, the places, small places that he worked and he did work for,
they didn't have a lot of money. So that kind of forced him to be more creative in terms of the
executions that he was building. So key takeaway number three, not having money is a great opportunity
to hone your creative skills. To summarize, key takeaway number one, respect the audience. Number
two, we are all equal. And number three, not having money is a great opportunity to hone your
creative skills. That was part two of my conversation with John Jay, the creative chairman of Uniqlo.
The next guest is PJ Carbath, a Brazilian novice who utilizes AI to push his creative boundaries.
So stay tuned. I am your host, Rei Inamoro, and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
