Winners’ Circles
SNA-driven ethnography
of award-winning creative teams in Japan

John McCreery
Anthropologist, Cornell Ph.D., 1973
✦
Moved to Japan in 1980
✦
Copywriter and creative director for
✦
Hakuhodo Inc., 1983-1996
Partner and Vice-President, The Word Works,
✦
Ltd. (www.wordworks.jp)

Welcome to my world
We can see the overall shape in the
Dentsu
distance, but what about the
underlying geology?
Hakuhodo
ADK
Other
Dentsu, 1901: ¥2057.5, Hakuhodo, 1895: ¥1088.4, ADK 1999: ¥358.6 (unit= billion)

The Plan
DATA: Credits from winning ads in the Tokyo
Copywriters Club Annual
(TCC )
SNA: Explore networks linking members of
Social Network Analysis
winning teams
(SNA)
DESK RESEARCH: Books and articles
written by or about central figures in the
networks
INTERVIEWS: Conversations with central
figures using output from SNA and desk
research as stimulus material

The Question
How connected is this industry?
✦
Stovepiped by agency (keiretsu model)
✦
Everybody knows everybody
✦
But, in terms of people working together?
✦

And then?
Who are these people?
✦
What roles do they play?
✦
How have things changed since the start of the
✦
1980s?

So what?
LATERAL PERSPECTIVE: Analysis
✦
comparable to that performed on movie and
citation index databases,on a longitudinal
series of networks.
LOOKING FORWARD: Use of SNA to
✦
explore the dynamics of project teams and the
populations of experts brought together to
work on them.

The Data
Tokyo Copywriters Club Advertising Copy Annual
✦
Published every year since 1963
✦
Credits are provided for each winning ad
✦
Today we will be looking at data from 1981,
✦
1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2007

The Tools
Filemaker Pro (Data Storage/Retrieval)
✦
Pajek (SNA)
✦
DataDesk (Statistics/Modeling)
✦
Text2Pajek (Data Conversion)
✦
iWork09 (Presentation)
✦

Special Thanks
James Ennis and Robert Hanneman
✦
(encouragement and advice)
Vladimir Batagelj, Andrew Mrvar, Wouter de
✦
Nooy (Pajek and pointers)
Jürgen Pfeffer (Text2Pajek)
✦

Whole Network - 1981

Whole Network - 2007

Facts to Consider (Growth)
Winning Ads and Creators (2-mode Networks) Winning Ads and Creators vs Total Ad Spend
3000 8000
2250 6000
1500 4000
750 2000
0 0
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
Total Ads Total Creators Total Ads Total Creators Total Spend
During the period in
During the same period, total
question, the number of
ad spend in Japan rises from
winning ads rises from 475 to
2465.7 billion yen to 7019.1
902, the number of winning
billion yen
creators from 885 to 2746

Facts to Consider (Media)
Share(%) of Winning Ads Per Medium Share of Ad Spend in Japan (%)
0.500 40.0%
30.0%
0.375
20.0%
0.250
10.0%
0.125
0%
0
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
TV Radio Newspaper Magazine TV Radio Newspaper Magazine
TV share rises sharply from 1981 to Turning to ad spend, we find that TV
2001, then declines. Excluding a brief and newspapers are the dominant
recovery by newspaper ads in 1991, media throughout the period, but while
the share of print advertising TV share remains high, newspaper
(Newspaper + Magazine) declines share steadily declines.
throughout the period.

Facts to Consider (Teams)
Creators Ads Avg Team
10.47
TV 12135 1159
Radio 6.11
1185 194
Newspaper 5.02
6152 1226
Magazine 4.42
2284 517
•Based on the number of individuals who are given credits per ad,
creative teams for TV commercials are, on average, twice as large as
those for newspaper ads and more than twice as large as those for
magazine ads.
•A team of size n contributes n(n-1)/2 links to the network.

0
Hypotheses (Components) 0
Creator networks will exhibit giant weak components
✦
(all vertices connected by at least one path)
Creator networks will also exhibit giant bi-
✦
components (all vertices connected by 2+ paths)
As networks increase in size, the size of giant bi-
✦
components will approach the size of giant weak
components
Adapted by author from M. E. J. Newman, Gourab Ghoshal
“Bicomponents and the robustness of networks to failure”
Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 138701 (2008)

Giant Weak Component(1981)
Net>Components>Weak
Total Vertices: 885
Draw>Partition
Total Components: 73
Layout>Energy>Fruchterman Reingold>2D
Giant Component: 638
Info>Partition

Giant Components(’81-’07)
Weak vs Bi-Components (# of Components)
Giant Component & Giant Bicomponent % of Total (Creators)
150
100.00%
113
75.00%
75
50.00%
38
25.00%
0
0%
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
GiantC/Total% GiantB/Total% #Components #Bi-components
•Giant components rise from 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
1981 to 1991 then stabilize 885 922 1399 1824 1884 2662 2746
Total Vertices
around 90% 73 38 33 33 37 65 51
#Components
•Bi-components converge 638 742 1253 1670 1692 2381 2488
Giant Component
toward giant components
GiantC/Total% 72.09% 80.48% 89.56% 91.56% 89.81% 89.44% 90.60%
from 1981 to 2001 but
diverge in 2006-2007 109 76 70 86 65 125 139
#Bi-components
•From 2001-2007, the 325 565 1064 1427 1547 2031 1978
Giant B-component
number of bi-components GiantB/Total% 36.72% 61.28% 76.05% 78.23% 82.11% 76.30% 72.03%
increases sharply compared
to the number of
components

Why these patterns?
GC &GBC % of Total (Creators)
100.00%
% of Winning Ads (Print, Broadcast, Other)
75.00% 70.0%
50.00%
25.00% 52.5%
0%
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
GiantC/Total% GiantB/Total% 35.0%
Weak vs Bi-Components (# of Components)
17.5%
150
113
0%
75 1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
38
Other Broadcast Print
0
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
#Components #Bi-components
•The rise of TV (1981-2001)
• The rise of Other (collateral + Web, 2001-2007)

Hypothesis (Degree Distribution)
Studies of large networks frequently find that
✦
the degree distribution of vertices follows a
power law.
What about these networks?
✦

Distribution Modeling
1981 Total Network 1981 Giant Component 1981 GC line value >1 (-0.41)
Cluster and frequency data from Pajek are analyzed using the calc>non-
linear models>power fit command in Data Desk in a three stage process:
(1) total network, (2) giant component, (3) pruned giant component (line
value >1).

Pruned Giant Components (’86-’07)
1986 (-0.42) 1991 (-0.48) 1996 (-0.42)
2001 (-0.49) 2006 (-0.45) 2007 (-0.40)

Return to the Mountains
Dentsu
Hakuhodo
ADK
Other
The results so far add confirmation to well-established propositions
✦
in network analysis.
They don’t, however, answer questions of interest to people in the
✦
industry
How many and what proportion of creators work on projects
✦
for more than one agency?
Who are these people and what are the roles they play?
✦

Shift Networks
Ads-Creators 2001
• Net>Components>Partition>
2-mode
• Draw>Partition
• Layout>Energy>
Fruchterman Reingold>2D
Agencies-Creators 2001
• Net>Components>Bi-Components
• Edit>Partition (separate Agencies
from Creators)
• Draw>Partition
• Layout>Energy>
Fruchterman Reingold>2D

Isolate Multi-Agency Creators

Multi Agency Creators
Single vs Multi Agency Creators Multi-Agency Creatives (%)
3000 20.00%
15.88%
2250 15.00%
11.57%
10.00%
1500
5.00%
750
0%
0
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007 ALL
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
One Agency Multi Agency %Multi Agency
•While total creators range from 885 in 1981 to 2746 in 2007, multi agency creators
range from 36 to 251
•As a percentage of total creators, multi agency creators range from 4.07% in 1981
to 11.57% in 2001
•Note, however, that if all networks are combined, the proportion of multi agency
creators rises to 15.88%.

The Roles They Play
% of Multi-Agency Creators by Role
0.60
0.45
0.30
0.15
0
Copywriter% CD% PL% AD% Designer% PH% PR% Director % CA%
1981 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 2007
• Selected from a list of 88 roles for which credits appear in the TCC Annual, the nine
roles that appear here account for 2/3 of all roles in our networks
• The short columns to the left (Copywriter, CD, PL, AD, Designer) are core members
of the teams and more likely to be agency employees.
• The tall columns on the right are production staff added after an idea has been sold to
the client: more often freelancers (PH, Director, CA) or employed by production
companies (PR).

To Learn More
•Start with a 2-mode network (here Ads-Creators 1981)
•Net>k-neighbors>vertex >distance =2
•Here the selected vertex is Nak190, legendary copywriter and creative director
Nakahata Takashi.
•The yellow vertices are the ads on which he worked.
•The green vertices are the other members of the teams in which he participated.

And Then Ethnography
To Read To Interview