ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the build-up to a competitive presentation for the international division of the audio-visual manufacturer Frontier by a Japanese advertising agency, which was asked to prepare a single coherent campaign for both Germany and the United States. It traces some of the problems involved in Japanese ‘imagining the West,’ looks at the agency’s solutions to these problems. The campaign’s immediate external purpose, then, was to improve Frontier’s corporate image, brand prestige and aspirational value. Its mid- to long-term aim was to create a unified global umbrella brand image that would cover particular product advertising campaigns in individual countries around the world. The former concerns Japanese understandings of those who are Japanese, the latter business relations in the Japanese advertising industry. In preparing for the Frontier presentation, the agency adopted as stylistic differences the general structural principles by which the Japanese classify foreigners.
