Ad Astra: Yasuharu Sasaki and the Infinite Diamond Mine

A qualified electrician, a certified sommelier, a keen kayaker, an amateur fish chef, and a student of everything from AI to finance. Yasuharu Sasaki’s curiosity is a sprawling thing, with many tentacles, taking him places that, at first glance, don’t appear to be obviously relevant to his day job as global chief creative officer of dentsu. But it’s that very broad-minded inquisitiveness that has taken him to the heights of innovation. 

After all, creativity is anything but obvious.

For example, when Yasu reflects upon the roots of his own creative spirit, the image he conjures up is not a child immersed in paints and papers or hooked on media. It’s of a little boy scrambling, climbing, running and exploring the Japanese countryside, where he grew up.

He would spend his days chasing insects, catching fish, gathering nuts and berries to his heart’s content. This may surprise some of his dentsu colleagues who know him for his pioneering digital creativity and innovation but before anything else, it’s his connection with the natural world that fuels him and his creativity. “I think the curiosity about nature and science that I gained here is the source of my creativity today,” he reflects. 

Even today, he makes space to reconnect with nature. These days, he finds a meditative peace in catching and cooking fish and it’s something that is truly energising. “No matter how busy I am, I try to go out to the sea at least once a month. Just a few hours on the water is enough for me to be reborn,” he says.

Growing up, young Yasu was so immersed in nature that he says that advertising rather passed him by - aside from one unsettling ad for Suntory whiskey. “To be honest, I didn't understand what it meant and was a bit scared, but it stuck in my mind forever. Looking back on it now, I think that this kind of commercial is necessary again,” he says, reflecting on the wilful weirdness of the ad. Who’d have thought that 15 years later, Yasuharu would be working for the person who made the spot?

But as much of a nature boy as Yasu was, he soon found himself being drawn to the world of technology. When he was 10, in 1981, he was delighted by the emergence of early video games. He couldn’t afford a personal computer of his own, so spent his evenings at a local electrical shop, where he’d programme his own computer games.

And then he came across the internet. “Around 1989, I encountered the Internet, and my life changed drastically,” he says. “I was originally just a nerd who wanted to play games, but I learned that there were people on the other side of the network and that I could access content that I had never thought possible.”

Seeing how this new tool could enable the exchange of images and even, eventually, video, it occurred to Yasuharu that this represented a new form of media. The thought intrigued him. So even though he studied coding at university and in graduate school, in 1995, he sought a job in media R&D at dentsu.

dentsu had other ideas. “So, originally, I wanted to do a media research job, but for some reason, dentsu assigned me as a copywriter. This kind of coincidence is quite common in Japanese companies, as they decide where you belong after you join the company... It was a job I had never imagined, but I am now grateful to the company for giving me a great job.”

That’s not to say it was easy. After many years immersed in computer science and coding, he had to learn a whole new language. “At first, I had no idea how to succeed as a copywriter, so I had a very hard time,” he recalls. “I wondered how people could be moved by just a few words, and how difficult copywriting would be compared to coding.”

The very first job he had was to write a print ad for a hotel chain where he struggled to hit the balance of keeping the client happy while creating something that would move the readers. Thankfully, though, Yasuharu’s innate sense of inquisitiveness drove him onwards.

“I think it was the difficulty of moving people's hearts and minds that aroused my curiosity. What an interesting world it is to be able to excite and move people with just a few words,” he says.

As a scientifically-minded man in a creative universe, there’s still so much to trigger that curiosity. “I guess the interesting and difficult thing about creativity is that there is no right answer. I'm a science person, so I tend to look for the right answer,” Yasuharu reflects. “In creativity, the more you think about it, the more exciting answers you will find. It is an infinite diamond mine. That's why it's so difficult, and why it's so much fun. I always have a hard time deciding how much to tell the team to dig deeper.”

Yasuharu hadn’t been at dentsu long before he found a way to connect his new creative skills and his digital background. In 1997, he started making plans for what digital-based communications would look like. It was a time of invention and discovery as there was no blueprint. Yasuharu and his colleagues had to create their own ways of doing things. They described this as ‘creative media work’, which enabled Yasuharu to think not just about the message and content of an ad but how it was communicated. Just three years into his career, his perspective on creativity was expanded beyond the traditional advertising categories.

Because of this pioneering and innovative work bringing tech and creativity together, Yasuharu wonders if people tend to overlook his appreciation for the full emotional scope of creativity. “It is possible that some of the people in the company still think I am a digital technology guy, but that is not true,” he says. “I just love creativity that is full of emotion. And that emotional depth can be created with words, design, film, and technology.”

Talk to Yasuharu about the creativity that he loves out in culture and that emotional connection is palpable. He loves an epic sci-fi - the new ‘Dune’ movies and the Apple+ series ‘Foundation’ are particular favourites right now. He laments that in Japan he doesn’t have too many people around him who share that enthusiasm. But it’s when Yasuharu talks about manga that his passion really comes to life. “With a single pen, a manga artist can create a common worldview in everyone's head, and then bring the characters to life and move them around in that world,” he says. “My favourite author is Fujiko F. Fujio. Don't you know, he is the author of ‘Doraemon’? Every story in ‘Doraemon’ is an innovation.”

To this day, the creativity that really delights Yasuharu are the innovations that make surprising connections - and that’s enabled by his own non-traditional background and broad interests.

“I really enjoy creating innovations,” says Yasuharu. “Innovation is not about inventing new technology, but about connecting already existing methods in unexpected ways to create value that no one has imagined. It is a moment that creates a new normal. The moment I come up with this new ‘connection’ is the moment I am truly happy.”

That mindset has informed Yasuharu’s approach to leadership and how he thinks about creative teams. ”Creativity and innovation are born from the combination of diverse talents. When there is an environment where everyone can think openly and spontaneously, and when the ideas of each person at their best are connected, a very strong power is generated. I thought that it would be more enjoyable to combine everyone's strengths to create stronger ideas than to come up with ideas on my own, which is why I changed to my current role.”

He’s now seeing this approach bear fruit on a global scale. Whether it’s Japan working with the UK, Argentina partnering with the US or India collaborating with Portugal, Yasuharu says that he’s seeing all sorts of exciting innovations spill forth.

Bringing together a diverse group of people, perspectives and skills is just half of the equation. As someone who is, by nature, not a loud person (despite his loud shirts!) and who came to creativity inexperienced and uncertain, Yasuharu says that it’s crucial to make space for the quieter voices. Afterall, a group that only hears the loud voices isn’t really drawing from diverse personalities. Yasuharu reflects that he is incredibly fortunate to have been supported by mentors within dentsu when he was finding his feet in advertising - of course he feels compelled to pay it forward.

“I would like to emphasise the importance of making it easier for everyone to speak up spontaneously anyway,” he says. “Innovation is hidden in one small voice. I think it is important for a creative company that anyone can take a different step forward with courage and confidence. I open Friday afternoons as a free consultation time so that anyone, even first-year employees, can freely ask for advice.”

As much as Yasu considers himself a quiet person, he values that ability to connect and collaborate in person. The growth of video meetings is one change across the advertising industry that frustrates him a little and removes that lovely, spontaneous magic that arises when people are brought together in a room. “Remote meetings are very convenient, but I feel that the probability of an explosion of ideas happening is decreasing. The way new work is created during face-to-face chats in real life is being lost, and I feel sad about that.”

That openness extends to how Yasuharu tends to approach working with clients. And that’s especially true today, when clients are searching for growth in a challenging environment and in need of huge transformations, particularly in the ESG space.

“In these complex and difficult times, creatives may not be able to give the right answer based on their own experience alone. In such cases, it is useful to think of our clients as fellow creatives, and we, as professional creatives, draw out ideas from them and stretch them,” he says. “This makes it easier for the client and us to co-create a better future together. dentsu has the know-how to do this, and we have earned the trust of the client's CXOs, which allows us to work with the client as equals to create future value with a higher degree of certainty.”

Unusually for a creative, Yasu has been taking finance classes for the past six months, which he says has made him realise how much CCOs and CFOs actually have in common. But maybe it also gives him an additional connection to his clients, a deeper understanding of the internal pressures they’re facing, and an ability to empathise even more.

One major change that’s impacting both clients and agencies these days is, of course, artificial intelligence. Given Yasu’s background in computer science, it’s been a particularly fascinating development to witness. It’s also proven to be irresistible to Yasu’s relentless curiosity; he recently completed a certificate in deep learning. 

“When I was studying computer science 30 years ago, I never imagined that, following the internet, an era would come when even AI would be relevant to creativity,” says Yasu. “I believe that in the future, creativity and AI will collaborate to create many innovations, not simply to automatically generate copy and design, or to efficiently and massively produce digital ads and videos. The GPT we have now is just a system that works on probability theory and comes up with the most average answer, but if creatives are serious about AI, AI can become creative too. At dentsu, many creatives are using AI, drawing out AI outputs that people cannot create, and creating AI-based solutions. We intend to use AI even more in the future to create unexpected solutions and generate innovation.”

And it’s not just artificial intelligence that’s opening up intriguing new possibilities. “Thanks to the changes in media over the last 30 years, the value that creativity can offer has expanded considerably, and not just on the screen or on the wall. I believe that creativity is now at the heart of everything that happens in the world. Creativity attracts people strongly and motivates people strongly. There are more and more places for us to enjoy our work, and I'm very excited about it,” says Yasuharu.

　　

“Now creatives at dentsu are doing scientific research using myoelectric sensors, and we have even created a huge ball park in Hokkaido, so we are enjoying a diverse range of opportunities.”

But however much technology changes and opens up new opportunities, for Yasu, creativity is still a deeply emotional, beautifully human thing, and that will remain the same. As a hardworking tool, AI, Yasu suggests, will liberate creatives. “We will be able to focus more on creating seemingly useless, but very human ideas. It's very exciting, isn't it?”

And for someone as endlessly curious as Yasu, perhaps AI will also free him up to pursue those diverse and unusual pursuits, which help him forge those innovative connections and creations. Or even better, maybe it will create more space to tap into the true source of his creativity: nature.