Where is Creativity Heading? Yasuharu Sasaki's View of Cannes

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was held in Cannes, France, from June 17 to 21. How did this world's largest celebration of creativity appear to its participants? We explore the "now" of Cannes through their perspectives.

Part 2 features an interview with Yasuharu Sasaki of Dentsu Group/Dentsu Inc., who served as a judge in the Titanium category this year. What global advertising trends emerge from this year's winning entries? And what kind of creativity does Dentsu Inc., championing "Innovating to Impact," aim for?

Yasuharu Sasaki: Global Chief Creative Officer, Dentsu Group; Chief Creative Officer, dentsu Japan; Managing Executive Officer (Creative), Dentsu Inc. After joining Dentsu Inc., he worked as a copywriter on numerous advertising projects and spent days photographing wildlife in mountains and oceans worldwide. Later, leveraging his computer science background, he became a founding member of Dentsu Inc.'s Interactive Creative Team. He held positions including ECD at Dentsu America (now dentsu Americas) and Head of the Creative Planning Division 4 at Dentsu before assuming his current role. He pursues the creation of new value by combining creativity and technology. Recipient of numerous awards including Cannes Lions Gold, D&AD Yellow Pencil, and CLIO Grand Prix. Served as Jury President for Cannes Creative Data (2019), D&AD Digital (2020), Cannes Brand Experience & Activation (2022), and Head of Jury for Effie APAC (2023).

The judging criteria for the Titanium category is "game-changing."

──What was your first impression upon arriving at Cannes this year?

Sasaki: This year, I arrived two days before the festival started because I was preparing for a presentation at a dentsu seminar. Typically at Cannes, you see the beach, surrounding facilities, and tents being set up and prepared all at once about two days before the start. This year, however, I noticed many staff moving around quite busily, and saw numerous platform providers and marketing companies preparing various exhibits. I feel this isn't just because participants returned after the pandemic ended, but because Cannes has shifted even more than before from being a festival of creativity to becoming a "place for creative business."

──What is the Titanium category, for which you served as a juror this year?

Sasaki: The definition of the Titanium category is simple: "to celebrate game-changing creativity." We select work that breaks conventional marketing norms and points to new horizons for the industry. There are no subcategory divisions for submissions; we judge diverse works using a single standard. Unlike other major categories, it doesn't have Gold, Silver, or Bronze awards. Instead, it awards only two levels: the Titanium Lion and the Grand Prix.

──Mr. Sasaki, you've served as a juror for other categories in the past. Was there anything distinctive about judging the Titanium category this time?

Sasaki: First, the Titanium category has a much lower entry count compared to other categories, precisely because the bar for winning is so high. The Brand Experience & Activation category I judged at Cannes previously had around 2,500 entries, but this Titanium category had only about 200 total. However, every entry in Titanium was so strong that any of them could easily have won the Grand Prix in another category, making the judging quite challenging.

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the key judging criterion for Titanium is "game-changing." Each juror evaluates entries with this term in mind, but it's a highly subjective standard, leading to significant differences in which works each person champions. This makes the judging discussions considerably more difficult than in other categories. I feel that if we had been able to discuss a bit more among the judges about "what exactly constitutes game-changing in 2024," it would have been even better.

Furthermore, a distinctive feature of the Titanium category judging is that all shortlisted entries undergo a "live presentation" on-site, with the final judging based on this presentation. The presentation and subsequent Q&A make it easier to delve deeply into the work, which is advantageous for the judges. However, it's also true that the skill level of the presentation can significantly influence the judging outcome. This year's Grand Prix winner, "DoorDash," didn't stand out particularly during the initial judging phase. However, I believe the presentation, which demonstrated the strong relationship between the client and agency and emphasized the challenges faced right up until implementation, influenced the final outcome.

With the Titanium category judges (Mr. Sasaki is the second from the left)

Three Trends Seen at This Year's Cannes

──The Titanium category is also emblematic of Cannes. From the perspective of Titanium, could you share your insights on the current state of Cannes and the global advertising landscape?

Sasaki: After judging this year's Titanium category and then surveying all the Cannes award-winning work, I sensed the following three trends:

(1) Creating collective impact through "creative" collaboration between multiple companies and communities.

This closely aligns with Dentsu Inc.'s long-promoted B2B2S (Business to Business to Society) approach. We saw numerous examples where large-scale challenges, difficult for any single company to tackle alone, were achieved through collaboration with other companies and community engagement. Crucially, this wasn't mere partnership but creative collaboration that sparked "aha!" moments. The result was simultaneous growth for people, brands, and society.

(2) Creating win-win and rapid transformation by tightly integrating business and society.

Merely demonstrating a company's purpose in the short term may generate temporary buzz, but it cannot achieve sustainable corporate growth. Many examples were seen where companies deepened the connection between their business and society to drive mid-to-long-term business growth.

(3) Strong emotional impact and social consensus building through expanding creativity into technology and non-advertising domains.

A trend continuing over recent years has been the abundance of solution ideas, product innovations, and service innovations beyond advertising. However, these are no longer merely about using AI or new technologies; recently, greater emphasis has been placed on how deeply they affect human feelings. We also saw several examples where creativity rooted in humanity created new norms.

Dentsu Creative's Global Presence

──At this year's Cannes Lions, awards won by Dentsu Creative offices worldwide were particularly noticeable.

Sasaki: Regarding the award results, dentsu winning the Grand Prix in the Creative Strategy category this year, following three consecutive Grand Prix wins since 2021, is truly remarkable. The work that won the Grand Prix this time was "A Piece of Me" by Dentsu Creative Amsterdam. And "Inflation Cookbook," which won several Gold Lions, was by Dentsu Creative Toronto. It's truly gratifying to see the strengths of our creative teams not just in Japan, but around the world, starting to shine.

Dentsu Creative Amsterdam wins Grand Prix in Creative Strategy category

──The seminar hosted by dentsu, where you served as a presenter, was also well-received.

Sasaki: dentsu had various opportunities to present at this year's Cannes. At the dentsu-hosted seminar, Global CEO Igarashi and I discussed "Five Principles for Fostering Innovation," drawing on examples while tracing dentsu's 123-year history. I believe we were able to introduce the "DNA" of how Dentsu has continuously generated innovation since its founding—its culture and how it connects diverse talents within the group. The seminar drew a large audience, filling even the second-floor seats, and we received significant feedback from attendees, media, and journalists.

In the latter half, we connected Cannes and Japan in real time, demonstrating how everyone can enjoy e-sports together regardless of disability or differences. We were able to enjoy this experience together with everyone at the venue. This was the result of joint research between Dentsu Lab Tokyo and NTT.

At a seminar hosted by Dentsu Inc. (Japan), Fast Retailing Director Yasuji Yanai took the stage and shared the vision behind the "THE TOKYO TOILET" project, resonating deeply with creators worldwide. Additionally, sessions led by Dentsu Creative leaders drew significant interest from many clients, making it a very fulfilling year for Dentsu.

In May 2024, dentsu announced its new brand proposition: "Innovating to Impact." This represents our commitment to continuously generating innovation and to delivering positive impact through innovation—impact that drives business growth, benefits people, and contributes to society. In today's increasingly complex challenges, innovation isn't simply about using the latest technology. As the world seeks "aha" moments of innovation and ways to truly move people emotionally and physically, I feel a strong sense of promise that dentsu's unique strengths can make a significant difference.

Mr. Sasaki presenting at a dentsu-hosted seminar

At the forefront of the new craftism in the AI era

──Where is dentsu's creativity headed next?

Sasaki: The creativity we provide extends beyond advertising. It delivers impact to business, people, and society, helping drive transformation in each. We call this "Transformative Creativity," and its implementation is now underway at dentsu offices worldwide. This year's Cannes award-winning works, "A Piece of Me" and "Inflation Cookbook," are prime examples.

Our creativity is "people-centric." It's not about companies efficiently delivering one-way messages to maximize lifetime value from consumers. Instead, we aim for creativity that empowers people – using the power of ideas and their execution – so businesses can grow alongside people and people can more easily drive societal change.

To generate this transformative creativity, it's crucial to uncover hidden insights through data and clearly demonstrate an idea's effectiveness. Equally important is using technology to create conditions that make it easier for people to take action.

──What direction do you think global advertising will take in the future?

With various AI technologies rapidly evolving, we'll likely see widespread adoption of AI for uncovering insights, automatically generating optimized messages and visuals for advertising effectiveness, and even automatically creating video ads. However, people will quickly become accustomed to such simple "generated ads." Furthermore, users themselves will likely start using AI to filter and optimize the information they encounter. This will make it crucial once again to create information and stories that people genuinely desire, along with surprising, high-quality content and experiences. And I believe it will be human creators who produce these (at least for the foreseeable future). How do we foster strong empathy among people? How do we harness the power of empathetic individuals for business growth and societal transformation? The ability to think "people-centric" will become increasingly vital.

In that sense, as I mentioned earlier in the trends section, I believe there will be a growing demand for "advertising" that builds mid-to-long-term ecosystems connecting people, companies, and society through deeply emotional approaches that resonate profoundly over time, ultimately creating happiness for both people and society.

──As the nature of advertising evolves, what should creators strive to be?

Personally, I believe creators should remain people-centered thinkers, willing to work tirelessly for others, regardless of how technology or media evolves. We should fully leverage data and technology, but only to better understand "human emotions" and "what moves people." And we must place utmost importance on design, storytelling, and craftsmanship. This isn't a nostalgic return to old-school advertising; I see it as the dawn of a new craftsmanship era in the AI age. We creators want to be at the forefront, having more fun than anyone else.