Yasu Sasaki, Head of Digital Creative and Executive Creative Director at Dentsu Inc. and Digital jury president, discusses brilliant work in the digital category, his favourite digital campaigns, and shares big-picture thinking on navigating the tricky terrain of the digital landscape.

According to Yasu, digital presents opportunities to “upgrade humanity”. He says, “As we know, digital has difficult aspects, on social media people are saying negative things or sending hate messages and people are afraid about data. They don’t want to give data to companies.”

By combining great ideas, proper ethics and good strategies digital can be of huge benefit to society, says Yasu. He highlights the Go Back to Africa campaign by FCB/SIX in Canada which turned racist tweets on their head. “Using digital each individual can have the power to speak to society,” he says.

The jury president also talks about the changing, more intimate relationship between companies and their consumers, who now have greater oversight and a stronger voice in the marketplace. He also explains how he likes to see a combination of digital technology and emotional connection, and cites the Burger King ‘Stevenage Challenge’ campaign by David. This saw BK sponsor unsuccessful UK football team Stevenage, branding their shirts and then encouraging FIFA players to make them the most successful team in the game.

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