Creative Q&A: Hakuhodo's Jin Saito is in the hot seat

How did you get into advertising?
When I saw Segata Sanshiro, the amazing Japanese ad series. In the series, actors dressed up as martial arts practitioners and acted out racing and other console games.

What was your first ever ad?
Kani doraku goes missing. We hid an iconic giant moving crab model normally attached to a crab restaurant to create buzz. We later ran TV commercials with the punch line 'the giant crab had taken the Shinkansen bullet train on a trip to a hot spring'. It was a campaign for JR, the national railways.

That was 20 years ago, and Japan’s first integrated advertising campaign. At the time, the 'disappearance' was reported widely in the press and on TV as an incident, pushing awareness of the ads right up. In further developments, Osaka’s iconic Kuidaore mannequin was among other landmarks that also went 'missing' after this campaign, making it a bit of a social phenomenon.

It is amazing to think that some 20 years ago we were already using the integrated advertising technique of instigating incidents for publicity so as to increase anticipation of advertising.

Which ad do you wish you’d made?
A series of ads for a watch shop in Nagoya in which the entire family has appeared over several decades. The ads started when the shop’s founder was young, and now his grandchildren appear in the ads. It is a long-running saga of a commercial.

What qualities do you look for in a prospective employee?
A never-give-up spirit.

What does it take to impress you?
I’m impressed by things that touch the true heart of people. For instance, Black Sabbath is one of my favourite bands, and one of its members was standing in line to see a horror film when he came to realise that people can’t help but be attracted to the feeling of fear. So he and his band-mates added the concept of fear to music, creating for the first time music with a black magic motif.

This became the conceptual foundation for today’s hard rock/ heavy metal genre. In other words, heavy metal began with Black Sabbath’s discovery of people’s innate desire for fear. It’s a good example of how all extreme ideas are based on essential qualities that anyone can agree with.

Where do you go to be inspired?
A big room with no-one in it.

If you were not working in advertising, where would you work?
Inventor.

What is your guilty pleasure?
Getting off the train at some random location and running as far as I can in one direction.
When I get tired I stay in any nearby capsule hotel.

What would you like to be in a next life?
A zombie.

What is your favourite word?
“No matter how often the debt collector comes, he can’t repossess your experience and knowledge.”

My grandfather, who was an entrepreneur, used to like to say that. He taught me that no matter how much debt you get yourself into, you need to study hard and challenge yourself.

I too want to keep taking on difficult challenges. Because if I succeed, I gain hard-to-get experience, and if I fail, that’s a valuable experience as well.

What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
Go right back to sleep.

What’s your favourite song lyric?
'Rock ‘n’ Roll will never die'.