Bas Korsten, Global Chief Creative Officer for Innovation EMEA and CCO at VML, is in love and haunted by ideas in the same time. However, he knows when to let go: when he cannot give them the time they need to grow. Bas graduated as a Logistics Engineer but moved into advertising as a copywriter. He became Creative Director of DDB Amsterdam and joined JWT Amsterdam in 2012. With double Grand Prix-winning campaign ‘The Next Rembrandt’, the agency was named Cannes Lions 2016 ‘Innovation Agency of the Year’.
In December 2019, Bas was promoted to Global Chief Creative Officer at Wunderman Thompson. In March 2023, Bas launched ‘The Mammoth Meatball’ for cultured meat company VOW and won multiple Grand Prix. Bas has won 70 Cannes Lions (6 Grand Prix) and invented a new sport: FootGolf.
"I'm in love with ideas and the problem with that is that they haunt you. If there's an idea that needs to see the light of day... I mean, I've been working on the Mammoth Meatball for five or six years, Next Rembrandt also. That's an idea that gets stuck in there and it doesn't let you go", says Bas.
Bas recently came to Romania for the Creativity4Better conference, where he spoke about the unseen process behind big ideas. During a break at the conference, we talked with Bas Korsten about creativity, technology, AI, humor, and aliens.
The creative lessons of this year
For me, it was how generative AI is going to shape our industry. I'm actually using it a lot. It helps you to get to ideas quicker. I'm a copywriter, so especially on the textual side of things, it can give you very many prompts quite quickly. So it just triggers your brain. That's what I hadn't imagined, because I was thinking more of it as a way to produce work, I've never thought about it as an inspiration tool. It gives you very many options very quickly.
I like Steve Jobs' definition of creativity: you take two existing notions and you bring them together into a new relevant one. FootGolf is a good example of that. You bring together two existing things into something new.
What generative AI does really well is give you a lot of notions that you can then combine in your head. It does a lot of the groundwork for you, so you get to the essence quicker, especially when it comes to text.
If AI would be a copywriter in your agency
I would say: Well done, I'll give it a bonus and a raise. Of course, I never take anything and just use it. It always needs crafting. But, as a base, I think it's pretty good.
Your personal definition of creativity
I'm in love with ideas and the problem with that is that they haunt you. If there's an idea that needs to see the light of day... I mean, I've been working on the Mammoth Meatball for five or six years, Next Rembrandt also. That's an idea that gets stuck in there and it doesn't let you go. So, for me, creativity and great ideas are those things that don't let you go and that drive you forward.
Your perspective on creativity in the beginning
Then it was how many connections can I make? I always forced myself to do 17 ideas on any brief, because it's easy to get to three ideas, it's easy to get to five, but at a certain point you have to go to really weird areas, otherwise you're never going to get to 17. So I just forced myself, but I wasn't able to go like "idea six is the one I need".
I think that critical thinking is something that you get over time and as you get older and get experience.
What came with the experience
I know how easy an idea is and I know how hard it is to bring it to life. The problem is that sometimes I need to kill an idea, even though I really like it, because I just I know it's going to be too much to handle. I've learned to stay away from some ideas.
I'm gonna put in the time, but it's like little babies: you gotta nurture them and they deserve the time. If you can't give them the time, it's better not to start at all.
The pressure to be creative every day
At a certain point in time you know you will always think of something. It might not always be a ten, but you know that you'll always figure things out. I know my head is going to save me. I know that I can rely on my head to just get me out of any sticky situation. I've got that confidence built up over the years.
Your vision as a creative director
I'm very hard on the work. I'm not hard on the people, I'm hard on the work and I'm saying no, no, no, yes, no, maybe, work on that, yes. It's because you see so many ideas you need to be very quick in assessing whether you feel it has potential or not.
I'm pretty direct. There's just too many ideas, you can't just always give feedback in very detailed fashion.
Recognizing big ideas
I feel like a kid who has a birthday every day and I get to unpack these little gifts every day.
We do a process called Lightning Bolt Briefs, where we give people 48 hours to come up with ideas. It's a global brief. We have 30,000 people across the globe, so we get 400 ideas back. You can't be dwelling too long. But just to think about the richness of 400 ideas and to go through those and to be able to pick the right ones out... I love that.
What has remained unchanged in advertising
The power of an idea. We've got so many things, so many tools to make them great. Sometimes those tools are overwhelming, like AI is now. But it's still a tool and it's something that you can use to make your idea better or faster or more efficient. I think human creativity will always be the defining factor. It's just that it'll be surrounded by tools and AI generated content which further drives the need for those big iconic pieces of work that pierce through the amount of averageness that we're confronted with on all these channels
Before, it was simpler. We had less channels, so your idea was more pointed towards the channel and it was therefore very much focusing on that, making that one thing and that one thing really good. Now, you go into a shoot and say: we'll have 1100 assets that we need to create out of a shoot, like a massive shoot. You used to have film and you would spend all your time and effort and eye for detail and sweat into this one piece and now it's being watered down.
Maybe what drives my desire to do these tentpole things is because it reminds me of what we had back then, where you could really focus on that one thing and make that the best thing in the whole world.
Ethical boundaries in advertising
I think there's just ethical issues with generative AI, which are worrying me. When you think about how generative AI is trained, are the sources available for everyone to see? What is the script that it's spewing at? What is it based on? Is somebody getting compensated for the fact that the AI was trained on his or her script? I think that's an ethical thing that we need to solve.
And then problem with generative AI in general. It's a hammer and a hammer can be used to build the most beautiful houses and it can be used to smash you in the head with. So it's the same for generative AI. You can use it for the worst purposes, or you can use it for finding new cures for cancer quicker. So it's up to us, as human beings, to set the boundaries.
Cultural sensitivities
You're more aware of the discussions, which I think is good, as long as it doesn't go into fears.
Because I think one tweet can send a whole boardroom in panic. And I think you can't make everyone happy, especially not on X. You can't make everyone happy, so don't try. Just make sure that you follow your own ethical set and standards and then if you stand behind that, then that's okay.
Your personal ethical code
It's very much playing it by ear. I don't have rules or a motto, but I try to be a good human being.
I don't want to offend anyone.
Taboos
Some subjects I don't think would ever be relevant to use in communication per se. I know that people don't like death. There was an ad once that was done in Holland, it was a car that could go very long on less fuel and so they were carrying a fuel tank like it was a coffin. That got a lot of negativity around it, because it's connecting to something that people don't want to be reminded of. It didn't go down well. And sometimes you have that.
I haven't had that a lot, where I needed to take something back because it was just causing too much of a stir. So I've been navigating it quite well.
If you were an alien watching the ads from 2024, what impression would you have of humanity
It's been a while since I was impersonating an alien. So I have to get into the skin of this green monsters.
If they could see us over a period of 10 years, I think they would go like, it's become a bit less fun. And it feels like all this technology is driving efficiencies, but it's not driving, I don't know, just fun to do things.
That's what I'm struggling with sometimes as well. I'm fascinated because I like technology and I like what it can bring us. At the same time, I'm going like focusing on that one thing, that one piece and making that the biggest thing in the world. I think it's not so simple anymore. Some of the complexity has taken some of the fun out.
Also, people being scared because humor can go wrong. Maybe we've become too scared in a way to do those things. We need to somehow detach ourselves from technology in a way and go back to that feeling of unbridled creativity. And the technology can come in later. It's a bit weird maybe coming out of an innovation guy maybe, but I think that would help.
Fears & hopes
I have four kids, so the fear is always around them. I don't fear anything for myself per se, I fear something for them and how the world is that they're growing up in. At the same time, I see them navigating the world, and that gives me hope, because my son wants to be a comedian, and he's really big on TikTok. I love the fact that it's maybe a different channel, but it's still something that's inside of him that needs to come out. Seeing that and the fearlessness with which he does that gives me a lot of hope for the future.
