Dentsu Lab’s global creative lead talks about the human instinct required to make great creative work and the commitment to creating projects that touch hearts, as part of LBB’s Creativity Squared series
Naoki Tanaka is a globally recognised creative technologist and innovation leader, and global creative lead at Dentsu Lab. Based in Tokyo, he founded one of the world’s first creative R&D labs over a decade ago, pioneering a model that fuses emerging technology, design and human behaviour to create culturally impactful work.
Under his leadership, Dentsu Lab has developed internationally celebrated projects across neuroscience, immersive experience, gaming, and accessibility, earning recognition from Cannes Lions, SXSW, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and global technology forums. His work sits at the frontier of creativity and engineering, translating complex R&D into experiences that move people emotionally and shift culture.
Naoki is a recipient of the Catalyst Award and served as a creative lead for Expo 2025 Osaka, recognised for pushing the boundaries of how technology can deepen human connection rather than replace it. His work is grounded in a singular belief: that innovation only matters when it expands human potential.
Naoki sat down with LBB to discuss his creative journey, how he works to constantly raise the bar creatively and some of his proudest work.
I genuinely love creative work, even though it’s rarely smooth or stress-free. Each project demands real effort and intensity, which is something I’ve learned to embrace. I’m deeply introverted, and that inward focus is where my strongest creative thinking happens. I do my strongest thinking alone, and while that can sometimes create distance, it’s central to how I work.
What I think about most is people. Human beings are strange and fascinating. That curiosity is both my hobby and my profession. For me, making creative work means facing the deeper layers of human nature. Real feelings live deep below the surface and the first stage of ideating is like diving into the sea, holding your breath and pushing down through the pressure.
Finding a perspective that genuinely moves someone’s heart is the hardest and most important part of the work. But when you keep observing people and society that way, you see many different sides to humanity. Creativity exists for people, and people have many sides – some beautiful, some troubling. Sometimes I feel humans are truly foolish. We often know what’s right, but we still can’t act. War, discrimination, climate issues – these are perfect examples. Even a five-year-old knows when something is wrong and still is not able to stop it.
Creativity is one of the few tools we have for confronting those contradictions head-on.
I love routines. Because my work constantly changes, routines in daily life feel like they restore me: washing dishes, peeling fruit, reading to my children. Routine helps me recharge, so I can leave again for another difficult journey.
I’m a creative director. I once heard that the word ‘direction’ comes from Latin and means something like ‘to guide people toward a distant place.’ That’s how my work feels. Each time, I go on a journey where I fight anxiety and come back mentally and physically exhausted. That’s why I prepare for the journey inside a daily life filled with routine.
‘Will this touch someone’s heart?’ I say that to my team again and again in meetings. Everything we create is made for people. But the brutal truth is that most of it gets ignored. It’s skipped. It’s as if it never existed.
Well-made work earns attention and holds it; great work stays with people long after they’ve seen it. And when something is truly great, something else happens: people want to share it. It’s human instinct. If we see something meaningful, we want to tell our family, our friends, someone we care about. Great creative becomes conversation, and it spreads – through words, through social media, and through culture.
At the same time, social media has made success harder for creatives who want to make something genuinely new. Because great work can be shared instantly, everywhere, and watched anytime. The bar rises constantly.
Some of my major work includes the staging of the TOKYO 2020 Paralympic Opening Ceremony ‘Wind of Change’; the Osaka-Kansai Expo water show ‘Under the Midnight Rainbow’; ‘Project Humanity’, and my latest piece from December 2025, ‘Waves of Will’. I still do film and graphic projects, but more and more, my work is becoming live one-time-only experiences.
This reflects a clear and growing hunger for experiences that can’t be duplicated or endlessly reproduced, something beyond ‘copyable digital content.’ Generative AI is the ultimate form of digital reproduction. But I want to try making something that happens only once, something that truly touches the heart - together with my friend, generative AI! How, for now, is still a secret.
I always start with research: the content itself, related technologies, and the history. If you don’t know what experiments and attempts came before, you risk repeating the past. If you understand the highest point reached so far, it becomes easier to imagine how to go beyond it.
Next, I picture the goal. What feeling should people have if the work succeeds? Then I look for the message needed to create that feeling. That message must offer a new perspective.
For me, creativity is simply: finding a new perspective.
I do that part alone first. Then I gather the people needed to maximise the message through expression, and I share the direction with them. For the execution, I intentionally collaborate with creators, artists, and researchers I don’t yet know. I love the chemistry that happens.
Sometimes it creates friction too, so it isn’t always easy.
The most important stage is the very first one: finding the message. That’s where a creative director’s real skill is tested. Sometimes there are ‘creative directors’ who skip that responsibility and just ask the team to generate ideas. I don’t call that creative direction. If you avoid defining the message, you can’t guide the team properly, and you can’t judge the ideas that come out.
People often ask if there’s a trick to finding new perspectives. For me, it often comes from small moments in everyday life. I keep notes about what catches my attention about people, especially patterns of how humans behave in this era. Those notes often combine with the project in front of me and turn into a strong message.
In the end, we create ideas to move hearts. So, connecting the ‘switch’ deep inside people with the client’s challenge is often the strongest method.
I’ve rarely lived in what you’d call the ‘mainstream lane.’
That unconventional path is the foundation of how I think, make decisions, and create work today. Having a new way of thinking and making is often the shortest route to new creation - but in my case, my career almost forced me to become that way. And in the end, that was lucky.
My unusual path started as a student. I was originally a science student, and through my master’s program I worked in a mechanical engineering lab. Every day I fired new materials and tested their strength. It was quiet, modest work, but I was happy.
When it came time to choose a career, I struggled. I had always imagined making things, as a manufacturer. But I was also obsessed with a different question: ‘Why do people buy?’
That curiosity pulled me toward psychology and behaviour. After a lot of thought, I chose advertising, and became something rare at the time: an advertising creative with a mechanical engineering background.
I also loved culture-driven films, so after joining the company I immediately aimed for a creative role. But my first assignment was account management. For four years, I wore a suit every day and faced clients and media. I wrote countless production estimates and explained plans directly to clients.
In my fifth year, I finally had a chance to move into creative. I passed the test and became a copywriter. But as a copywriter who started five years late, I received almost no briefs. Then one job came to me: banner ads for an automaker’s giveaway campaign - designed to grow newsletter subscribers, with a ‘win a car’ prize.
I kept making banners for three years. Unlike TV or newspapers, I was given freedom. I wrote nearly a thousand lines of copy. I brought in illustrators. That experience gave me a strong belief: creative can move hearts regardless of the medium. From there, I began doing award-winning work in copy and film, while also building a mindset that freely uses any method, digital, live performance, media art, whatever it takes to move people. Eventually, that path led to larger stages like the Olympics, the Paralympics, and the Expo.