MAD STARS is open for entries until June 16, with Early Bird pricing until May 9 and regular pricing until May 30. Find everything you need to know to enter here. It has selected its Preliminary and Final jury, with the Executive Jury still being finalised. View the juries here.

MAD STARS 2025 jury member, Hajime Yakushiji, has spent twenty years at Dentsu Tokyo and is currently creative director. He came to agency life from an unexpected place. Before joining Dentsu he was creative director at JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Yakushiji is a fierce advocate for the importance of imagination in advertising. Imagination and creativity are essential in a data-driven world, he says, and client restrictions should be used to push creative minds to explore ideas more deeply. Businesses, he adds, often fall into the trap of thinking within the boundaries of existing logic. They have abundant data and technology resources but fail to come up with new ideas. To combat this, Yakushiji and his team at Dentsu have developed imagination workshops, designed to help companies break free from fixed mindsets and embrace creative thinking.

MAD STARS: Dentsu won Grand Prix of the Year last year at MAD STARS. What will you be looking for in judging MAD STARS award-winning work?

Hajime Yakushiji: Looking at the 2024 award-winning works, I noticed that many of them capture human emotions through the power of design and creativity while also addressing social issues. Each piece demonstrates a high level of execution, expanding the possibilities of what design and creativity can achieve. If I were to score them, they’d be close to a perfect 100.

But at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel that they were almost too perfectly crafted. Around the world, we’re seeing an increasing number of ideas that challenge long-held beliefs – ideas that spark debate and shake up what was once considered unquestionably “right.” The role of AI in creative output is one such example. While I will continue to recognise works that are universally praised, I am also looking forward to those that provoke discussion and even controversy. Through debate, and even if something feels incomplete, I want to embrace work that dares to explore new value systems.

MAD STARS: What do you think it takes to get brave work through the system?

Hajime Yakushiji: I believe it’s about bringing something different into the system, whether it’s talent with a different skill set, challenges outside your usual scope, perspectives and tastes that don’t align with your own, or even new methods, processes, and decision-making approaches. Over the past 10 to 15 years, the creative industry has expanded beyond advertising, tackling business and social issues more directly. This shift happened because those challenges were introduced into our ecosystem. The same applies to creative bravery. Breaking through the system requires introducing the unexpected.

MAD STARS: What do you see as the unique characteristics of the advertising and marketing industry in your region?

Hajime Yakushiji: The boundaries between advertising and marketing have blurred, and there is a growing focus on tackling business, corporate, and social challenges. While this trend is not unique to Japan, I believe it is particularly pronounced here. In other words, there tends to be a greater distance between the challenge and the execution. If we think of strategy as the bridge between the two, Japan stands out for the sheer variety of strategic approaches that can emerge. Not all of them may be “correct,” but this diversity itself is a defining characteristic of the industry in Japan.

MAD STARS: What global trends (good or bad) have you observed as important or noteworthy?

Hajime Yakushiji: In the marketing field, advancements in digital technology have driven optimiSation and speed. Now, this trend is increasingly shaping the creative domain as well.

Today, we can generate what seems to be the “optimal” creative output for a given challenge almost instantly, and businesses can move forward without issue. Naturally, they’ll turn to the same approach again next time. While this trend helps reduce friction and workload in both business and society, we should be mindful that it may also limit the emergence of truly new ideas.

Right now, the novelty of this approach itself makes it creative and valuable. The key is to embrace its benefits while still allowing room for experimentation and play.

MAD STARS: What do you see as the importance of international awards such as MAD STARS?

Hajime Yakushiji: RecogniSing outstanding work is, of course, essential. It gives talented individuals new opportunities and inspires others to follow. But to me, the greatest value of international awards like MAD STARS lies in the record they create. What kinds of work were submitted that year? How were they evaluated? By documenting these moments, we gain a clearer understanding of how the industry evolves over time. After all, evaluation standards shift with the times, and true value can only be seen within its broader context.