utility of a clock with synchronized music and live dance routines – as creativity at its best. The dancers, whose audition videos alone were viewed half a million times on YouTube, showcase the latest Uniqlo styles by changing their clothing dependent on the time and season. The campaign unlocked earned media from 27,000 bloggers in 76 countries, who each embedded the widget on their sites at zero cost to Uniqlo – but maximum impact on brand awareness. Sales ticked up nicely too. Kagami’s own famous novel, Detective in an Uncertain World, has never been translated into English. It once again shows him rule-breaking. Much sci-fi has the unspoken rule that if you go back into the past you cannot change it. The present is, therefore, protected. But, what if, at the moment anyone makes a decision, there are then two different worlds – the world chosen and the world not chosen? For Kagami, the present is not protected at all. He’s busy re-choosing it. He founded the Dentsu New School in 2011. It’s about educating the educated in what’s important. He hates the idea of teaching. To me it seems to be much less of a school and much more of an inspiration zone, where he has assembled brilliant outsiders to engage the students. They include Hiroshi Nakamira, an award-winning architect born in 1974, who established a new lifestyle concept in Japanese architecture, and Katsura Kaisi, the comedian, who performs Rakugo, a traditional Japanese comic art. And Ryo Shimizu, born in 1976, the Japanese gaming guru, who is a pioneer in mobile gaming. All this is done for Dentsu. If he could travel back in time to the Dentsu figure he admires most it would be Hideo Yoshida, who was President of Dentsu from June 1947 to January 1963. He died before they had a chance to meet. But it was Yoshida who laid down the Dentsu way, and core to it was that the business we are in is both science and art. Maybe some of that “way” has been lost over time: maybe the Dentsu of now is less able to understand a creative now than previously; maybe it’s just become too mature. Kagami is optimistic about the company: the rule-breaker remains loyal.