“The Risk Is What Makes It Worth Watching”: Creative That Lasts with Luke Somasundram

Luke Somasundram is an associate creative director at BBH Singapore. With brilliant collaborators, he has faked history, launched travel insurance with a horror film, designed a puffer jacket for summer, and brought virtual fruits into the real world.

Outside the world of advertising Luke performs improv comedy and writes for theatre and television.

Below Luke chatted with LBB to discuss why good work takes risks, why audiences are smarter than ever, and what drives his obsessive consumption of creativity

Person

As a creative I am unfortunately a procrastinator and an overthinker. I spend a lot of time absorbing as much information as I can, and I bank on my subconscious being able to cook up ideas that work. I trust my gut more than my brain, and follow the impulses that excite me, even if they don’t make sense.

I then spend even more time analysing the work, back-rationalising it and figuring out why it works, and why it will make people feel something. It’s a process that’s chaotic and rife with uncertainty, but it seems to be the only thing that works.

Beyond that, I tend to get fixated on executional details. I understand ideas, even my own ideas, a lot better once I can express them in executions I know how to make – be it a script, product, or experience.

Product

I suspect all good work is grown from a seed of truth, and the more unexpected the truth the better the more compelling the work. The work I find most impressive is usually the stuff that’s built around a superheavy core of truth so dense it’s impossible to ignore.

I also think that good work takes risks. This doesn’t mean it’s reckless, the risks should be calculated and well-informed. But they should still be risks. Taking a risk generates tension that can drive conversation and newsworthiness. Audiences are smarter than ever, and I think they do respect it when they see a brand daring to take a risk to showcase what it values and believes.

Finally, I think good work is revealed in the details. In the extra bit of effort placed to write a joke into the disclaimer copy or error screen. In the choice to make something just a little bit better, even though it’s not necessary. In good work, you can see someone cared.

Process

Late one night at my first agency, I was looking through dusty old annuals, and a giant silverfish burst out of the spine of a One Show tome and sank its pincers into my skull. Since then, it has controlled me in what doctors say is a ‘Ratatouille’-type situation.

The silverfish compels me to consume as much creative material as I can. Old books and new comics, film reels and DVD box sets. I eat it all in a fevered frenzy as the silverfish trills encouragingly. I fall unconscious, and the silverfish fills my head with troubled dreams the exact duration of media buys. I awake and transcribe them, the details blending with audience insights it has overheard. The silverfish prefers it if my transcriptions are phrased in press release form.

Press

Before advertising, I wrote for the theatre and performed and taught improv comedy. This past life has instilled in me a great appreciation for the kinds of budgets and opportunities advertising affords us. It always delights me when I hear creatives complaining about production budgets that could run an indie theatre for years.

The theatre has also taught me a lot about the value of making things for yourself and making things out of what you have access to – be it using the space, improvising with the talents you have in the building, or turning the limitations of an arts grant or performance license into an opportunity. Meanwhile improv has taught me a lot about the value of being able to state an idea concisely and directly, in a single line. In improv we call it the ‘game of the scene’, but I think some of the thinking translates over.

And in terms of what can break a creative project, I do feel that desire to mitigate risk, while seductive and seemingly responsible, can ruin great campaigns. There’s a reason why people pay to see high wire acts. The risk is what makes it worth watching.