Interview: Luis Bassat

“In order to improve you have to question everything

Luis Bassat is one of the most influential people in the Spanish advertising world. He recently visited Madrid, where he participated in an international conference on advertising and the automobile, organized by Fundación MAPFRE. Here he expresses his love for Africa, his passion for modern art, his views on creativity and his endeavors to achieve greater gender equality.

Text: Nuria del Olmo. Photos: Máximo García

He arrives a little late, but smiling. A funny anecdote in his hotel explains everything. The receptionist had given him the wrong room key. That of the writer Lluís Bassets. After a lengthy period, rummaging through his drawers and just about to eat his candy and put on one of his shirts, this Catalan, born in Barcelona and of Sephardic origin, suddenly became aware of the error. He admits that he loves things happening to him. He is a creative, a genius and, at 75, he is still the father of advertising. He firmly believes that any idea can inspire the best advertisement.

What do you do nowadays?

Very little advertising, just when a friend asks me for advice. I devote most of my time to my foundation – Fundación Carmen y Luis Bassat – which my wife and I created years ago and which mainly helps those most in need. One of our first projects was the rebuilding of a school, which had been buried by a landslide in Guatemala. We changed course when our youngest son, who studied Medicine and Pediatrics, took some money to Mozambique, where he had worked for seven years. That year we received a letter from the director of a hospital. He was very grateful because, with that contribution, they had been able to build two new delivery rooms and had installed running water and electricity. Since then, our focus has been on helping children, mostly orphans and sick kids, in that African country, where there is also a high rate of women with AIDS, who give birth to babies with HIV, tuberculosis and malnutrition. There’s a lot to be done.

You also support contemporary art, don’t you?

Indeed so, that’s the foundation’s other great challenge. I believe that artists in Spain are on a par with those inthe United States, England, or China, for example, but they are not so well known. It’s something that interests me, to which I’ve devoted a lot of time and which led to me starting up the Contemporary Art Museum of Catalonia, which did not exist. It’s located in Mataró (Barcelona), in the first building built by Gaudí. Our exhibitions mainly consist of works from my private collection.

Is your collection that extensive?

The money I’ve earned – and I’ve earned quite a lot, I’m not ashamed to say – is hung on my walls; I’ve invested in works of art. I have no other expensive hobbies. I wasn’t seduced by yachts or sports cars; and I’ve travelled a lot in my work, so, whenever I’ve had vacation time, I’ve stayed at home. They say that my collection is one of the four most important that exist in Catalonia. There are 2,500 paintings and 500 sculptures, which I’ve acquired over the years and which are by artists we like, such as Picasso, Miró and Tapies, as well as other lesser known ones like Millares or Saura.

I’ve been dedicated to advertising all my life and cars have been my passion, both driving and advertising them. There are fantastic campaigns. Our agency in Madrid, for example, designed a great campaign a few years ago to publicize the latest navigation system on the Ford Mondeo. The idea was based on how difficult it is to understand the explanations of people in different regions of Spain when you get lost and how important it is to have a device that will get you to your destination.

It was a one-minute ad that had you splitting your sides laughing, barely paying heed to the product’s technical characteristics. Another one of my favorites is the Do you like driving? campaign by Toni Segarra, who I’ve congratulated many times.

However, you once said that good advertisements are no longer being made.

That’s true. I spent many hours searching for examples to demonstrate this at the conference. Up to 2007 there were really good ads and, from then on, everything changed and it’s hard now to find good campaigns. The quality is coming back now but, with the crisis, advertising cars was completely halted and the creatives repeated the same ad every year.

What skills are necessary to stand out in this industry?

The most important thing is to know how to listen, read between the lines, understand everything the client tells you, know how to ask the right questions to try to locate the pr oblem, just like good doctors do when they listen carefully to their patients. Of all the things that concern a br and, and there are usually thousands, advertisers must be capable of striking the right note in a spot lasting just 20 or 30 seconds, getting people to change their mind and choose a particular product, whether it be a vehicle, a soft drink or soup.

You’ve written a lot about creativity and innovation. What can we do to work better?

It’s essential to question everything, think about how we do things and whether we can improve them. A long time ago, a student asked me how he could be a good creative. I asked him how he went to work, if he took the same route every day. He said he did. I suggested he leave home ten minutes earlier, choose a different route and, for a while, walk down a different street every day. It’s clear to me that, if you take different routes, you get to see different things. Routine is the number one enemy of creativity.