From barkeeper to brand builder – the many lives of Sascha Kuntze

Kuntze believes we can all “learn a thing” from our inner child. “Those ads back then, that I remember, they weren’t necessarily the most creative by my standards today. But they made me happy with their songs. And I remember them.”

In his early adult years, military service brought an unexpected twist. After scoring highly on an IQ test, he was asked where he wanted to go in life. Kuntze said it was his dream to make movies. “So I was invited to the propaganda unit at the army. But it wasn’t quite as glamorous as I had imagined, so I ended up becoming a barkeeper in the general’s restaurant.”

Filmmaking has always been his passion. From around the age of 12, he would steal his mum’s digital camcorder to make short films, emulating the German version of SNL. “My two siblings reluctantly had to be my cast,” he laughs. “I blew up dinosaurs with firecrackers that I modified to create stop motion action films. And so, right after school, I finally landed a job as a set runner at a film production company in Munich.”

Kuntze explains that he was the first on set, the last to leave. “I made coffee, blocked roads, did pretty much everything just to get closer to making films. One thing led to another and I ended up as assistant director after some time in the north of Germany shooting crime TV series for German TV.”

But his dream was a degree in feature filmmaking. Rejection from top film schools was a “big bump” to his confidence. “I had all this creative energy and it felt like the institutions wanted to stop me.”

Many rejections later, positive news followed and he joined Germany’s “hottest independent agency” at the time, Springer & Jacoby, where the team, he says, excelled at “creating structure and discipline around creative excellence.”

His next stop, Jung von Matt, “nearly killed” him because the hours were so punishing. “It made me question the industry.” That questioning led him to Mars, where he worked in marketing for Snickers. “It was really interesting to see the other side, soak in corporate culture and candy bars.” Eventually, he found his way back to advertising with a move to Dubai and a decade at Ogilvy.

Since 2018, Kuntze has channeled all those experiences into his role as BBH Singapore’s chief creative officer.

Curiosity, he says, has always been a constant – a drive he traces back to the German kids’ show Löwenzahn. “I wanted to become a factory owner. As a young child, we had these chewing gum vending machines all around town and I could crack them open with my tiny hands and I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to own a chewing gum factory when I’m older!’ And, lo and behold, 35+ years later, we made Singapore’s first legal chewing gum.”

Chewing gum is banned in Singapore, so the creative team made something that looks, tastes and chews like gum, but technically isn’t. “We did that for us because we can. I love that. Not only is it a childhood dream come to life, it’s also an ode to creativity, to not letting anyone – not even the law – be the end of what’s possible. There is always a way. You just need to think of the right idea and, more importantly, have the determination to bring it to life.”

With a long career behind him, Kuntze says there are many pieces of work he’s proud of for “various” reasons. “I’m proud of them either because I was really resourceful in bringing it to life or because it changed the company culture of a massive Fortune 500 company with one single piece of work and got them thinking. There are also quite a few pieces that made it into culture.”

One ad he still finds relevant is the work he did with Reporters Without Borders, called ‘Pixelated Truth.’ It featured images of politicians with certain body parts pixelated, which gave new meaning to the pictures. “It eventually went viral and then fueled a political debate in Japan when they had their Fukushima disaster. I love it when the work works on many levels. It gets shared because it’s funny, but it also works because it’s deep and meaningful to people.”

Kuntze is a fan of originality and gets excited by work that feels “ahead of its time.” He believes that is the culture BBH has built. “It’s very entrepreneurial. We’re a workshop, not a factory. We’re agile, we’re very diverse and that gets us to very unique and original solutions. And now we do that on a global scale. Not many people know that there is this kick ass global agency in Singapore that understands pretty much every culture and can develop work that resonates beyond borders. A lot of ‘western’ agencies still carry a bias.”

Outside work, Kuntze experiments with AI. “I love music but, besides playing piano, I never had the patience or time to make more of this passion. But now I can. I am coming up with the songs and write the lyrics and I can use AI and various other tools to bring it to life. I publish under the artist name Sam Not Sam.”

Yesterday, he finished making his first music video (“Well, the first one with AI”). For Kuntze, it’s all about making things happen, “whichever way possible” – a philosophy he takes into his daily working life as agency leader.

“My leadership style is a hybrid. I adapt to the situation. I see myself as a conductor who sometimes chooses the song and loves getting surprised by the orchestra at what they want to play. We all need to enjoy doing it. Sometimes I wave my arms to keep the beat, other times I enjoy listening because our orchestra is so damn good. And sometimes I join and play the triangle.”