If you’ve ever been to Cannes Lions, you know it’s part circus, part pilgrimage. Oceans of rosé, the wristband Olympics, conversations happening in every accent under the sun - though still too few Asian ones - and sponsors tripping over each other to out-beach-club one another. It’s overwhelming, chaotic, a little ridiculous and also brilliant.
Because beneath this glittering chaos lies profound inspiration that sends me back to my teams with renewed energy. This year was my third time going, and I still came home buzzing with ideas.
But not everyone can make it to the Riviera which is why Cannes Lions Unpacked in Singapore was such a gift. In just a few hours, we got the distilled essence of a week-long festival minus the hangovers with a clear Asia lens. The challenge was obvious: how do you capture a sprawling global conversation without leaving people more exhausted than inspired? Yet Cannes Lions, Warc, IAA, and The Marketing Society pulled it off brilliantly.
The Paradox of Modern Marketing
As Rica Facundo from WARC explained, modern marketing, especially in Asia, can feel like living in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The feeds never stop, algorithms demand speed, content multiplies like rabbits, and audiences' attention spans are shrinking faster than our patience during a buffering Zoom call.
This is why creativity today isn't just art - it's a real business driver. When done well, creativity doesn't just win awards, it builds brands, grows market share, and delivers pricing power. The paradox is that the faster the world moves, the more marketers need to slow down, commit to fundamentals, and give ideas time to breathe.
Consistency as a Creative Superpower
A central theme from the event was something we all know but often forget: consistency is power. Not the boring, wallpaper kind but the kind that builds memory, trust, and ROI over time.
Consistency is Power
These three elements make it work:
Consistency isn't boring, it's courage
Said P&G CMO Marc Pritchard at Cannes. In a world addicted to "what's next," it takes discipline to show up with the same truth repeatedly. Consistency compounds, turning brands into familiar, reliable choices.
Disguised repetition
This is where creativity shines. Like a hit song that sneaks its chorus back in, familiar yet fresh, the best brands repeat their core idea in ways that feel new. Different assets, channels, and executions, but always echoing the same emotional hook: variations on the same big organizing idea.
Emotion + consistency: Emotion
How a brand makes the audience feel - is the accelerant that makes consistency stick. Without emotion, repetition becomes noise. With it, distinctive brand assets turn into memories, and memories turn into preference.
Together, these make consistency the ultimate creative superpower.
Ads Need Time - Now More Than Ever
In a world dominated by short-form content and algorithmic feeds, the fight for attention is brutal. The instinct is to churn out more content, faster. But the solution isn't more, it's better continuity.
Brands need to plan "lots of little" that work synergistically across channels, reinforcing one another under a bigger brand platform or universe. Ads need time to work. Ideas need patience to land. Long-term creative platforms the kind that compound meaning over years, are more critical than ever, as fragmentation threatens to dilute brand identity.
Tech as an Enabler, Not a Crutch
No 2025 marketing conversation escapes the AI buzzword bingo. But the truth is simple: technology, data, and AI are enablers, not saviours. The best campaigns still start with human insight. Tech makes them sharper, faster, more nuanced across cultures, more scalable.
With geo-fragmentation increasing, companies must examine markets region by region, even country by country and so nuance is no longer optional. This is where tech becomes a powerful enabler of the agility needed to adapt and flex with speed. But it can't replace creativity. When used to amplify consistency, emotion, and storytelling, tech is a multiplier. When it tries to replace them, it becomes just another shiny distraction.
The New Skills Marketers Need
To thrive in this age of speed and hyper-connectivity, Asian marketers must master new capabilities:
Learning new languages
As Sir Martin Sorrell and his co-panelists explained, beyond creativity, today's marketers need fluency in strategy (and the discipline of saying no), data (from insight mining to measurement and C-suite KPI alignment) and tech (knowing when to embrace it, when to ignore the hype). Agility, the ability to flex across markets, test, learn and pivot rather than wait for perfection, is another essential muscle.
Cultural code-switching
Success in Asia requires knowing precisely when to stay universal and when to go hyperlocal. This isn't about translation, it's about cultural fluency that respects local values while maintaining global brand integrity.
Learning to let go
As examples from the Inside the Jury Room session and the Vaseline Verified case showed, brands can't control every pixel anymore. The marketer's role is setting clear guardrails, then trusting audiences and creators to co-shape the story. Done well, letting go doesn't mean losing control, it means gaining relevance.
Why Creativity Still Matters
Here's where I land: the fundamentals of brand-building haven't changed. They've just become harder to practice, which makes them more valuable than ever.
In a world of speed, clutter, and infinite feeds, creativity isn't just art. It's business. It's science. It's the lifeblood of growth. And if we embrace patience, consistency, and the right balance of tech and humanity, we may just be entering a new golden age of marketing.
Not the golden age of Mad Men but one where ideas sticky, emotional, consistent ideas,still rule.
And here's the beautiful thing: some brands from Asia are already showing the world how it's done. The Vaseline Verified case - a Singapore-born idea that became a global phenomenon and Singapore's first Titanium winner - isn't just a source of regional pride. It is powerful proof that when Asian creativity meets global ambition, magic happens. The future of marketing may well be written here.
Authored by Severine Vauleon, former Global Brand Vice President, Unilever and The Marketing Society board member, supported by ChatGPT and Claude AI.
