“Curiosity sets you apart...and most importantly, empathy because advertising is fundamentally about people.”
Meyvi Wedelia has helped global giants such as Google, YouTube, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and AB InBev move beyond advertising and into culture in a 16-year career, making their global voices feel more at home in markets as nuanced as APAC. The See It Be It alumna has worked and led teams in APAC, Europe, and South America, bridging cultural nuance with global scale, spoken and judged at the YouTube Works Awards and MMA Smarties, and her work has picked up applause from Spikes Asia, The One Show, One Asia, MAD STARS, and more. Now she has landed at Gut, the “brave agency for brave clients”, a creative agency whose impressive results come from one maxim. It puts intuition above algorithm. Gut’s creativity puts intuition first.
Wedelia shares what her remarkably broad experience has taught her about the power and the importance of one of our most powerful human tools.
The importance of connecting with audiences in culture has certainly blossomed. Why? How and why did it become your specialty?
Meyvi Wedelia: I think it’s blossomed because audiences today have never been more fragmented and overstimulated. People live in their own worlds, with different habits, communities, and realities, and if something doesn’t feel relevant to their lives, they scroll past.
My background exposed me early to data and behavioural insights, but I quickly realised that numbers alone don’t move people. Understanding culture and context fills that gap, and that’s what makes ideas truly resonate. I’ve always loved working at the intersection of strategy and creativity, digging into human truths and turning them into work people actually connect with. In Asia, this matters even more: audiences are incredibly diverse, and context isn’t optional, it’s everything.
What do you think are the most important personal requirements (skills, interests, approaches) for success as advertising creatives today?
Meyvi Wedelia: Of course, technical skills matter first, taste, craft, and execution are foundational. You need strong eyes and the discipline to bring ideas to life properly.
Beyond that, curiosity sets you apart: the willingness to observe culture, question assumptions, and constantly learn beyond advertising. And most importantly, empathy because advertising is fundamentally about people. Algorithms and data can inform, but ideas connect when they reflect real human truth. I’d hire anthropologists any day.
You’ve worked in huge network agencies and large indies. What are the commonalities and what are the differences that you’ve observed in your “sampling”
Meyvi Wedelia: It’s honestly hard to compare them, since I experienced them at different points in my career and the industry moves so fast. What’s consistent across both is that great talent exists everywhere, regardless of an agency’s size or structure.
The differences come down to pace, proximity, and relationships. Large networks bring discipline and scale, which teach you structure. Independents move fast and give you close access to founders which is energising, you’re in direct conversation with the people shaping the agency’s philosophy. I’ve also worked in-house, which gave me a different perspective: when you nurture strong relationships with clients, you’re in the driver’s seat with them, shaping briefs together and steering strategy. It’s fully collaborative and incredibly rewarding.
I’ve loved having experienced both perspectives. It’s like learning to drive: first a manual car, then an automatic, then a hybrid, each teaches you different skills but makes you more well-rounded. Having experienced all of them has made me agile, adaptable, and confident navigating very different environments, and I thrive on that.
We have never had, or used, more information (data) to create great advertising and yet creativity is under fire? What do you think has gone wrong
Meyvi Wedelia: I love data, it’s always been an amazing tool for informing decisions and strengthening ideas. But because data is more accessible than ever, our tolerance for uncertainty has shrunk. When everything is measured instantly, ideas that need time, belief, or instinct feel risky.
That’s why in our session we’ll talk about Intuition vs Algorithm: in a world dominated by data, AI, scale, and white noise, it can be easy to lose sight of one of our most powerful human tools: intuition.
What brings you to ADFEST?
Meyvi Wedelia: ADFEST feels close to home, a space where Asia-Pacific creativity gets the spotlight it deserves. The region is complex and layered; it’s not always loud, but it’s rich, nuanced, and deeply cultural. To meet people across different cultures and learn more about the point of views. I’m looking forward to both sharing and learning, and to exploring how we can be braver while staying respectful of context.
