At ADFEST 2026, Ted Lim, Founder and Chief Creative Consultant at DIFF Creative Consultants in Kuala Lumpur, and Andreas Moellmann, Founder and Brand & Marketing Strategy Advisor at FUTURE INC in Bangkok, presented “The Uncomfortable Truth about The Future of Creativity.” The industry is in the middle of a creative transformation, yet nobody knows exactly what the other side looks like. The discussion centred on what creativity must become to remain valuable.
The session framed the challenge as a crisis in creativity’s relevance to business. This is not primarily a talent crisis, a creative crisis or even a technology crisis. Clients are under increasing pressure to prove business impact. Creativity is therefore being judged less by what it produces and more by the value it creates.
What clients ask from creativity may differ, but every expectation points back to impact. Clients do not buy advertising for the sake of creativity, they buy outcomes.
Business growth: Bernard Charnwut, Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo APAC, said agencies are solving business issues such as turning around sales, accelerating growth, driving distribution and changing brand perception.
Market cut-through: Raymond, Lim’s client of more than ten years, wants creativity that cuts through media clutter and helps a brand stand out.
Emotional impact: Suhayl Limbada, CMO and Market Lead for KFC Thailand, wants greater courage in storytelling, work that makes people feel something, and ideas that move both brand and business.
Commercial return: A Mars executive explained that every 1% of media investment shifted from one- and two-star advertising into three- and four-star creative increased the value of Mars Corporation by USD 50 million.
Together, these examples show that clients value creativity by what it does for the business.
Moellmann illustrated this with an imagined rare Pokémon card signed by Blackpink. It could be highly valuable to someone who loves both, but far less valuable to someone interested in only one. The point was that value is shaped by perception and creative ideas are no different.
The way creative ideas are bought and sold can make that value difficult to establish.
Free pitches: Strategic and creative thinking may be presented before any formal commitment or payment.
Multiple routes: Several agencies may each offer several directions, positioning ideas as choices among many possibilities.
Unlimited revisions: An idea may continue to change until the client is ready to approve it.
Execution-based fees: Payment is often connected to production and delivery rather than to the thinking itself.
Client-defined value: An idea receives a clear commercial value only after it has been selected.
Moellmann described creative ideas as optional. They may be presented as one direction among several, then accepted, revised or rejected. Their value is therefore usually established only after the client chooses them.
He contrasted this with business solutions that become inevitable. They are tied to problems with definable commercial costs. When those problems cannot be left unresolved, the value of the solution can be established before the client commits.
Lim asserted that major shifts are needed:
Agencies need to shift the way they think and work.
Advertising Business needs to shift to a Business of Ideas.
Creative Advertising needs to shift to Creative Business Solutions.
Lim illustrated this by sharing a few campaigns that have succeeded:
Perodua showed how creativity can protect business value. Instead of clearing unsold cars with a 10% to 15% discount, Lim proposed repainting them pink and repositioning them as a limited edition for women. The edition sold out within weeks, allowing the client to protect its margin while the agency received 5% of the savings.
Adidas Odds showed how creativity can reshape a business solution. Rather than redesigning the shoe, the solution introduced boxes containing two left shoes or two right shoes for amputees who only needed one side. A simple packaging idea solved a product problem while generating millions of views, significant earned media and global attention.Uniqlo showed that creativity can identify business opportunities before a brief even exists. Asked what his agency could do for the brand in Indonesia, Lim focused on the scale of the market and the cultural importance of wearing new clothing during Lebaran. The following year, Uniqlo launched Hana Tajima, a modest-wear collection built around that opportunity.
Together, these examples translate into five shifts in creative work:
From Answering Briefs to Shaping Briefs
From Producing Options to Presenting Solutions
From Value after Execution to Value before Execution
From Competing on Output to Competing on Input
From Charging for Delivery to Charging for Impact
Moellmann returned to “The Uncomfortable Truth” that the industry is in the middle of a transformation and nobody knows what the future will look like. But if we can determine the value of creativity for business, we can shape its future. So the practical question becomes What is solving the business problem worth to the client? Once that benchmark number is established, the agency can accurately calculate the commercial worth of its ideas. The future of creativity belongs to those who can defend why their ideas matter to the bottom line. By shifting, advertising can reclaim its value.
Lim closed with his “Human & Marketing Truth” by quoting Bill Bernbach’s observation: “We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mould it, and so busy reading statistics that we forget we can create them.” The session ended with a reminder that creativity is not confined to advertising. Its value may increasingly be defined by the business problems it helps solve.
