Info

Posts tagged cannes lions

Why Weak Thinking Is Starving Creativity


A strange thing is happening in adland.

Budgets are holding. Tools are multiplying. Content is everywhere.
And yet—campaigns are feeling flatter, safer, forgettable.
We’re showing up more. But saying less.

According to Lions’ State of Creativity 2025 report, we now know why:

51% of brands say their insights are too weak to fuel bold creativity.

The very oxygen of original work—insight—is running low.


Creativity Isn’t Dead. It’s Malnourished.

The study surveyed 1,000 marketers and creatives globally.
Only 13% said they were “very good” at developing high-quality insights.
And over half admitted their strategic thinking wasn’t strong enough to support brave ideas.

This isn’t about copy or color palettes.
It’s about the starting point—the thinking beneath the campaign.

When that’s soft, everything collapses.
We don’t create culture. We decorate it.


The Great Disconnect

Here’s where it gets messier.

26% of brands believe they’re good at generating insights.
Only 10% of agencies agree.

That’s not a disagreement. That’s a misalignment.
And it shows up in the work: campaigns with zero tension, zero edge, and zero memory.

It’s a quiet crisis—because no one gets fired for playing it safe.
But no one gets remembered for it, either.


Why This Is Happening

The report points to three key reasons:

  1. No one agrees on what a “good insight” actually is.
    29% of agencies said the core problem is not knowing how to define it.
  2. Insight development isn’t prioritized.
    It’s not funded. It’s not briefed. It’s not protected.
    (But production timelines? Always urgent.)
  3. Brands struggle to react to culture in real time.
    57% said they can’t respond fast enough to cultural moments.
    Insight, by the time it surfaces, is already stale.

As one respondent put it:

“Capturing cultural moments requires real-time data and courage. But fear of failure gets in the way.”


What Insight Isn’t

  • It’s not a stat.
  • Not a demographic.
  • Not “Millennials love experiences.”
  • Not pulled from a deck last year and recycled today.

Insight is friction. It’s clarity on a human truth your category hasn’t touched yet.
It’s the gut-punch behind the campaign—not the headline.

Without it, the work may look good.
But it won’t feel anything.


What This Means for Brands

If creativity is how we stand out, insight is how we break in.
Into minds. Into culture. Into relevance.

Without it, your ad becomes wallpaper.
With it, your ad becomes signal.

And right now, in an industry that can generate 10,000 versions of an idea with AI in under a minute,insight is the last unfair advantage.


This isn’t a creativity crisis. It’s a thinking one.

We’ve never had more tools, more channels, more data—
and yet, we keep mistaking noise for impact.

Without real insight, we’re just adding color to the void.
Insight is what gives a campaign a spine, a soul, and a shot at mattering.
Without it, we’re not communicating—we’re just performing.

And in a world flooded with content,
only the brands that see deeper will ever be seen at all.

Man-on-beach

See All the Cannes Lions Grand Prix Winners

Monica Lewinsky Asks Adland To Just Say No To Public Shaming

Bogusky Takes On Coke With ‘Hilltop’ Ad Spoof

Martin Sorrell on the mega-media reviews: ‘We can’t remember anything like this

CANNESOGRAM from we are social An interactive cartogram based on Cannes Lions wins over the last decade

Why the tech firms at Cannes will destroy advertising

Broadcasters and publishers: It’s really time to put all your eggs in the mobile video basket

Dave Trott on Cannes: ‘Ad festivals prevent creativity’

We’re losing talent every day’ – Mondelez’s Bonin Bough on how businesses can compete with Google and Facebook for people

Generation impatient: How brands can keep consumers happy when they want everything now

Agencies as product creators: It’s time to make things people want, not make people want things

Facebook gaining ground on YouTube in video ads ‘arms race’

When Columbine happened it shut down my career’ – Marilyn Manson on why not all PR is good PR

Internet will be biggest advertising medium in third of global ad market by 2017

BuzzFeed Could Be Making TV Shows Soon ‘In a different way,’ though, CEO says

The Battle for Influencers: How Social Influence Has Changed

The state of mobile ad spending in 5 charts

Facebook’s facial recognition capabilities are about to get a little creepier

How Taylor Swift changed Apple’s mind over music royalties

Facebook Messenger can now be used without a Facebook account
Anonymity is the internet’s next big battleground

The countries most likely to survive climate change in one infographic

Millennials are a ‘nightmare’ for Wall Street

13 mind-blowing facts about Greece’s economy oh lord!

Humans Are Tech’s Next Big Thing—And That Could Be Risky

Facebook Tests Mobile Ads That Could Cure Lead-Generation Ills Holds potential for email marketers, automakers and more

Google designed a new wearable that allows doctors to monitor patients away from the hospital

How good is your logo?

Does something smell fishy over the Cannes Lions Product Design Grand Prix winner?

Some articles that got my attention this week

 

Chaos, panic, and disorder.. in the business world

Man-on-beach

See All the Cannes Lions Grand Prix Winners

Monica Lewinsky Asks Adland To Just Say No To Public Shaming

Bogusky Takes On Coke With ‘Hilltop’ Ad Spoof

Martin Sorrell on the mega-media reviews: ‘We can’t remember anything like this

CANNESOGRAM from we are social An interactive cartogram based on Cannes Lions wins over the last decade

Why the tech firms at Cannes will destroy advertising

Broadcast…

View On WordPress

haha what a brilliant little tumbr!! Dear Big Agency – Your tweets are terrible. Please Stop.. I love it! A big thanks @armano for bringing this to my attention

cannes you please shut up

haha what a brilliant little tumbr!! Dear Big Agency – Your tweets are terrible. Please Stop.. I love it! A big thanks @armano for bringing this to my attention

View On WordPress

Not at Cannes? Use Cannescellation

Cannescellation is a Chrome extension that replaces Cannes-related content with a video of the offending tweet being destroyed