Why creative agencies should stop doubting and start leading

Every now and then, some random spin gets thrown at creative agencies. From consultants, analysts, technocrats, to self-proclaimed 'growth experts', everyone has a theory about how we’re finished or broken or irrelevant. 

And we, the people who actually create IP are listening to this and sometimes even buying into the noise. This defeatism is bizarre.

Let’s consider some facts. According to Dentsu Creative Global CMO Survey 2024, 83% of CMOs believe that creative ideas can transform businesses, and 81% see creativity as more important to their business than ever. 

According to research from Nielsen and Meta, the lever most strongly associated with increased performance on Meta technologies is ad creative execution, with the study finding that campaigns with high-quality creative achieved 35% greater effectiveness.

Sometimes, I feel the biggest threat to our industry is not some AI tool—it is this constant negative talk. This energy is also getting projected to the talented young people who value working in our industry. 

I have been in this incredible industry long enough, working with some of the most talented agency people and smart client leaders, been through multiple ‘agency business is finished’ narratives and in the last five years, I’ve also had the privilege (and the extraordinary lessons) of sucessfully rebooting a legacy creative agency—MullenLowe Mishra (MLM) Vietnam. 

I understand the fear. I respect the challenges.

The reality is, after all that, we are still here, evolving rapidly as an industry, being more relevant than before, developing IP and some of us are even delivering a pretty decent margin. 

Because at our core, we know how to create something out of nothing. The technology keeps changing, but the mission never changes. 

We don’t just trade media, write code, or operate some fancy machines, despite all of it being ncredibly relevant of course. But we as an industry actually make something every day, which regular humans can see, hear, touch, experience and act upon. 

I feel as an industry we need to show up more like people who know this truth deep down.  

A big mission in front of us

In a world growing more uncertain by the day, the growth playbooks of the past 30 years—fuelled by globalisation-led pipelines—will begin to lose edge. Even in high-growth ASEAN economies like Vietnam and Indonesia, domestic consumption will have to be ramped up. It needs to be hyper-local and deeply intentional. No one knows how to do this better than we do. 

Clients will need faster, sharper, more original ideas, delivered cost-effectively. But with AI tools flooding the market, sameness is becoming the default. How will brands grow based on templates? They need distinctive IP, bold storytelling, and demand generation strategies rooted in data, insight, and IMC thinking.

Everyone’s chasing fast and cheap at scale, but is it actually moving the needle? Is it making anyone care? 

Let’s be clear: it’s ludicrous to expect generative AI to do all this. So yes, master the new tech stacks— but don’t be defined by them. Embrace AI as a creative multiplier but you still need to crack the idea. Because you’re not just an operator of the machine. You’re the author of meaning and builder of culture. 

Creative and media must ‘think together’

In today’s fragmented media landscape, the convergence of creative and media is no longer optional— it’s mission-critical. With platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and retail media networks hijacking attention economics, campaigns that silo creative from media often suffer from terrible contextual fit, resulting in wasted impressions and lower engagement. 

According to WARC, integrated creative and media strategies deliver up to 2.6x higher ROI compared to disjointed efforts. 

Nielsen reports that creative quality accounts for nearly 50% of campaign effectiveness, but its true impact is only unlocked when aligned with media placement, timing, and audience targeting. 

As brands increasingly demand proof of performance—from ROAS to lower customer acquisition costs—this collaboration ensures that storytelling is not just emotionally resonant but also data-optimised for conversion.

There are entire industries crying out for creativity led solutions. Take healthcare, for instance.

At MLM Vietnam, we saw firsthand how one year of focused, consumer-centric creativity-fuelled medical communications for a major vaccine player leapfrogged several previous years of conventional efforts. This goes to show that categories like fintech, edtech, and healthcare will need more creative solutions.

You might say that some agencies are already doing it and winning. And yes, there are several examples in APAC and globally. They are usually independent, very intentional, agile, deeply entrepreneurial—and they are winning because they are not sitting around listening to the talk.  They aren’t fighting technology. They’re building with it. 

Often clients have fuelled the fragmentation, knowing and unknowingly, perhaps by hiring a new ‘specialist’ for every micro channel and trend, hoping more partners would mean better outcomes. Of course, there are exceptions. 

But in reality, it has led to messaging mess, clumsy execution and weaker brand cohesion or just plain media burn—matched only by a race to the bottom on fees and timelines. If clients want better ideas with better cohesion, they need to stop fragmenting ownership and start backing agencies properly—with the right mandates and the right remuneration. 

This industry’s future belongs to those who show up with intent, team up with the right partners, and lead with bold ideas. The mission never changed—only the tools did. So let’s get back to building.