Leaving my third Cannes Lions this year, I felt a quiet confidence settle into the industry. Marketing seems to have outgrown its awkward teens, when every shiny platform sent us sprinting in twenty directions and is entering early adulthood. We are rediscovering the craft’s core truth: brands grow when values, creativity and commercial rigour work as one.
For Asia, where many markets are still scaling at double-digit speed, taking note of this evolution matters. The region’s marketers have always executed fast; now we must add patience, purpose and pricing power to the mix.
Five shifts from Cannes that signal marketing’s coming-of-age
1. Soul is back — and it compounds
Apple’s opening keynote reminded us that people “buy because they feel.” Purpose-laden Grand Prix winners such as Vaseline Verified for Unilever (Cannes Lions Health & Wellness Grand Prix, 2025) prove that commercial results follow emotional impact. System1’s latest “compound creativity” study shows that brands which remain meaningfully consistent out-earn their peers over time. For example, e.l.f. Beauty’s twenty-five straight quarters of growth and Xiaomi’s ongoing premiumisation journey confirm the link between purpose and pricing power.
2. The CMO graduates to growth diplomat
Conversations no longer revolve around “earning a seat at the table”. They assume it. Today’s successful CMO speaks board-level finance, wields zero-party data and still defends distinctive brand assets. Marketing leaders like Apple’s Tor Myhren and e.l.f.’s Kory Marchisotto demonstrate that bravery, curiosity and empathy are now prerequisites for growth, not soft add-ons.
3. AI becomes the enabler, not the driver
Generative AI saturated the beaches again this year, yet the most valuable sessions treated it as an accelerant, not a destination. According to recent research from the WFA, three in four global marketers already deploy GenAI for content and ideation, but the best outcomes appear when humans reserve their energy for story, insight and cultural nuance. My advice here is stick with three enablement rules:
1. Automate what doesn’t differentiate.
2. Codify guardrails so speed never outruns integrity.
3. Reinvest saved hours into bigger, braver thinking.
4. Cultural fluency replaces localisation
Asia’s 'next-billion' consumer forum hammered home a simple truth: you must earn cultural permission before you earn share of wallet. Brands such as Johnnie Walker (in its China reincarnation) thrive because they move from translation to participation-building communities, not just campaigns. Map your priority markets, identify the community gatekeepers and meet them before you brief media.
5. Trust is a multi-stakeholder sport
Against a backdrop of geopolitical tension and rising scepticism, Sir John Hegarty’s reminder rang loud: “Money has a voice, but it doesn’t have soul.” Boards now expect marketing to manage reputational equity as deliberately as demand generation. Track the gap between those who say your brand adds value to society and those who say it detracts; close it quarter by quarter. Creativity, applied responsibly, remains our best trust-building tool.
Three calls to action for Asia’s brand builders
1. Audit. Summarise your brand’s human purpose in a single sentence; if you can’t, neither can your customer.
2. Measure. Prove pricing power with brand science while performance dashboards optimise weekly conversion.
3. Invest. Upskill teams in anthropology as enthusiastically as in analytics; bring the inside-out voices of employees to the fore.
Final thought
David Ogilvy reputedly once said advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. Cannes 2025 reminded me that remarkability isn’t an algorithm; it’s a choice to lead with soul, prove with science and connect through culture.
Marketing is indeed growing up. For Asia’s practitioners, stewards of some of the world’s fastest-rising brands, that adulthood offers a chance to build businesses that last and move people.
Long live the brand.
Siew Ting Foo is a transformation growth leader and author of Building Brands with Soul, a blueprint for turning trust into pricing power. She is the former APAC CMO as well as global chief brand officer and head of Insights at HP.
