WFA partners with LIONS on global study to explore the future of creativity

WFA is partnering with LIONS to explore where senior brand marketers think creativity will come from in the future, and the role of AI in the creative mix.

Clients and Creativity 2026 will ask senior brand marketers from across the WFA’s membership of multinational companies for their take on creativity and how it will evolve in a tech-driven age.

The research is timely given the growing role of AI and tech in developing creative and the increasingly compelling business case that creative excellence can help brands in delivering on growth objectives.

Both WFA and LIONS will be encouraging all brand-side leaders to complete a short, five minute survey to ensure that the results are as representative as possible.

Previous WFA research, conducted alongside LIONS’ brand Contagious and Observatory International in 2022, showed that 82% of multinationals thought creativity was marketing’s super-power and 28% regarded it as business critical, with a further 43% calling it extremely important.

The results will be published in early June ahead of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in order to feed into conversations in Cannes where much of the discussion will inevitably centre on the role that AI can play in helping to drive greater creativity.

The results of Clients and Creativity 2026 will be part of a wider push to promote the power of creativity to brand owners at this year’s Festival. Earlier this year Cannes Lions launched the Creative Brand Lion to celebrate the brands putting creativity at the top of the agenda. The new award will recognise the organisations building systems for sustained results-driven creative marketing. The inaugural Jury President will be Marcel Marcondes, Global Chief Marketing Officer, AB InBev, winner of the WFA’s Global Marketer of the Year in 2024. 

“We’re delighted to be working with LIONS to explore the importance that major global and regional brands are putting on creativity and how it fits into their capability building strategy in the years to come. With so much debate about the role of AI, we are keen to get a senior client view of what the key ingredients will be in the future to delivering creative excellence that can drive demonstrable growth,” said Stephan Loerke, CEO of the WFA.

Simon Cook, CEO, LIONS, said: “Cannes Lions is introducing the Creative Brand Lion to recognise the systems, cultures and capabilities of brands that make world-class work and sustained business growth inevitable. Alongside this new benchmark, we’re pleased to partner with the WFA on this research. Client-side insight will continue to play a critical role in providing a temperature check on leading brands and the evolving relationship between creativity and AI, and we look forward to exploring this in full at the Festival in June.”

Brands seeking to enter this year’s Cannes Lions Awards for the new Creative Brand Lion can do so here.