You can’t ‘do’ creativity in isolation – it should be embedded as a priority across every part of your business. But to build a truly creative culture, marketers need to show that creativity drives commercial performance.
I’m not going to pretend that we’re not going through tough times. The world is changing, and we’re all feeling the pressure to deliver. Attention has become fragmented, putting media strategies under strain and generative AI has been revolutionary, but it has also eroded trust in businesses, according to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer. In fact, 66% of people are uncomfortable with how companies use GenAI.
If you’re struggling to convince your C-suite that now is the time to double down on creativity, not pull back, you’re not alone.
At Cannes Lions 2025, we hosted the inaugural CEO Forum to make a better case for creativity to the C-suite. During his keynote speech, my colleague Simon Cook, CEO of LIONS said:
“For a long time, creativity was seen as elusive, difficult to measure, easy to undervalue. That perception is no longer accurate. The data has caught up with the instinct and the intent.”
Simon Cook CEO LIONS
The power of creativity
The point Simon was making is that creative excellence can drive commercial growth. We all know this, of course. We wouldn’t work in marketing if we didn’t believe in the transformative power of creativity but now we have the hard evidence to support this belief.
This year, we asked global brand consultancy Interbrand, which publishes an annual list of the Best Global Brands, if a correlation could be found between companies that put creativity at the heart of their business and commercial impact.
Interbrand independently analysed 50 publicly traded brands and businesses that won the most awards by volume at Cannes Lions from 2020 to 2025. It collected 45,000 data points – BGP data, market data, brand strength scores, price-to-earnings ratios, revenue growth, and more, and it found that companies that emphasised creativity in the past five years, as evidenced by a Lion win, saw a 2.7% uplift in EBIT and a 4.7% uplift in market capitalisation over the 12 months following their win.
This tangible value was seen across sectors from tech (Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google) to the automotive industry (Volvo, Volkswagen, BMW) to streaming media (Netflix, Spotify). It was also across geographic scopes from global conglomerates (Unilever, P&G) to national brands (John Lewis) and it was across all five years – from the pandemic and Black Lives Matter era of 2020 to the post-purpose, GenAI-dominated landscape of 2025.
The takeaway? Award-winning creativity is a serious strategic asset and the brands that understand this are the ones outperforming their competitors.
How do you embed creativity across the business?
I’ve been lucky enough to work for and observe brands that value and prioritise creativity. Aside from a belief in its ability to drive commercial growth, they’ve all had certain behaviours in common. This is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it can serve as a springboard for protecting and igniting creativity in your organisation:
Behaviours of brands that prioritise creativity
Involve everyone
Run brainstorming sessions with colleagues from the finance department, from the sales team, from operations. Promote shared ownership of creativity and how it connects to your core brand proposition and you’ll gain champions across the business.
Measure success
Your C-suite is in constant pursuit of value so agree on what success looks like for your brand and frame creativity around that. Then you’ll be able to show how brand building builds equity.
Be consistent
What matters most to your brand? Keep that at the heart of everything you do. According to a study System1 did with Effie Worldwide, emotional ads that run for over three years see 7.5 times the incremental profit of a quickly abandoned campaign.
Take risks
You’ll need to build trust first, of course but once you’ve got the C-suite on your side, be brave with your creativity and go for ideas that take you out of your comfort zone. Don’t settle for dull. Bold, standout creativity is more likely to engage audiences emotionally. It’s also more likely to win awards and, therefore, as Interbrand’s research found, drive commercial growth.
Authored by Paul Coxhill Chief Operating Officer & President, LIONS and Fellow of The Marketing Society.
