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:
- No one agrees on what a “good insight” actually is.
29% of agencies said the core problem is not knowing how to define it. - Insight development isn’t prioritized.
It’s not funded. It’s not briefed. It’s not protected.
(But production timelines? Always urgent.) - 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.
