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The 2025 State of Creativity Report
Brands are facing a culture lag.
According to the 2025 State of Creativity Report, only 13% or brands feel confident in their insight development, and just 12% rate their cultural agility as excellent.
This breakdown is undermining creative confidence and slowing brands down when they should be stepping up.
So, what’s holding brands back?
- Slow approval processes (40%)
- Limited resources and investment (32%)
- Misaligned insights and brand vision (9%)
Sound familiar? Here’s how we can respond.
- Sharpen your insights. Start by getting better at spotting what qualifies as a strong insight. Dig deeper in your research, collaborate across teams, and look for patterns in culture and behavior that can unlock original creative angles.
- Be ready, not just aware.Advocate for faster sign-offs and clearer guardrails so you can jump on the right moments while they’re still relevant. Know which conversations your brand has permission to join and where it should lead.
- Build creative confidence.Push yourself and your team to experiment more. As you get better at reading the room and making faster calls, your confidence builds, and so does the work. That’s when big ideas start to land.
Dig into the full report by Lions.
Smash or Pass 👍/👎
Tools
TextRanch
Speaking of creativity, here’s palate cleaner: a completely AI-free tool.
Get your copy proofread by real human editors from TextRanch. For real.
Send them a short email or a massive proposal and they’ll edit for grammar, tone, and clarity.
It’s fast (by human standards), it’s easy, and it doesn’t require a subscription.
You just send in your text, and they send back a cleaner, clearer version. Like is 1999.
Watch
Can’t Take Her Spot-Spot-Spot 👏
Nike and Malia Obama just dropped an unbelievable tribute to Black girlhood.
The “One of A’Kind” spot supports WNBA icon A’ja Wilson’s debut “A’One” sneaker.
What’s extraordinary about this campaign is how secondary the shoes are to a simple series of emotionally resonate vignettes—from double dutch and majorette dancing to church traditions and playground songs.
The creative team did their homework. With nods to Wilson’s South Carolina roots, the ad includes cameos by her parents and former coach Dawn Staley and dancers from her hometown HBCU. They even filmed inside the family church.
It’s a collective story about what it is to be a Black girl, what it feels like to be mentored and celebrated by your community, and what it means to have a role model as powerful as A’ja Wilson.
Malia Obama knows something about powerful role models, and it shows. We can’t wait to see more from her.
