CANNES, FRANCE – While judging the Experience & Activation Lions at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Publicis Groupe Korea Chief Creative Officer SooHee Yang noticed a meaningful evolution in how brands are designing experiences that resonate. This year, the strongest entries weren’t just immersive — they were intentional, marrying purpose with entertainment and proving that emotional connection and measurable impact aren’t mutually exclusive.
Dive into SooHee’s observations on how today’s most compelling brand experiences balance emotional resonance with performance-driven outcomes:
Purposeful entertainment
One clear shift this year was how brands delivered purpose in more entertaining, emotionally resonant ways. It wasn’t just about being meaningful — the most powerful work combined sincerity with fun, creating real-time connections through humor, culture, and creativity.
This balance of purpose and play made brand experiences more engaging, memorable, and human.
Outcomes over visibility
The other observation is that impressions are no longer just about reach or visibility — a supporting layer to the creative idea to prove effectiveness post-launch. What stood out this year was how deliberately brands are designing for outcomes. They are baking impressions into the creative process with attribution, ID-based tracking, and performance-focused KPIs driving the work forward.
Creatives are being challenged to connect brand ideas directly to business outcomes as a foundation, not a follow-up — to win, make sure you build your creative ideas with business outcomes in mind from the very beginning.
About the Writer
Soo Hee is the Chief Creative Officer at Publicis Groupe Korea, where she leads the creative team in developing marketing communications for global clients such as McDonald’s, P&G, Philip Morris, Pfizer, Renault, Samsung, Disney, Crocs, Coca-Cola, Nivea and Cenovis.
With more than 27 years of experience, she offers a powerful mix of insightful creative and strategic integration in brand development. Her creative excellence has earned multiple awards throughout her career.
Notably, her campaigns for McDonald’s have won a Grand Prix and a Bronze at ADFEST 2024, three Silver awards at Spikes Asia 2024, and two Silver awards at ADFEST 2025. In 2024, her McDonald’s campaign was also shortlisted at the Cannes Lions, with further recognition from the New York Festival, Clio Awards, iF Design Awards, The One Show, and Korea Advertising Awards.
Soo Hee is actively involved in the advertising community, contributing as a jury member at various international & local festivals. She has served on juries for the LIA Awards, Korea Advertising Awards, The One Show in 2023, and the Health & Wellness shortlist jury at Cannes Lions 2024. In 2025, she was also named a Grand Jury for the Gerety Awards.