As brands navigate an increasingly complex and changing world, how can they create value beyond the marketplace? From sustainability and social inequality to public safety and environmental challenges, everyday problems societies face call for solutions beyond conventional marketing.
For Thomas Hongtack Kim, Partner & Chief Creative Officer of Paulus Seoul, the answer lies in the intersection of technology, creativity, and deeply explored human insight.
Speaking at DigiCon 2026, Thomas presented “From Insight to Impact: When Human Insight Ignites Creative Impact,” drawing on his experience developing creative solutions for sustainability and social impact. Through projects spanning charitable action, refugee visibility, construction safety, and environmental sustainability, he illustrated how brands can move beyond traditional communications to address real human needs.
“My approach has always been to combine technology and creativity grounded in deeply explored insights,” he said.
His central argument: creativity becomes more powerful when it is grounded in an understanding of the people affected by a problem and can transform insights into solutions that can make a tangible difference.
Moving beyond traditional branding
During his keynote, Thomas examined the expectations of brands as sustainability becomes increasingly important in business and society. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Creating Shared Value (CSV), and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become familiar frameworks, but their significance ultimately depends on the action they inspire.
“Brands need to take action to address these challenges,” he said, framing this responsibility within the context of what he described as “an era of brand activism and branded solutions for sustainability.”
For him, brands can no longer solely rely on communicating their values. They must find ways to help address social and environmental challenges through solutions that align their capabilities with the needs of the communities they serve. His approach links technology and creativity, using human insight as the foundation for ideas that respond to real-world problems. Rather than treating purpose as a message added to a campaign, this approach places the problem at the center of the creative process.
One of Thomas’s examples was “Barcode Drop,” a campaign developed for Minewater bottled water that addressed a familiar challenge in charitable giving. Although many people express willingness to donate, far fewer follow through with action.
The campaign identified a gap between people’s intentions and their behavior. Instead of asking consumers to exert additional effort to support a cause, the team looked for a way to integrate giving into an activity they were already doing.
The result was a water bottle with two barcodes, with the additional barcode enabling consumers to help provide clean drinking water to children in Africa simply by scanning it in-store.
According to campaign-related figures presented during Thomas’ talk, 51% of consumers participated in the initiative within its first two weeks, while sales volume increased by 244%.
Explaining the insight behind the idea, Thomas said, “We found that people are always good but lazy.”
His observation informed the campaign’s central premise: instead of relying on traditional charity appeals, the team made participation easier by incorporating the act of giving into everyday purchases. The project demonstrated how a creative idea could address a social challenge while also generating business results. By reducing the effort required to participate, the campaign turned an ordinary action into an opportunity to support a cause.
For Thomas, the lesson is this: understanding human behavior reveals opportunities traditional approaches overlook. Sometimes, the challenge isn’t convincing people to care, but making it easier for them to act on what they already believe.
Using creative experiences to bring overlooked stories closer
Thomas also explored how creativity can help the audience connect with communities whose experiences are often overlooked.
In one project developed in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Thomas’ team created an exhibition featuring 3D figurines representing refugees. Instead of displaying the figures in a conventional museum setting, the team concealed them within the exhibition space and encouraged visitors to discover the figures for themselves.
Finding a figurine prompted visitors to access videos about the person represented through their mobile phones. The exhibition became an interactive experience that encouraged patrons to engage with individual stories. It attracted over 48,000 visitors in three weeks, with patrons sending messages of encouragement to refugees.
Thomas underscored that the project was rooted in recognizing how easily people can overlook others’ experiences, particularly when those experiences fall outside their immediate surroundings.
“It’s not because they are there, but because we will never care enough about this,” he said, reflecting on the lack of attention given to displaced communities.
The project sought to bridge that distance by making refugee stories more visible and letting visitors encounter the people behind the broader issue.
Another project addressed the experiences of people displaced from their hometowns during the Korean War, many of whom never had the opportunity to return before they died. Since physical visits to their former homes were difficult or impossible, the creative solution explored the possibility of having a virtual journey home.
Using imagery and technology, the project sought to recreate the experience of returning to familiar places, connecting displaced individuals with locations tied to their memories and personal histories.
Both projects illustrated how creative thinking can help make distant or overlooked experiences more tangible. By giving audiences a way to discover, understand, and engage with individual stories, the work moved beyond simply raising awareness and created experiences that invited people to see the human realities behind it.
Turning technology into a tool for inclusion and safety
Beyond storytelling, Thomas presented projects that applied technology to practical challenges, demonstrating how innovation becomes more meaningful when it responds to the realities of its intended users.
One example was “Shared Safety,” a project developed to improve communication and safety at construction sites. Language barriers can make it difficult for migrant workers to understand potential hazards and follow safety instructions, creating risks for workers and site managers alike.
The project uses digital twin technology to help managers identify risks, update site information, and communicate warnings in real time. Connected devices worn by workers let them receive alerts about potential dangers, helping close communication gaps that could otherwise put lives at risk.
Thomas explained that the solution did not rely on translating every instruction into multiple languages. Instead, it used technology to communicate information visually and make safety alerts more accessible.
“As you see, we didn’t use the global languages; we use non-global languages,” he said, implying that the system helps workers and managers respond to shared information despite language differences.
The project demonstrates how technology can support inclusion when designed around the realities of its intended users, rather than requiring people to adapt to systems that may not accommodate them.
Kim also presented “Nano Cooling Film,” a transparent cooling technology designed to reduce vehicle interior temperatures and lessen the need for air conditioning. The initiative explored how passive cooling could help address rising temperatures and vehicle emissions.
The film uses multiple layers to manage heat while remaining transparent, offering an alternative in Pakistan, where conventional window tinting is prohibited. According to the figures presented during the talk, the technology could reduce interior temperatures by up to 20 degrees Celsius.
Another case, “Vision Pulse,” tackled school-zone traffic safety by addressing the limitations of existing systems in detecting children hidden behind obstacles.
Using ultra-wideband technology, the system allows tags carried by children to communicate with devices installed on buses, providing drivers with information about children’s locations and distances. The technology was designed to help drivers identify potential dangers before an accident occurs.
Across these projects, Thomas demonstrated how technology can become a vehicle for human-centered solutions. Its value does not rest solely on technical sophistication, but on its ability to address a specific problem in ways existing approaches may not.
Rethinking what brands should stand for
Meanwhile, drawing on his experience as a creative leader and juror at international award shows including Cannes Lions and The One Show, Thomas connected his case studies to a broader shift in the creative industry.
The growing recognition of sustainability-focused work through dedicated award categories reflects an increasing interest in ideas that deliver more than communication value. These initiatives demonstrate how creative thinking can address social and environmental challenges while creating meaningful outcomes for businesses and communities.
Thomas then noted that this shift also calls for a different understanding of branding. Traditionally, brands have been defined by product quality, design, and price. While these attributes remain important, he argued they no longer define what a brand can contribute.
“Brands can no longer take a neutral stance on social and environmental issues,” Thomas said.
This means moving beyond communicating what a product offers toward identifying how a brand’s capabilities can help address challenges beyond its immediate commercial interests.
The distinction is particularly important in a landscape where consumers encounter countless brand claims. A meaningful commitment becomes more credible when people can experience its value and see how it addresses a real need.
“This is a new way of marketing. This is the new way of branding.”
When human insight becomes the starting point for impact
Across the projects he presented at DigiCon 2026, Thomas returned to a consistent principle: how meaningful creative solutions begin with understanding people.
Whether making charitable giving more accessible, bringing visibility to displaced communities, improving construction-site safety, or developing technology to protect children, each initiative began with a problem that required a different way of thinking. The solutions emerged not from technology or creativity in isolation, but from combining both with a deeper understanding of human behavior and lived experience.
Thomas also emphasized that increasingly complex social challenges cannot always be addressed through familiar methods alone. “We cannot solve the problem using old way and established solution,” he said. “So we need creativity.”
For brands, this presents an opportunity to reconsider the role of creative work. Campaigns can capture attention and communicate a message, but they can also change how people participate, improve access to essential information, and help address challenges that affect everyday life.
adobo Magazine is the official media partner of DigiCon 2026.
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