Wieden+Kennedy’s Karl Lieberman on the state of creativity in 2025

Wieden+Kennedy had a remarkable creative year in 2024, earning Ad Age’s Creative Agency of the Year honor for compelling work with a modern edge for the likes of Nike, McDonald’s and DoorDash. To learn more about its approach, we spoke with Karl Lieberman, W+K’s global chief creative officer, about the state of creativity in 2025—at the agency, in the industry and the world at large. Also read: A-List executives offer advice to their younger selves See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. What excites you most about how creativity is evolving in advertising today? Dan [Wieden] had this notion that great advertising should be like a conversation between two people—a brand and a consumer—and how that one-to-one conversation needed to be personal and interesting enough that other people would actually want to listen in on it. I always loved that. But for a long time that conversation did feel a bit one-sided because the brand was always the one [communicating], whether that was with TV spots or some print ads or radio or whatever. But now, with social and all these other channels we’ve got access to, this whole thing can actually be a lot more like a real, dynamic conversation that can go back and forth in real time. And these conversations can lead to all kinds of really interesting stuff, because oftentimes they become wildly iterative. People turning work into memes. Brands taking those memes and doing something interesting with them. People iterating off of that. It can become a conversation that builds and changes and oftentimes goes to places you had no idea they’d ever go to. And to me that’s what’s super exciting about this business right now. You wake up every day kind of having no idea what’s in front of you creatively. There’s real freedom in that. Is it always awesome for our nights and our weekends? Not really. But I’m not sure if advertising’s ever been great for nights and weekends anyway. What is the appetite for risk-taking among clients these days, and how do you talk to risk-averse clients about the value of creativity? As an agency we’re pretty damn lucky, because I don’t think any client who’s entirely risk-averse would actually be interested in the kind of work we’ve been trying to do over the last 40-plus years. So typically the clients we partner with come in genuinely wanting to do something that’s pretty interesting, but they’re also looking for something that feels really true and right for the brand. When it’s right for the brand and it’s true, it actually shouldn’t feel risky at all. That’s why I always loved that Nike Kaepernick work. That may have seemed risky to some folks, but Nike has always found ways to back their athletes whether that was Tiger [Woods], Charles [Barkley] or Colin Kaepernick. So what may have seemed like a huge risk from the outside was actually what Nike’s done time and time again. What are some ground rules for making sure creativity can thrive in a client-agency relationship? Oh I’d say, just like any relationship, it’s a million things. But probably two of the more important ones would be: Having a clear and shared understanding of what we’re trying to do—what it is we’re actually trying to solve. If that’s muddy, then usually the work’s muddy. And I think the second would be: Honesty. If you can’t be honest about things, then that’s kind of a killer of creativity. You need to be able to say when a brief sucks, or that the work we’re getting to isn’t very interesting, or that the ambition’s all wrong, or whatever. You just need to be able to be honest at all times and never “selling.” When you’re just trying to sell stuff, then you’re dead. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here As budgets get squeezed across the industry, creatives often have to do more with less. How does that affect the creative process or product? How do you keep creatives excited about the business given those pressures? The weird paradox in this is that while budgets can definitely feel squeezed compared to decades prior, creatives are actually making more stuff than ever before. When I started out in advertising, you used to make like, maybe, one or two good things a year if you were lucky. Now a creative can be making one or two good things a week because of all these channels we’re working across. That’s pretty crazy. And sure, they’re not always 90-second-long, multimillion-dollar TV commercials or films or whatever, but they might be an awesome T-shirt that the entire sports world becomes aware of after a championship, or a social post that goes absolutely everywhere, or a packaging design that ends up in every single grocery store in the country. So it’s less about budget and more about: What can we do right this minute? I always loved that Lorne Michaels “Saturday Night Live” quote about how they don’t go on because the show’s ready, they go on because it’s 11:30. I feel like that’s the big shift advertising’s made over the last decade. It’s less about money and timing and perfection and more about figuring out how to create all of these really different things that keep these really interesting dialogues going. What skills do you look for in creatives entering the business today? We’re never really looking to “make the next great ad,” because ads are unfortunately just kind of inherently bad and disliked at this point, so even the best ad—the greatest ad ever made—is still just an ad. So instead of hiring advertising experts, we try to find people who have real relationships with real culture. Folks who can react to culture, comment on culture, feed culture, knock different parts of culture together, question culture, celebrate culture, etc. And not advertising culture, but the culture of sports, entertainment, design, cars, music, comedy, literature, internet, business, etc. Jocks, nerds, artists, sneakerheads, students of film, students of comedy, poets, playwrights, former athletes, former lawyers, former bartenders, current comedians … if you’re part of the real culture that’s happening in the real world, then we’d love for you to be part of Wieden+Kennedy. And once we have these people connected to culture in the building, what we ask of them on a daily basis is pretty simple: Have an opinion. Not just on ads, but on everything. On our brands, on what our brands make, on what’s happening in professional sports or in food or music or in politics or in neighborhoods and cities. Opinions on everything from deodorants, SUVs and cheeseburgers to Olympic athletes, rideshare apps, music playlists, flying cars, puberty, being a mom … everything. I think that’s kind of always been the foundational magic of this place. Real people talking about real things versus ad people talking about advertising. Is AI a creativity killer or a creativity enhancer? What’s the best way to use it positively and productively at this stage? AI in its current iteration? It’s absolutely helpful. Folks are using it for comps, research, ideating, cleaning up copy, etc. I love using it for things like, “Can you find a better adjective than this?” So right now AI’s kind of like everyone’s got access to a bunch of junior teams who don’t know a ton about what it is we’re trying to do, but are handy with computers and are super prolific. At this moment, I’d say AI’s very much a creativity enhancer. Will it be a creativity killer in the future? I have no idea. But I’ve watched “The Terminator” enough times to know that Skynet’s not awesome. I’m actually generally an optimist about this kind of stuff, and when I think of the long history of technology and creativity, I think technology’s been a pretty good thing, whether that’s been the printing press or blue screens or Photoshop or whatever. I hope it continues to be a creativity enhancer, but who knows … There’s that great saying about predictions: “Prediction is very difficult. Especially about the future.” How are creators changing the game? What’s the best way for clients and agencies to think about the value of creators and their role in working with brands today? We talk a lot about using every possible surface area of a brand—from the media they buy to their packaging to their social handles to the in-store experiences, etc., etc., etc. Every surface area can be used to communicate what the brand’s all about and what its POV is on the world. And I think of creators—in a sense—as another awesome surface area/channel to tap. The best ones bring the brand’s voice and its POV to life in really interesting, authentic and surprising ways. So we love working with creators. I think the best thing we can do is give them a really clear understanding of what the brand’s all about and what we’re trying to do with it. Because when a brand’s got as clear of a POV as Nike or McDonald’s, it’s awesome that we can really get out of a creator’s way and let them do their thing in their own authentic voice. What do you hope to see more of creatively in the industry this year? More great work! This business is so much easier in so many ways when there are a lot of great brands and a lot of great agencies out there doing a lot of great work. It’s been a tumultuous time for agencies, so my hope is we continue to power through all that and get back to making amazing things. See all of Ad Age’s 2025 Agency A-List winners here

Wieden+Kennedy’s Karl Lieberman on the state of creativity in 2025

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