m25 Global Creative Series with Janath Gamage: “Asia Pacific’s creativity has always been there”
The latest episode of m25’s Global Creative Series catches up with Janath Gamage, Creative Director – Ogilvy SG/WPP@Unilever. Gamage unpacks a vital truth about the fastest-growing advertising region: Asia Pacific’s creativity has always been there. He argues that what is truly ‘rising’ is the world’s ability to finally see its sophisticated craft, which has historically cleared an “unsaid higher bar” against a global creative standard built elsewhere. He breaks down how good ideas remain “medium-fluid” across activations and experiences, and shares his practical, human-first approach to the Algorithmic Era, where AI is a tool to speed up execution, giving him more time to focus on the human craft that truly makes the work feel original.
With global ad spend projected to hit $1.27 trillion in 2026, more than 70% digital brands are moving budgets into activations and experiences. How are you rethinking creativity when campaigns must live both online and in the real world?
Personally for me, it doesn’t really change drastically at all. Everything still stems from the one big idea. It’s social-first, not social-only. And if activation/experience is a bigger ask for the markets, it’s about putting more focus on the translation and amplification of the idea into activation and experience.
Good ideas are medium-fluid. That hasn’t changed and it won’t.
Asia Pacific is becoming the fastest-growing advertising region, how do you see your market shaping global creative standards, and where do you think outsiders still underestimate its sophistication?
The honest answer is that Asia Pacific’s creativity has always been there. What hasn’t kept pace is a lot of other factors, especially to do with presenting it to the world.
The “global” creative standard was largely set by one side of the world, and it shows. The case study format, the English-language presentation, the awards circuit; all of it was built for a specific kind of storytelling. The region doesn’t just have to make great work. It has to make great work, then translate it, then make the translation entertaining enough to compete in a format that wasn’t designed with our cultural complexity in mind. That’s a different game, and a harder one.
Then there’s everything else; the PR infrastructure, the celebrity leverage, the industry press. Markets in this region are competing without a lot of those tailwinds that others take for granted. Especially the smaller markets – I know because I came from one.
Agencies and creatives from this region have still cut through. Have still set standards. Have still won the rooms that weren’t built for them. That deserves much more respect – because they cleared an unsaid higher bar to get there.
So when people say Asia Pacific is “rising”. I’d push back, slightly. The creativity has been here. What’s rising is the world’s ability to see it, it’s a craft and that’s rising. There’s still a lot that goes unaccounted for, unseen, underrated. Not because it isn’t good enough. But because the game itself wasn’t built for it.
The genre of Thai advertising: emotional, deeply human, laced with humour -they didn’t just pioneer, they defined it. It has its own vocabulary, its own rhythm, its own rules. And what’s more impressive is that it keeps evolving with the times.
VML Thailand’s latest micro-drama series for Shield Insurance is a mad good reminder. For a brief that would’ve been a nightmare I feel, the peeps at VML Thailand have pushed the hard sell so far to the extreme it became pure brilliant entertainment. Not in spite of the selling but because of it.
It’s real cultural fluency and you can’t import that.
What role does AI play in your process today, and where do you draw the line between machine efficiency and human imagination?
For conceptualisation: very little. That’s still the most human part of the process and I’d like to keep it that way. Where it helps me is in de-cluttering, taking what’s tangled in my head and making it legible enough to share with a room.
On the execution side, personally, it genuinely changed my workflow. As a starting base in terms of art, it speeds things up significantly, which ironically gives me much more time to craft manually than I ever had before. That’s the part people don’t talk about enough. AI hasn’t replaced the craft. It’s given me more time for it.
Production is still minimal for me. The quality hasn’t reached the level of finesse I need, and honestly, the last thing I want is for our work to look like the AI goop that circulates endlessly online. It’s not unlike bad CGI or heavy-handed Photoshop -when it’s off, everyone can tell. They might not know why. But they can tell.
So the line for me isn’t philosophical. It’s practical. Use it where it genuinely serves the idea. Don’t let it anywhere near the parts that make the work feel human.
I was researching traditional masks in Sri Lanka for an idea and asked AI to go deeper.
It told me about a village, a festival, and thousands of attendees. Confident, but completely made up.
When I called it out, it apologised and moved on like a politician.
Lesson learned!
With new pathways into advertising, how do you mentor young talent differently today compared to five years ago?
Go harder than ever. That’s what I’d tell them.
The tools at their disposal today have made it more convenient than ever to show what they’re truly creatively capable of. That’s not a threat to creativity, that’s an invitation to think bigger. Embrace it. Celebrate it BUT, do it smartly.
The tools are evolving so fast. The worst thing a young creative can do right now is slow down waiting to see where it all lands. You don’t get left behind by the tools. You get left behind by hesitation.
Looking toward 2030, what bold prediction would you make about how advertising will look and what legacy do you hope your campaigns leave for both brands and culture?
Honestly? I’m not sure anyone who tells you they know exactly what 2030 looks like is being straight with you.
What I do believe is that advertising won’t die. It’ll transform. Whether it resembles anything close to the shape and form of what we’ve known -I genuinely don’t know.
It’s similar to something the character Ian Malcolm spoke about throughout Jurassic Park (the book, not really in the film), so to sum it up: The planet will be fine. We might not be. The arrogance is in thinking we’re a threat to the Earth itself, when really we’re only ever a threat to the conditions that keep us alive. Earth has outlasted asteroid impacts, ice ages, mass extinctions. It’s not sweating over us.
‘Creativity’ will survive, just like the Earth, but as for us, the industry, only time will tell.
As for legacy, I’d want the work to have meant something beyond just a brief. To have moved something. Changed something. Even slightly. That the campaigns I’m most proud of didn’t just sell. They did something in the world, even in the smallest way. That’s the only bar worth measuring against.I’ll drink to that.
If you could retire one industry cliché forever, what would it be?
“Make it viral.”
Retire it. Bury it. Never speak of it again.
Read previous episodes of m25’s Global Creative Series below:
Episode 5: Thomas Hongtack Kim, CCO of Paulus and Founder of 2kg
Episode 4: Roman Carlo Olivarez, Executive Creative Director of TREYNA Group
Episode 3: Vidya Manmohan, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of V4GOOD
Episode 2: Jody Xiong, Founder, Director and CCO of The Nine Shanghai
Episode 1: Youji Noh, Executive Creative Director of TBWA\Media Arts Lab Seoul