Swarangi Joshi’s Creative LIAisons Wrap Up: What Happens in Vegas Won’t Stay in Vegas

Swarangi Joshi, Group Head (Copy) at Enormous Mumbai, was one of the near 130 talented young creatives, selected from around the globe, to attend the LIA Creative LIAisons training program that runs concurrently with the LIA judging week at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas. Here Joshi wraps up her learnings from the week.

I came to Vegas thinking I was going to learn from some of the best people in advertising, meet creatives from around the world and hopefully go back with a few new perspectives.

What I didn’t really think about was what happens after.

There were 128 of us in that room, from different countries, agencies, cultures and stages of our careers. For five days, we listened, questioned, argued, judged work, met people we had only seen through case studies and filled our heads with things to think about.

And then we all go back.

Back to Mumbai, Paris, Italy, Brazil, New York, Seoul and everywhere else. Back to our agencies, our teams, our desks and the people we work with every day.

Someone tells their team about something they heard in a session. Someone looks at a brief differently. Someone argues for an idea a little harder. Someone starts using AI differently. Someone asks a client a better question.

And suddenly, what happened in Vegas isn’t really staying in Vegas anymore.

That, for me, is what made Creative LIAisons feel bigger than just a five-day programme.

I expected the sessions to be good. I expected to meet interesting people. What I didn’t expect was how much of the content would actually stay with me.

These weren’t people coming in and talking for the sake of giving a lecture. There was real material to take away, whether it was conversations around AI, craft, clients, creativity or simply how we think about the work we make. There were quite a few moments where I found myself thinking, “I’ve never looked at it that way.”

And that is probably one of the best things you can ask for from a week like this.

One of the biggest highlights for me was sitting at the back of the actual LIA Statue jury room and watching the work being judged in real time.

You see people challenge each other, defend a piece, question the thinking behind it and really get into why something deserves to move forward. You realise that judging great work isn’t simply about whether you like it. It’s about the thinking, the problem it solved, the strength of the idea and whether it has something that makes it stand out.

Everyone has an opinion. Sometimes those opinions are completely different. And that’s not a bad thing.

We got to experience that ourselves in a mock jury session led by Marco Venturelli. We were given cases, asked to judge them ourselves and then compare our thinking with everyone else’s.

That was one of the most useful things for me. You don’t have to agree with someone’s point of view to learn from it. It also forces you to think quickly. You have to form a point of view, know why you have it and be able to articulate it, instead of sitting with an idea for half an hour.

But probably one of the most inspiring parts of LIAisons was meeting the people behind the work.

Normally, we sit at our desks, open a case study and think, “Wow, that’s crazy. How did they come up with this?”

At LIAisons, you could actually meet the person who made it and ask them.

It was almost like you’ve seen the babies, now you meet the mother.

And hearing people talk about their work, the process behind it and why they cared about it was infectious. There was so much love for advertising in that room.

I think you need that. You need to love the work you make. You need to care about the craft. You need to be around people who care about it too.

Meeting creatives from different parts of the world also made me realise how similar we are, despite coming from completely different markets.

We all have questions about clients, ideas, strategy, getting better and figuring out where our careers are going.

The accents change. The markets change. The culture changes.

But the questions are similar.

There were also conversations that made me think about creativity outside the obvious definition of the job. The importance of trying things outside advertising, doing things you’re not necessarily good at and building a life that gives you more experiences to bring back into your work.

You often see those experiences reflected in the ideas, films and creative work we make.

One conversation around work-life balance particularly stayed with me. The thought was that if you want to be a good creative, you need balance. But if you want to be a great creative, there may not always be such a clean line between work and life.

Though controversial for some, that thought really resonated with me.

Not because I think working all the time is healthy. I don’t. But because I’ve never really seen creativity as something that belongs only to the hours between 9 and 5.

Life feeds the work.

AI was another big conversation.

I came away thinking about it much more simply: as a tool.

It can take care of some of the more repetitive or time-consuming parts of the job and give us more space to actually think, write and create. You can almost treat it like having a huge team of interns working with you.

But there’s an important distinction for me.

AI can work with what already exists. It can recognise patterns in the references that are already out there.

We’re the ones creating new references.

AI follows patterns. We make patterns.

Another thing I came back thinking about was the way we look at clients.

When you’re growing in this business, it’s very easy to think, “The client just doesn’t want to approve my idea.”

But there are ten other things happening on their side that we don’t see. They’re not necessarily against the idea. They’re trying to make it work too.

So the question shouldn’t only be, “Is this a great creative idea?”

It should also be, “Is this good for the client’s business?”

Because if you can make those two things work together, you’re not fighting each other anymore. You’re on the same team.

A lot of the advice across the week came back to something quite simple: keep going.

Be a pain in the a**. Keep asking questions. Keep pushing.

A “no” doesn’t always have to be a rejection. Sometimes it’s just a detour.

Be a problem solver, not a cribber.

If I had to give one piece of advice to anyone going to LIAisons next year, I’d say go in like a dry sponge.

Attend everything, even the session you think you’re not interested in. Ask questions. Put your hand up. Talk to people. Say hello.

Because the more people you meet and the more perspectives you hear, the more you realise how much there is still to learn.

And then you go home.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

Because 128 people experiencing something is one thing.

128 people taking those experiences back to their teams, agencies, friends, cities and countries is something else entirely.

Maybe someone will change the way they work with their team. Maybe someone will make a better brief. Maybe someone will push an idea they would have otherwise given up on. Maybe someone will pass on something they heard to a creative who wasn’t even in the room.

And maybe that creative will pass it on again.

That’s how an experience becomes bigger than the people who experienced it.

I came to LIAisons to learn from people whose work I’d admired from a distance.

I left realising that the best thing about the work isn’t just the idea you see at the end. It’s the people behind it. The arguments. The questions. The failures. The ridiculous amount of persistence. The fact that someone cared enough to keep pushing until it became something worth showing.

I think that’s what I want to take back with me.

Keep asking. Keep making. Keep pushing. And, somewhere in all of it, keep loving the work.

And hopefully, that’s the part of Vegas that doesn’t stay in Vegas.

Check out more 2026 LIAisons reflections below:

Swarangi Joshi, Group Head (Copy) at Enormous Mumbai.
Kristian Pineda, Copywriter at BLKJ Havas Singapore.
Ata Zhao, Creative Director at TBWA\Shanghai.
Seth Low, Senior Creative at McCANN Singapore.
Malik Bernardo, Associate Creative Director at Dentsu Creative Philippines.
Soham Ghosh, Creative Director at Ogilvy Gurgaon.