WPPed Cream '15 awards

Every year, a few million more words seem to be written on the subject of creativity - and still creativity defies analysis. No definition of creativity has yet to be universally accepted - and nor will one ever be. The frustrating, intriguing truth about creativity is this: it can be recognised and celebrated only through the individual artefacts that creativity makes possible. We may appreciate a thousand different examples of creativity – yet be totally unable to work out what they have in common.

Those of us in the field of marketing communications work to an additional discipline. The only creativity of value to our clients is applied creativity. Nothing we invent on behalf of our clients is an end in itself. Everything we do is done for a purpose; to achieve an agreed and often measurable objective. 

I hope that the examples of our work seen here will give you immediate pleasure; that you’ll find they look and feel ‘creative’. But I also ask you to look below the surface and detect their utterly functional purpose – because they’re all impressive examples of creativity made to work. 

For the fifth consecutive year, WPP companies have been named the most creative at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. 

They are: and I’m intensely proud of them.