When brands stop interrupting and start belonging: Serviceplan Korea’s Julie Kang on why humanity must always (and should forever) lead

If there’s one shift defining creativity right now, it’s that brands have stopped trying to interrupt our lives and started trying to belong in them. 

That’s how Julie Kang, Chief Executive Officer of Serviceplan Korea, distills what she witnessed across Entertainment, Media, and PR at ADFEST 2026 as a Jury President — and it’s a fundamental change rooted in what the festival calls “Human+”: the idea that true value comes when we put people first.

Julie Kang at the ADFEST 2026 Lotus Awards Press Conference

“Brands are no longer ‘interrupting’ our lives; they are becoming part of our culture,” Kang tells adobo Magazine in an exclusive interview. “The true winners moved beyond simply responding to trends and were ideas designed to deeply ‘belong’ within a culture.”

This isn’t just wordplay. The difference between a brand that follows culture and one that shapes it is the difference between a guest and a member of the club. “We saw a significant shift where brands stopped acting like ‘owners’ of the conversation and started acting like ‘members’ of the community,” Kang explains.

When a brand shows up as a member rather than a boss, everything changes. Take BLKJ Havas’ Grande-winning campaign “One Noodle” for Haraku Ramen — a 3.5-meter single noodle designed to solve a real problem gamers face: eating without making a mess while playing. According to Kang, it’s not about selling ramen; it’s about truly understanding what people need and becoming useful in their actual lives. 

Or consider 22 Feet Tribal WW and DDB Mudra’s “The Great In-Game Wedding,” which turned a gaming platform into a real space for human connections, breaking down the stigma around gaming. 

Julie points out that these aren’t brands showing up to sponsor culture, but to actually build it alongside the people who live in it.

However, Julie says that there’s a catch: this kind of genuine belonging requires brands to give up control. 

“Brands are becoming credible storytellers when they have the courage to relinquish ‘polished’ perfection and creative control to earn real ‘talkability,'” Kang notes, adding that control is what kills trust. 

Leo Manila and BBH Singapore’s “Gamifries” campaign for McDonald’s perfectly strikes the balance — they launched without their logo, letting the gaming community discover it first and claim it as their own. 

Kang adds, “They [gaming community] gained an authentic level of trust that no polished corporate message could ever buy.”

This is the shift from brands telling stories to brands living alongside people. When companies listen to what communities actually want instead of pushing their own message, they stop borrowing credibility and start genuinely earning it.

Why human creativity is now the real advantage

Kang, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Flux AI Asia, believes we need to go back to basics when we talk about creative excellence. 

“In the past, we focused heavily on ‘what’ we were making and ‘how’ to make it, but in the age of AI and data, Creative Excellence is about returning to the core essence of ‘why’ we create,” she says.

The real difference comes down to human imagination – the one thing machines simply can’t do. She ran an experiment at her agency using the opening lines from Albert Camus’s The Stranger – “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure” – asking them what they think about those words when they read or hear them. 

Julie Kang sits down with adobo Magazine for an exclusive interview at Pattaya, Thailand

When an AI engine processed those words, it produced something obvious and predictable — a woman lying on a bed. But her team’s imagination painted different pictures. One person saw a coffin floating above a church steeple in a French village. Another pictured a man walking barefoot across a desert in pain. A third imagined a violent, crashing sea.

“AI provides the statistical average, but the ‘difference’ created by unique human vision is what defines excellence today,” Kang declares.

This is why the biggest mistake a young creative can make is treating AI like it has all the answers. “Because AI calculates probabilities to suggest the most plausible average, relying on it too heavily stifles the very ‘strategic foolishness’ and ‘illogical intuition’ that lead to true breakthrough and creative magic,” Kang warns.

In a world where AI can do routine work at scale, human imagination — the ability to think sideways, to break logic, to dream — becomes more valuable, not less. 

Building a future where humanity leads

adobo Magazine, in its 20th year, envisions a future that is creative. For someone who has been a seasoned creative and industry leader in Asia, I asked Kang to paint a picture of what a creative future looks like for her.

She stops a beat and conjures a striking vision: a world where deep, meaningful storytelling and useful technology work together — and where human creativity shines even brighter precisely because so much generic, automated content exists.

“The creative future will be a fusion of ‘deep narrative’ and technological utility, where human imagination and human-centricity stand out even more amidst the flood of automated content,” she says. “It will be a future where technology is used as a tool to touch human emotions, much like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Shot on iPhone’ project, ensuring that the human touch remains at the core of every innovation.”

But here’s the problem: the industry itself is breaking. Kang sees creators being squeezed by falling budgets, fierce price competition, and an overwhelming workload that drains the creative spirit.

“We must move away from a race to the bottom and instead provide an abundant environment where creators can focus purely on their creativity,” she insists.

This suggests a shift in how agencies think. Instead of just executing campaigns, they need to design systems that solve real human problems. It means leaders need to protect the illogical, playful thinking that leads to breakthrough ideas. And it means staying true to being what Kang calls “Dream-makers who use technology to make human dreams a reality, rather than just using it to create something ‘cool’ or polished.”

L-R (Geeth Rathi, Jim Ingram, Ajay Vikram, Yasuharu Sasaki, Julie Kang, Michael Ahmadzadeh, Theresa Ong)

As AI becomes more powerful, the gap between forgettable and meaningful will only grow wider. The brands and creators who truly belong in culture won’t be those with the fanciest tools. They’ll be the ones with the deepest understanding of people — their struggles, their dreams, their lives.

READ MORE:

adobo Magazine enters its 20th year with a clear truth: the future is creative

Serviceplan Korea’s Julie Kang on the art of crafting a winning Cannes Lions entry

See the ADFEST 2026 Grande Lotus winners

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