Can advertising still create the future?

The world is moving faster than the business models built to serve it. Climate shocks, new technologies and shifting consumer values are redrawing what growth looks like - and what advertising is really for.

Orange juice, coffee and cocoa have all hit record high prices; everyday luxuries becoming early warning signs of a system under strain. And BYD, once dismissed as a local Chinese upstart, now outsells Tesla worldwide. Meanwhile, the “green economy” is growing ten times faster than the one it’s replacing (10% vs 1%).

These aren’t headlines from the business pages - they’re signals of a new economy taking shape in real time. Supply chains, consumer expectations and whole industries are being rewritten in front of us.

That’s not a sustainability movement.That’s a market and technological shift.

So if everything about the world is being redesigned - how we move, eat, power our homes and even wash our clothes - shouldn’t advertising be redesigning too?

The industry’s superpower hasn’t changed - but its target has

Advertising is brilliant at creating demand. It knows how to make ideas mainstream, how to change habits, how to build meaning around things that didn’t exist yesterday. Those skills are exactly what the next economy needs.

The brief just got bigger. It’s no longer about selling more - it’s about selling differently.

Not growth by extraction, but growth by invention. Growth that creates new markets, new behaviours, new kinds of value, services replacing objects, participation over consumption.

The signs are already here

• Mobility: brands like BYD and EdenLab client The Trainline are redefining how the world moves - from the Chinese EV giant outpacing legacy automakers to the rail platform shifting football fans from cars to trains through passion, price and convenience.
• Energy: Challengers like Good Energy, Octopus and OVO are reshaping the energy market - turning supply into solar and power into empowerment. Energy Independence is becoming the new status symbol.
• Food: Wildfarmed, Bold Beans and Minor Figures are rebuilding food culture from the soil up - brands where better farming, flavour and design go hand in hand.
• Homecare: Smol and Unilever are two ends of the same innovation story - one a challenger rewriting the homecare aisle with concentrated, waste-free design; the other a global giant experimenting with biology and circular systems to rethink everyday products from the inside out.

These aren’t sustainability campaigns. They’re innovation stories - proof that creativity, applied in the right place, doesn’t just communicate change; it creates it.

A bigger, more interesting brief

If advertising built the consumer economy of the last century, it can help build the regenerative one of this century. Not by moralising but by making the right ideas irresistible.

This industry has always shaped desire. Now it has the chance to shape what’s desirable.

The same creative force that made people want a faster car or a shinier phone can make them want a smarter way to travel, eat or power their home. That’s not a smaller brief - it’s the most exciting one yet.

Leo Rayman, Founder and CEO, Eden Lab, will be presenting at the IPA Sustainability Summit 2025 on 25 November, sharing insights on driving sustainable growth in our industry.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.