As part of an interview series in collaboration with ONE Asia, we’re speaking with independent agencies across the region about their local markets, how they are building their agencies, and the role independents play within the wider creative industry.
Next up, we speak with Adams Fan, Founder & Chief Creative Officer of F5 Shanghai. Before F5, Fan held senior creative roles at DDB Shanghai, Ogilvy Shanghai, and Leagas Delaney.
Over the course of our conversation, Fan discusses the advantages and challenges of independence in China and how technology is changing that equation for smaller agencies. He also talks about the McDonald’s ad that stayed with him as a young creative, the organ donation film he is most proud of, and why taste matters as AI makes creative production more accessible. He closes with his advice for anyone building an independent agency in China today.
Before founding F5 in 2016, you worked at network agencies including DDB and Ogilvy. After a decade at F5, what have you learned about the advantages and challenges of independence?
The facts probably tell the story better than I can.
Over the past decade, F5 has become one of the most recognized Chinese independent agencies at Cannes Lions. We have won four Lions and received eight shortlists. I have also had the opportunity to serve as a Cannes Lions juror twice and speak at the festival four times. I had also judged and won at One Show as well.
I am quite sure that if I had stayed inside a large network in China, many of these things would never have happened.
Why? Because independence gives you permission to be a little crazy.
You can move faster. You can take risks. You can say yes to an idea before you have figured out every detail. There are fewer layers between the creative instinct and the final decision. For a creative person, that freedom is incredibly valuable.
The other big advantage is that independence allowed us to follow where the Chinese market was actually going.
Global agencies in China were largely built to help international brands grow in China. But over the past few years, the direction has started to reverse. Chinese companies such as BYD, DJI, Lenovo and Midea are going global, and they need creative partners who understand China but can also communicate internationally.
That has become a very natural sweet spot for us. We had been supporting the international expansion of Chinese brands, including Midea, Lenovo, Bedsure, XREAL and LingoAce.
Independence gives you permission to be a little crazy.
We are now listed as a “Professional Service Provider for Shanghai Companies Going Global” by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.
Of course, independence also comes with real challenges. We do not have a global office network behind us. We do not have unlimited capital. And building a deep talent pool is always difficult for an independent agency.
But interestingly, technology is changing that equation. AI is helping smaller agencies access capabilities that once required much larger teams and resources. That is one reason F5 has evolved into a fully AI driven agency.
Independence is not about being small. It is about staying free enough to move before everyone else does.
F5 brings the idea of “refresh” to marketing by “refreshing ideas, perspectives and possibilities.” Can you talk more about that philosophy and how it shapes your creative approach to the work?
China is already the world’s second largest economy, but I still think Chinese advertising has much more room to grow in terms of global creative influence. That gap is one of the reasons we started F5.
For us, “refresh” means refusing to accept the obvious answer. Sometimes that means challenging the brief itself.
Pfizer’s Mozart 80 project is a good example. The original brief was quite straightforward. They wanted us to make a film for campus recruitment.
We looked at the budget and told the client very directly that a conventional commercial probably would not work. We did not have the budget for a good director, celebrities or a massive media push. In today’s extremely fragmented media environment, making an ordinary recruitment film would probably mean spending the money and leaving very little behind.
So instead of answering the brief, we refreshed it. We proposed dropping the commercial entirely and turning the budget into a technology driven experience.
The objective did not change. The route did.
Fortunately, Pfizer was brave enough to go with us, and the result proved the value of that decision. The idea generated far more attention and conversation than a conventional recruitment ad could have achieved with the same investment.
That, to me, is what “refresh” really means. It is not about being different for the sake of being different. It is about finding a new path that makes the client’s investment work much harder.
How would you describe China’s independent agency scene today, and what excites you about the creativity coming out of it?
China’s huge market gives independent agencies enough space to survive, experiment and grow. China also has an incredibly large and diverse indie scene.
From my observation, a significant share of the most interesting creative work in China today is coming from independents. Boutiques like F5 have also contributed many impactful and award-winning ideas. One reason is the people behind them. Many indie founders are also the creative leaders of their agencies. They are often the kind of people who are willing to take risks, challenge conventions and try things that larger organizations may hesitate to do.
What excites me most is that technology is making independence even more accessible. Tools like Codex, Claude Code, and other AI agents are making the idea of an OPC, a one-person company, much more realistic. Work that once required a team of ten people may soon be possible with two or three, or even one very capable person supported by AI.
What excites me most is that technology is making independence even more accessible.
That means the barrier to starting an agency is becoming much lower. A single person or a small group may increasingly be able to compete with much larger traditional network agencies.
And the more independent people we have, the more people we have who are willing to break the rules.
When you were starting out as a young creative, were there particular campaigns that changed the way you thought about advertising or what was creatively possible? (Please share links where possible.)
One ad that really stayed with me was McDonald’s “Swing Baby.”
I first saw it on Hong Kong television in the late 1990s, when I was still very young. I grew up in Guangdong, close to Hong Kong, so Hong Kong television and advertising had a big influence on me.
The idea was incredibly simple. A baby is sitting in a swing. Every time she swings forward and sees the McDonald’s Golden Arches through the window, she smiles. When she swings back and the sign disappears, she starts to cry. That is basically the whole commercial.
But I remember thinking, wow, advertising can be this simple and still be so powerful.
That had a big impact on me because culturally, we Chinese often prefer more rather than less. Clients may want to communicate five product benefits, three reasons to believe and a promotion, all in the same commercial.
“Swing Baby” taught me the opposite. Sometimes one very simple idea can say much more than ten messages.
When we are working on a brief at F5, I still ask myself: can we remove something? Can the idea become simpler, sharper and easier to remember?
Looking back at F5’s work over the years, is there a particular project you’re especially proud of, and what made it stand out for you?
The project I am probably most proud of is a public service film called “Crying Baby.”
It was created for organ donation in China. At the time, the gap between patients waiting for organs and available donors was enormous. In 2016, China’s organ donation rate was only 2.98 donors per million people, although it had already grown significantly from 0.03 per million in 2010. About 13,000 organ transplants were performed that year.
I was the lead creative on the project, and F5 worked together with DDB Shanghai to bring it to life.
The story is very simple. A baby keeps crying no matter who tries to comfort her. Then a stranger holds her, and suddenly she becomes quiet. She puts her ear against his chest and hears something familiar. Her mother’s heartbeat. The man had received her mother’s donated heart.
What happened afterwards was beyond what we expected. The film was broadcast across all 16 CCTV channels for about a year. It also appeared on screens in places such as high speed trains and spread widely across Chinese social media. Years later, it was still circulating internationally, sometimes so widely that people mistakenly believed the story was real.
Most importantly, the client told us that donor registrations increased significantly during the campaign period, and that the communication helped bring greater public and government attention to organ donation.
That is why this project still means so much to me. Most of the time, advertising helps sell a product or build a brand. “Crying Baby” reminded me that creativity can sometimes do something much bigger. It can change how people think, encourage them to act, and perhaps even help save a life.
ONE Asia Creative Awards is built this year around the idea of “Where Taste Matters.” At a time when technology can generate almost limitless creative output, what does “taste” mean to you, and how do you recognize it in a piece of work?
Taste is a bit like Chinese food. If you have never tasted the best, it is very difficult to judge how good a chef really is.
I think creativity works the same way. AI has unleashed creative power for almost everyone. Today, anyone can generate copy, a poster or even a commercial with very little money and only a few tokens. That is exciting, but it also explains why we are seeing such a flood of mediocre AI generated content on social media.
The problem is that the ability to make something is not the same as the ability to judge whether it is good.
For advertising, taste matters even more because bad taste does not just create bad content. It can damage the brand.
That is why I still believe strongly in professional creative people. We need a great copywriter to judge whether the AI-generated line is really good. We need an experienced art director to decide whether an image feels premium or cheap. We need a sound designer who knows when the music is right. And we still need a film director who understands rhythm, emotion and storytelling.
At F5, we often say that AI can do a lot of the making, but humans still have to make the judgment.
A recent example is the global brand film we created for Midea’s new proposition, “Simply Ideal.” AI was deeply involved in the production, but the final quality came from constant human choices about what to keep, what to remove and when to stop.
How important is it for Asia to have awards platforms that judge creative work within the context of the region rather than primarily through a global lens?
Global awards are important because they celebrate great work across the industry as a whole. But if most of the attention continues to go to the US, Latin America, the UK and France, Asia can easily become underrepresented.
That matters because creative talent needs visibility. Great work needs to be celebrated, not only for recognition, but because recognition gives people confidence to keep pushing further.
That is why platforms like ONE Asia are important. They help nurture creativity within the region, give Asian talent a stronger voice, and create a stage where the cultural context of the work can also be properly understood. From there, the best work can go on to compete globally with much more confidence.
I do not think Asia lacks innovation or creative ambition at all. Just look at what Asian companies have achieved in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, semiconductors, finance and technology. The spirit of innovation is clearly here.
What the advertising industry needs is a stronger platform to reflect that same confidence.
For me, regional awards should not be seen as separate from the global stage. They are part of the path towards it. They help Asian creativity become more visible, more ambitious and ultimately stronger globally.
What advice would you give someone trying to build an independent creative agency in China today?
First, find a path that only you, or very few people, are taking. If you build the same kind of agency as everyone else, it is very hard to survive.
Second, fully leverage AI. For independent agencies, AI is not just a production tool. It can help close the gap in resources, speed and capability between a small team and a large network.
Third, train your in person communication skills. This industry is still about people. You need to convince clients, inspire your team, attract talent and sometimes sell an idea that looks crazy at first.
And finally, prepare yourself for the painful parts: cash flow, hiring, retaining talent and managing people. Creativity may be the reason you start an agency, but management is what keeps it alive.
To learn more about ONE Asia and how to enter, go here.
