TWO INDEPENDENTS, ONE GLOBAL AMBITION

F5 Shanghai and Leagas Delaney deepen their creative alliance between China and the world

As Chinese brands move from exporting products to building global brands, and international brands seek deeper cultural relevance in China, F5 Shanghai and Leagas Delaney are turning a years-long collaboration into a close cross-border creative alliance.

For the new generation of Chinese companies expanding overseas, the challenge is changing.

It is no longer simply about whether Chinese products can compete internationally. In electric vehicles, consumer technology, home appliances and other categories, many already can. The bigger question is whether Chinese brands can build the same level of emotional relevance, cultural meaning and long-term desirability as the world’s most established global names.

At the same time, international brands entering China face the challenge in reverse: global recognition alone does not guarantee local relevance.

It is in this space that F5 Shanghai and Leagas Delaney are deepening a creative partnership developed over several years — bringing together international brand-building experience with an intimate understanding of one of the world’s fastest-moving consumer markets.

Rather than creating another traditional agency network or licensing arrangement, the two independent agencies will collaborate where their capabilities are most complementary: helping ambitious Chinese brands build meaning overseas, while helping international and premium brands grow with greater cultural relevance in China and across Asia.

FROM “MADE IN CHINA” TO “BELIEVED IN AROUND THE WORLD”

For Adams Fan, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of F5 Shanghai, this shift reflects a much larger transformation taking place in Chinese business.

“China has probably never had a stronger generation of companies with global ambitions,” says Fan. “But going global is no longer just about getting products onto shelves in another country. The next challenge is getting people in another culture to understand you, desire you and eventually believe in you.”

For many Chinese companies, the traditional agency choices can create another problem. A global network may bring international resources, but also layers of process, distance from senior creative talent and slower decision-making. A local agency can offer speed and proximity, but may lack decades of experience in creating brand ideas designed to travel across cultures.

“The F5–Leagas Delaney model is designed to sit between the two: senior global strategic and creative thinking, direct access to decision-makers, deep understanding of China, and a working structure built for speed rather than hierarchy.” comments Jimyi Xu, Marketing Director of F5 Shanghai.

“The partnership will span areas including global brand strategy and positioning, creative platforms, premium and luxury communication, cross-cultural campaigns, AI-enabled creativity and content, and local execution across China and selected international markets.” adds Xu.

A GLOBAL CREATIVE LEGACY, MEETING A NEW GLOBAL CHINA

Founded in 1980, Leagas Delaney has built its reputation as an independent agency around a simple philosophy: “Everything Matters.” Today its work spans more than 70 markets and 20 languages, with clients and relationships across luxury, finance, travel and premium consumer categories including Patek Philippe, Pictet, MSC, Investec, Explora Journeys and Bombardier.

At the centre of that history is Tim Delaney, one of advertising’s most distinctive and celebrated creative figures. His contributions to the industry have been formally recognized with his induction into the One Club USA Hall of Fame, the UK’s Campaign Hall of Fame and – in 2017 – the China Advertising Hall of Fame, where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award.

His relationship with Patek Philippe produced one of the most enduring ideas in modern luxury communication. The Generations campaign began in 1996, first with “Begin your own tradition,” followed by the line that would become synonymous with the brand:

“You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.”

Three decades after the campaign began, its power lies not only in its longevity but in what it demonstrates: the difference between advertising a luxury product and creating an idea that becomes part of the meaning of the brand itself.

Fan sees precisely this kind of thinking as increasingly important for Chinese companies.

“Tim’s work has always demonstrated that great brand building is not about decoration. It is about finding a human truth strong enough to survive changes in media, technology and fashion,” says Fan. “For Chinese brands going global, that is exactly the transition we now need to make — from communicating what a product does to defining what a brand means.”

THE PARTNERSHIP IS ALREADY IN MOTION

The relationship is not beginning with an announcement.

F5 Shanghai and Tim Delaney have already collaborated on work including Kaluga Queen, the Chinese caviar company that has grown into the world’s largest caviar producer, supplying more than one-third of global demand and appearing in Michelin-starred restaurants and international airlines including Lufthansa.

Together, F5 and Delaney developed its global brand proposition:

CROWN THE MOMENT.

The idea repositioned caviar beyond traditional codes of status and ceremony, turning “crown” from a symbol into an action: a way of elevating the moments in life worth remembering.

For F5, the project became a prototype for the kind of work the partnership could increasingly undertake — taking a Chinese company with world-class product credentials and helping it articulate an idea capable of travelling naturally from Shanghai to Paris, London, New York or Tokyo.

“I’ve known Adams and F5 for several years, and we have already had the opportunity to work together,” says Delaney. “What I value is that they understand China deeply but think beyond China. They are independent, entrepreneurial and interested in ideas rather than process for its own sake. That makes the relationship very natural.”

“The opportunity is a practical one. When a Chinese client needs global strategic and creative thinking, or when an international client needs genuine understanding of China and Asia, we can bring the right people together. Each agency contributes something different, and that is where the value lies.”

SHANGHAI SPEED, GLOBAL CRAFT

Founded in 2016, F5 Shanghai has built its reputation at the intersection of creativity and technology. The independent agency has won four Cannes Lions with eight shortlists and has created work for brands including Pfizer, Lenovo, Midea, China Mobile and the Saudi Tourism Authority. Founder Adams Fan has also represented China on the Cannes Lions stage four times and served on the Festival’s awarding jury in 2025.

Its work reflects the rapid changes taking place in China’s creative industry.

For Pfizer, F5 created Mozart 80, using AI to imagine music Mozart might have written had modern medicine allowed him to live to the age of 80; the work went on to win at Cannes Lions. For China Mobile, its recent Cosmic True Heart transformed the utility of the 10086 service hotline into a fully AI-generated love story spanning 10,086 parallel worlds. For Saudi Tourism Authority, F5 created Immerse Your Soul in Arabia, a China-specific brand platform designed to reshape Chinese perceptions of Saudi Arabia as a travel destination.

The combination with Leagas Delaney is therefore less about East borrowing from West than about two complementary strengths meeting at an unusually important moment.

One brings decades of experience creating global brand meaning and an exceptional understanding of premium and luxury communication.

The other brings China’s speed, cultural fluency, technological experimentation and proximity to a new generation of companies whose ambitions increasingly extend far beyond their home market.

THE NEXT CHINESE GLOBAL BRAND MAY NOT LOOK LIKE THE LAST ONE

Chinese companies are already changing global industries through manufacturing, engineering, supply chains and technology. Their next transformation may be less visible but just as important: building brands capable of creating cultural influence as well as commercial scale.

That requires more than translation.

It requires understanding what should remain Chinese, what needs to become universal and — perhaps most importantly — what a brand can stand for that people thousands of kilometres away can still feel.

“I don’t believe Chinese brands need to become less Chinese in order to become global,” says Fan. “The opportunity is almost the opposite. They need to discover what is distinctive about themselves and express it in a way the world can understand.”

For F5 Shanghai and Leagas Delaney, that is where the partnership begins. Not with geography.

With an idea strong enough to travel.

IN CONVERSATION WITH TIM DELANEY

1. China has become extraordinarily successful at creating world-class products. What does it take to make the next leap — from a globally successful product to a genuinely global brand?

Chinese products are now winning on merit around the world. Look at cars with the likes of Jaecoo and BYD, where people choose Chinese brands because they’re genuinely better and great value. The opportunity now is for the brand to catch up with the product. A great product wins the first purchase, but a brand gives people a reason to stay loyal and pay more. That means standing for something beyond what you make. The companies that get this right will move very quickly.

2. You created one of advertising’s most enduring luxury ideas for Patek Philippe. What can the new generation of Chinese premium and luxury brands learn from that experience?

That the best luxury ideas don’t have to be directly about the product at all. Then ‘Generations’ for Patek Philippe never talked about movements or complications (although we do also create communications that can tell these stories too); it talked about fathers and sons, what we pass on and the importance of legacy. Find the human truth and emotional insight underneath your category, then have the discipline to stay with it. Patek Philippe has run the same idea for over thirty years. Consistency is itself a key luxury signal and is often undervalued.

3. Do Chinese brands need to become “more international” to succeed internationally — or more confident about what makes them Chinese?

More confident, without question. The world doesn’t need another brand that looks like it came from nowhere in particular. The great global brands, whether Swiss, Italian, British or Japanese, carry something of where they’re from. The job is working out which parts of that identity travel and expressing them so they can be understood without being diluted.

4. AI is changing the economics and possibilities of creativity. Does it change what makes an idea great?

It changes how fast and how efficiently we can make things, and that’s genuinely exciting. F5‘s work shows what’s possible. But it doesn’t change what makes an idea great: a truth people recognise, said in a way they remember. If anything, when everyone can produce more content, more easily, the idea becomes even more valuable, not less.

5. Leagas Delaney and F5 are both independent agencies. Does independence matter more today than it did ten or twenty years ago?

I think so. Clients want direct access to the people doing the thinking, and they want decisions made quickly. Networks have their strengths, but layers of process aren’t one of them. Independence lets us put senior people on the work and choose partners like F5 because we respect them, not because a holding company told us to.

6. You and F5 have already worked together on Kaluga Queen. What did that project tell you about the potential of Chinese brands in premium global categories?

That Chinese companies can already lead the world in the most premium categories. Kaluga Queen is the best-selling caviar brand in the world, served at the Oscars and in Michelin three-star restaurants. But the product was ahead of the brand. Even in China, people knew caviar without really knowing why they should want it.

The answer was already in the name and the crown logo. “Crown the Moment” turned that crown into something you do, marking the moments in life that matter to you rather than showing off. It works as naturally in Shanghai as it does in Paris, and that’s the potential and indeed opportunity.

7. What will the F5 Shanghai–Leagas Delaney partnership look like in practice?

Practical and flexible. When a Chinese client needs global strategy and creative thinking, we bring Leagas Delaney in. When an international client needs real understanding of China and Asia, F5 leads. No new network, no bureaucracy, just the right people from both agencies on the right problem.

8. You have worked through the eras of print, television, digital, social media and now AI. What has not changed?

The importance of the idea. Every new medium arrives promising to change everything, and each one does change how we reach people. But a strong idea works everywhere: in a magazine, in a thirty-second film, on a phone screen or in an AI-generated world. Patek’s ‘Generations’ has lived – and thrived – through all of those eras. The execution has changed many times; the idea hasn’t. That’s the test I apply to everything. If it only works in one format, it probably isn’t an idea. Technology should be the servant of the idea, never the master.

Source: F5 Shanghai

  Agency, Collaboration, F5 Shanghai, Leagas Delaney