Author Archives: Chris Stephenson

advertising, awarding, celebrating, co-creating, collaborating, content creating, creating, marketing

Crafted to Win: Four Approaches That Delivered Media Lions at Cannes 2025

In my most recent post I shared some thoughts on the vibe from last week’s Cannes Lions festival, and noted that: “Along La Croisette and in the Palais and everywhere in between was an industry grappling not with the future to come, but with a future that now lies behind us. The current source of unfair advantage is being able to marshal your resources – be they marketing, agency, creator, or anything in between – to leverage better than your competitors the world around you.”

That idea of marshalling what’s possible to gain unfair advantage was on full display in the awards category perhaps closest to my heart – media.

Cannes 2025’s Media Lions recognized 66 pieces of work from over 2,000 entries, with the Grand Prix awarded to Dove’s “Real Beauty Redefined for the AI Era” from Unilever. The campaign tackled AI-driven beauty standards by retraining Pinterest’s algorithm to prioritize inclusive representations, delivering brand lift and widespread engagement.

Beyond the Grand Prix, twelve Gold Lions were awarded to campaigns that the jury believed best demonstrated what’s possible with media – showing contextual understanding, innovative media thining, and platform-native creativity.

My personal highlights include Streaming Bars by Heineken, which turned Netflix ads into real-time bar experiences; Coupon Rain for the formidable Mercado Livre by the equally impressive Gut, São Paulo, which transformed news coverage into shoppable coupon moments; and the Redditor Edit for Skoda by agencies including PHD (hurrah), which co-created car features with Reddit superfans. As well as Vaseline’s Verified campaign which co-opted creators to be part of the brands marketing by verifying and rewarding their hacks, and Waitrose’s Sweet Suspicion, by agencies including MG OMD (hurrah again), which leveraged some festive whodunnit storytelling to cut through the Christmas foodie clutter.

Overall, 2025’s winning media work signals a shift toward media experiences that blur entertainment, utility, and advocacy – where effectiveness is derived from earned engagement, tech-enabled storytelling, and brand bravery in reimagining how media is planned, shaped, and shared.

Across the Grand Prix and Golds, four themes emerge. They don’t just tell us where media thinking is now – they hint at what’s possible for brands and agencies aiming to gain competitive advantage by understanding and leveraging platforms, content, and communities.

So, let’s talk about

  1. Native Platform Innovation
  2. Media-as-a-Service (MaaS)
  3. Culture Hacking
  4. Collaborative Storytelling

Native Platform Innovation

This year’s highest-awarded Media Lions work didn’t just use media space – they re-engineered the platforms they were using.

Dove’s Grand Prix-winning campaign didn’t run ads on Pinterest; it partnered with the platform to rebuild its algorithm around inclusivity. Skoda used the upvote mechanic on Reddit, enabling users to collaboratively and collectively design a car. Heineken made Netflix ad breaks contextually relevant by mirroring the show you were watching.

What these ideas all have in common is that they don’t just think of platforms as media – but as media environments with logic, language, behaviours, and levers to be understood and hacked.

Dove Real Beauty Redefined for the AI Era (Grand Prix)

Redditor Edit for Skoda by PHD, London and Leo, London

Octavia Redditor Edit

Streaming Bars for Heineken by LePub, São Paulo

Want some of the action? Don’t think in terms of ‘placements’ but in terms of ‘platform logic’. Winning in contemporary media means understanding how people behave within platforms, and building the interventions that leverage, shift, or enhance those behaviours. If the media plan doesn’t ask, ‘What can this platform uniquely do for the idea?’ – there’s a danger that you’re undercooking the opportunity.

Media-as-a-Service (MaaS)

Many of the Gold Lion winners this year didn’t just run communications – they used those comms to deliver functional value. Coupon Rain transformed football coverage into real-time discount delivery. Ziploc dynamically revalidated expired coupons if the product was in a shopper’s cart. Tata’s Rewards Bag doubled as a QR-enabled shopping assistant.

In all cases, media wasn’t a message – it’s a service, a utility layer. These campaigns served value, solved problems, and made the experience deliver something of tangible value.

Coupon Rain for Mercado Livre by Gut, São Paulo

The Rewards Bag for Tata by VML, Montevideo

Preserved Promos for Ziploc by VML, New York

https://www.vml.com/work/preserved-promos

So, some ways in to building MaaS. Media that does something is more persuasive than media that just says something. Especially in an attention-fragmented world, marketers should treat media as a delivery system for value – not just as visibility for a message. Ask yourself: how can your media plan reduce friction, add convenience, or embed utility? Consumers increasingly reward brands that solve, not just sell.

Cultural Hacking

From Heinz’s Deadpool x Wolverine mashup to Skol’s retroinfluencer Instagram hack, many of this year’s big media winners didn’t wait for cultural permission – they inserted themselves into it. These campaigns exploited timing, tone, and trends to become instantly relevant and shareable. They were less about crafting traditional narratives, and more about inserting brands into the stories that culture was already telling, and cared about.

Can’t Unsee It for Heinz Ketchup & Mustard by Rethink, Toronto

Retro Influencers for Skol by Gut, São Paulo

https://gabimarcatto.work/retro-influencers

Sweet Suspicion for Waitrose by MGOMD, London and Saatchi & Saatchi, London

So, how to hack into culture? The opportunity here is no longer in owning the narrative – but in engineering and earning relevance. How can you build teams and approaches that pay attention to, are curious about, and have a point of view on culture? Ensure that your thinking and activities are explicitly reacting to or riffing off the current vibe. Equip teams – as well as senior leadership decision-makers with the tools and confidence to listen to and react to communities and ideas.

Collaborative Storytelling

Some of the strongest Golds this year weren’t broadcast ideas – they were co-performances. Vaseline co-opted into their marketing over 450 content creators who had created Vaseline hacks. Rocket Mortgage turned a Super Bowl ad into a live singalong experience. In Colombia, an insurer let viewers buy insurance for fictional characters – with real-world policy results. These ideas weren’t passive; they required something of the audience, and rewarded participation with narrative ownership or tangible rewards.

Vaseline Verified for Vaseline by Ogilvy, Singapore

First Ever Live Commercial Crossover for Rocket by Zenith, New York, Mirimar, Los Angeles

Fictional Insurance for RCN/Prime by DDB Colombia, Bogotá

So, how to you encourage collaboration with audiences and communities? The key is in building out engagement architecture. Brands that unlock collaborative storytelling build media experiences that invite audiences in, not just push messages out. Ensure that your approach includes moments where the audience can ‘play their part’, and are rewarded for doing so.

Awards are, of course, always subjective. You might agree with this year’s juries – or see things differently. Let me know in the comments below. Ultimately, it’s part of an important process that I once described as the industry’s ‘engines of objectivity’.

Because what matters is not so much what wins what (there, I said it), but rather that we are able to collectively surface and celebrate the thinking and ideas that inform, inspire, and empower us to do the best work we can. That’s the work of Cannes.

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awarding, content creating, creator-ing, streaming, trending

The Future’s Behind Us: Dispatches from Cannes Lions 2025

I love the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

There. I said it.

I’ll admit that I’ve had my moments of scepticism over the years, but we need Cannes – perhaps now more than ever.

We need it for the celebration of the work. For the ideas. To shape and focus the industry agenda. We need it to logistically get people in one place at one time. For the opportunities to reconnect with old colleagues and friends – and make some new ones. Because it reminds us of what we do when we’re at our collective best. We need it for all those reasons, and many more besides.

I used also to think that we needed Cannes to show us the future – but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Because the future has arrived already. We are living inside it.

My take on the vibe at Cannes Lions 2025 was of an industry not bracing for a future to come, but rather one wrestling with the reality of its arrival. It was a thought that dawned on me Tuesday whilst I was talking with a long-time industry acquaintance; that the future has moved from being something rushing towards us – into something that now lies behind us. It simply moved faster than our ability to keep pace with the changes it wrought. And now we’re playing catch up.

And so here we were. Navigating together the shared reality of our transformed world.

There was no better example of this new reality than YouTube’s presentation in the Palais des Festivals cavernous Lumiere Theatre. Less a presentation than a victory lap, the streaming platform’s CEO Neal Mohan shared with the audience that a billion hours of YT are watched daily on television sets – YouTube is the new TV. With Kaizen – the story of Inoxtag’s Everest climb – he suggested that YouTube creators are also now the new Hollywood start-ups.

Alongside creator content’s expanding influence over the industry is the halo of fan content that accompanies it – often in podcast form. Mohan shared that 1bn people watch a podcast every month on YouTube, noting the power of the connection between creators and fans – observing that “fans don’t follow culture, they shape it … fandom itself is a form of creative expression”.

Brands need not miss out on the action. Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg and Call Her Daddy host Alexandra Cooper were on hand to announce the launch of ‘open call’ – a new feature powered by YouTube BrandConnect, which enables brands to discover and partner with creators.

In a blog post, YouTube notes that “Open call gives creators of all sizes the opportunity to pursue new relationships with brands. And brands can lean on the relevance and trust of YouTube creators to get more from their social strategy on YouTube.”

Amelia and Alex put it more bluntly: creators can “take the middlemen out” and work directly with brands.

I was left in no doubt about the popularity of creators as the audience began to swell on the Palais’ Terrace Stage Wednesday, not for the excellent daily festival lowdown from Contagious’ Alex Jenkins and Chloe Markowitz – but for the following session featuring TikTok’s Global Head of Business Marketing and Commercial Partnerships Sofia Hernandez in conversation with creators Keith Lee and Logan Moffitt – the latter rocked to fame earlier this year with this viral cucumber salads.

It was bedlam.

Again, that sense that I was sat in a future that had already arrived.

We’re living and working in a world in which creator culture has supplanted the advertising model, in which streaming distribution has overtaken the broadcast model, in which clicks from search engines are declining as the foundations of search evolves – all of it powered by the invisible hand and accelerating force of AI (I got 650 words in without a mention, people).

In response, brands and marketers have changed their strategies and approaches to media and marketing.

Duolingo’s Emmanuel Orssaud described how the platform eschews the conventional integrated model (too expensive, trying to do too many things, doesn’t get people talking) in favour of a social-first model where 30% of all spend is focussed not on proven effective comms but on “figuring out what else will work”. They’re expanding next into long-form content with a Duolingo Gameshow, and an anime series.

It echoes Liquid Death CEO Mike Cesario’s comments on last year’s Cannes Lions Creative Impact stage in which he shared the brand’s category-redefining approach to marketing. The brand focusses on standing out and being entertaining. The only game in town for Liquid Death is capturing attention, because “if you can get people to stop and look at your product, you’re already ahead of 99% of the market”.

Even the vibe of the awards competition this year felt like a body of work negotiating with itself. The customary smorgasbord of brands’ ideas and innovation were competing with – and often losing out to – their own past body of work.

New campaigns for Apple competed with ten years’ worth of the ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign’, while Dove’s 2025 entries vied for metal with ‘Real Beauty for Dove’ – a 20-year-long body of work for the brand.

As Contagious’ Alex Jenkins put it – it’s a bit like bringing a gun to a knife fight.

One juror in a post-panel discussion shared with me that brand campaigns competing with the whole back-catalogue of others caused a fair bit of debate. I bet it did. The same juror indicated that they would be referring the issue to Cannes Lions. I can’t imagine it will be allowed to happen again.

So it turns out that the hero of Cannes Lions 2025 wasn’t innovation or ideas, nor was it comms platform vs tactical campaigns, or creativity vs tech or ads vs content or anything vs anything else.

The hero of Cannes 2025 was change itself.

Along La Croisette and in the Palais and everywhere in between was an industry grappling not with the future to come, but with a future that now lies behind us. The current source of unfair advantage is being able to marshal your resources – be they marketing, agency, creator, or anything in between – to leverage better than your competitors the world around you.

It’s tempting to suggest that it was ever thus; but we all know, deep down, that it’s never before been like this.

On stage in the Omnicom Space, Malcolm Gladwell noted that “There is a nobility in failure. [and that] the stories of failure are the most compelling stories that are not being told. The costs of trying crazy shit are not nearly as high as people think. This is exactly the moment to be trying crazy shit and failing!”

Or as Mercado Libre CMO Sean Summers puts it, “The industry is facing a tsunami. The biggest risk, is not taking a risk.”

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I’ll be publishing more thoughts and perspectives from last week’s festival. Subscribe to catch the rest as soon as it drops.

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co-creating, collaborating, community-building, content creating, creator-ing, realtiming

Streaming’s Next Decade: From Ads to Audiences – and Why Creators are Set to Win

I evaluated in my previous post some media and marketing predictions I made in late 2014. Netflix had announced their arrival in Australia for the following March. My expectation that content would win out over channel, that ability to deliver on desire for choice on-demand would determine growth, and that programmatic would swallow huge swathes of the industry – have all proved I think, largely, true.

My prediction however that the industry would largely fall out of love with the ‘ad’ didn’t come to pass as expected. Adverts have remained the predominant unit of currency for paid branded messaging.

Instead, the group that capitalised on the opportunity as I saw it – to create “platform-neutral content strategies that can adapt to platform and context more quickly – generating more relevance for brands’ comms” were not brands, but creators. The “native content in video form” that I foresaw becoming predominant in video did come to pass, but with a generation of content creators – rather than brands – at the helm.

For many brands and marketers, success is now dependent on engaging and fuelling this generation of content creators – who intermediate between products and services on one hand, and customers and consumers on the other.

Last week saw two awesome examples of this now established marketing model in practice.

How Capcom Inspire an Army of Creators to Fuel Monster-Hunting

Monster Hunter Wilds, which released worldwide on February 28, has had a great launch. Within the first three days, the game sold over 8 million copies (it’s now over 10m), setting a record as Capcom’s fastest-selling title. On Steam it attracted more than 1.3 million concurrent players shortly after launch, securing a position among the platform’s top 10 most-played games by concurrent users.

Whilst this success wouldn’t be possible without a great product – Wilds has been critically well-received, earning 90 out of 100 on Metacritic with reviewers praising engaging combat, impressive creature design, and innovative gameplay features – its success is also down to a determined effort to engage audiences thru the game’s affiliated army of creators.

Last Tuesday’s Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase, hosted by producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, revealed the first free update, which is scheduled for this coming Friday. The content is relevant of course for people who play the game (declaration: I’m 49 hours in and counting), but I’d suggest that’s not the primary audience for this content.

Rather, Tuesday’s content was designed and deployed not primarily for the game’s 10m players, but for creators. The update had more than enough new information to fuel new content, but enough details held-back and teased to allow room for all-important speculation and prediction. This video from the awesome Khraze Gaming channel is a great example.

There’s now a very established – and mutually beneficial – relationship between the Monster Hunter Wilds dev team and the game’s content creators. The game’s owners are supporting their community of content creators, who in turn are producing content to build their community of subscribers.

This isn’t all one-way. There’s been plenty of pushback from hardcore fans of the series, critical that the game is too easy. But the devs aren’t shying away from this. They are embracing this community feedback, in an open letter this week announcing that:

“We would also like to thank you for the many comments, thoughts and feedback we have received since the game was released.

The development team has been reading your feedback, and we are encouraged by it. We are also using the comments and feedback we have received to help us plan our future actions.

Future updates will see more Tempered Monsters (★8) added to the game … And for even more of a challenge, Arch-tempered monsters will make an appearance. These are even stronger versions of tempered monsters.”

Another masterful example of a marketing team engaging and fuelling content creators was from Marvel.

How Marvel Inspired Creators to Create with a Five-Hour Plus Livestream

In this even more astonishing and finely-tuned example of the marketing-to-creators model, Marvel revealed the cast of the now-in-production Avengers Doomsday via a five hour plus live-stream – with a new cast member being revealed on the back of a director’s chair every 12 minutes. The announcement concluded with Robert Downey Jr. – who will play Doom in the strategically crucial film for Marvel – walking out to sit in the final chair and asking the audience to be quiet on set.

Just to reiterate in case you read that quickly – the Avengers Doomsday cast reveal announcement video was a panning shot of 27 director’s chairs … which lasted five and a half hours.

This clearly is content designed not to be watched by audiences. Rather – just like Monster Hunter Wilds – its content precision-made for creators. Content machine-tooled to be poured-over in crazy detail in real-time by an army of creators (many of whom are of course huge fans).

Creators like The Breakroom team, who scrambled into their studio to livestream their discussions and reactions to the Avengers announcement video, in real-time. A livestream of a livestream. Marvel designing and deploying content for creators.

This is the new and now established model. Content from brands tailor-made for creators, designed to fuel the production of content for their audiences. Creators are the intermediaries and amplifiers of brand messaging. Communities are maintained and managed not directly by brands, but by a team of creators the literal job of who is to drive engagement with audiences for brands; either because they are fans, or their income depends on it – and in reality, usually and probably both.

This is what will underpin brand success over the next decade of video.
This is a model about to be supercharged by next-generation AI production capabilities.
This is what marketing precision at scale really looks like.

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advertising, content creating, creator-ing, predicting, streaming

Streaming’s First Decade: Three Predictions I Got Right – and One I Called Totally Wrong

It’s been ten years to the month since Netflix launched in Australia (where I was lucky enough to be working at the time). A decade on, it’s worth reflecting on what’s changed, what I called right, and what caught me (and the industry) off guard.

There’s been some great commentary from Tim Burrowes both via Unmade (paywalled) and on the MediaLand podcast about the impact of the streamers on the broader media landscape down under. In a Mediation post back in 2014, I made some predictions about what the arrival of streaming would mean for marketing in Australia, and the broader media landscape.

I think I mainly called it right.

Three Out of Four Ain’t Bad: Three Predictions That Nailed It (and One That Didn’t)

Prediction one: “In the immediate term there is undoubtedly going to be a firestorm for views and scale – brace for plenty of press releases in the first quarter of 2015 about content deals, views and reach. in the medium term this will play out in a battle for content – with many shows already locked away in local deals, there will be fierce competition between the platforms as distribution rights cycle into play.”

Verdict: Totally called it. The fight for content has not only played out between the streamers, but more broadly across the industry as legacy broadcasters and streaming platforms battled for the content that will drive and retain subscribers. In Australia that battle continues to this day, with the launch of Max on Monday locking HBO’s content library onto the platform – and the arrival of ESPN on Disney+ introducing an additional potential bidder for many of the market’s upcoming sports rights negotiations. Content has, for the last decade, remained king and has been a key defining element of the success – and conversely the struggles – of the streaming platforms.

Prediction two: We’ll see “a radical shift in viewer expectations. more choice, more freedom to choose what we watch and where, how and when we watch it. This future has been a long-time coming and has been with some for much longer than others”.

Verdict: Two for two. If anything has defined streaming’s impact, it’s the expectation of choice, on demand. That expectation has spilled beyond streaming—into podcasts, and even cinema. The streaming age taught many of us that, for the typical movie, it was easier to wait and watch at home – a behaviour reinforced by ever-reducing windows between theatrical and home release.

As the Entertainment Strategy Guy put it in a recent post, we’re drawn to the cinema now for ‘events’; “the actual most popular “genre” isn’t really a genre, but a style: exciting. People go to the movies to see spectacle, which often means action or exciting set pieces …18 of the top 25 films [in the US 2024 box office] have a lot of action set pieces. (Even Wicked ends with one).”

Prediction three: “With increasingly fragmented and diverse platforms and viewing services, advertisers and their agencies will increasingly rely on programmatic solutions to build reach quickly.”

Verdict: Absolutely. Over the past decade, programmatic advertising has transformed the industry by enabling real-time bidding, automating media buying, and enhancing targeting capabilities. On one hand, this shift has driven greater efficiency, has undoubtedly improved ROI, and empowered marketers to deliver more personalised experiences. But it’s also led to concerns about transparency, data privacy, and brand safety – not to mention the broader impact of an over-reliance on short-term, performance-based media on brands and long-term brand-building. It’s all our jobs to ensure we build tech that will serve us better over the next – AI-powered – decade, than we did for the last.

Prediction four: “Many advertisers and ad agencies will finally be forced to break out of the ‘advert’ model – using instead platform-neutral content strategies that can adapt to platform and context more quickly – generating more relevance for brands’ comms. think native content in video form.”

Verdict: So this one is a lot less clear. I genuinely thought back in 2015 that the industry’s long-held affinity for the ‘advert’ would wane. I thought the classic ad, so effective in the broadcast age, wouldn’t survive in a streaming world; a world in which tolerance for content interruption would be significantly reduced.

I was genuinely wrong on that. The power of the ‘ad’ holds sway to this day. The industry didn’t wholesale move on from the ad. It didn’t predominantly leverage more diversified content and ideas-based marketing to create fewer, better, more transformative experiences for audiences.

Too expensive. To difficult to scale and measure. Too hard.

Only it wasn’t.

Because while the industry remained predominantly stuck in ad-land, the last decade has seen a content revolution that has more than delivered on my prediction of ‘native content in video form’.

Native Creators: The Creator Economy Delivered What Marketing Didn’t

In parallel to the growth of streaming over the last ten years, the creator economy had, by 2023, blossomed into a $250 billion industry. This expansion is projected to continue, with estimates suggesting the market could reach $480 billion by 2027.

A report last year (admittedly from YouTube) found that an astonishing 65 percent of Gen Z responders self-identified as video content creators. The number of content creators worldwide has surpassed 200 million, reflecting the increasing appeal of content creation as a profession. The market for global influencer content has more than tripled since 2020, reaching approximately $33 billion in 2025.

It seems trite to point-out that this incredible growth – and it is incredible – is largely down to the fact that creator-made content is typically significantly more engaging than traditional ‘adverts’; it feels authentic, personal, and tailored to specific communities … because it IS authentic, personal, and tailored to specific communities.

Audiences tend to trust creators they follow, viewing their recommendations as more genuine and relatable than polished brand messaging—leading to higher attention, interaction, and emotional connection.

The prediction I made a decade ago suggesting that the industry’s ad-venture would come to an end was correct, it just turned out to be a generation of creators – powered by platforms like YouTube and latterly TikTok – that delivered on that strategic opportunity of ten years ago. The great irony of course is that advertisers did end up being an integral part of this creative content revolution; they were the money.

In other words, it wasn’t the brands who changed the game—it was creators and their audiences. And it’s that shift – from ads to creator-audiences – that will define the next decade of streaming.

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converging, fragmenting, podcasting, streaming

Netflix’s Next Move? Video Podcasts – And Why Marketers Need to Be Ready

Business Insider reporting this week suggests that Netflix is exploring deals with prominent podcasters. According to sources ‘familiar with Netflix’s strategy’, “Netflix insiders had warmed to the idea of tapping podcasting talent to host a talk-based video show, after previously expressing scepticism that the format could work on the platform.”

The availability of the podcast in video form has been surging of late. Most notably on YouTube – where prominent podcasters have been streaming their conversations for a good while now – but also on Spotify, where earlier this year I was surprised to see Alistair and Rory of the popular The Rest is Politics podcast pop-up within my Spotify app in video form.

Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, hosts of Britain’s biggest podcast The Rest Is Politics, popping up in video form on Spotify

Spotify pivoting to become a video streaming channel is just one part of a wider – and sizable – convergence into the video format, which in many ways represents one of most significant shifts in media and content consumption of recent times.

Forces of Fragmentation and Consolidation

When the industry initially debated fragmentation in the media landscape it was, generally, in reference to channels. Back in olden days when I started planning you basically had TV, print (both newspapers and magazines no less), radio, outdoor – plus something we called ambient media (out of home contextual ideas that popped up to generally surprise and delight urban audiences).

Digital was nascent, and streaming was still way over the horizon (I still have the presentation I gave to a major UK TV broadcaster client in around 2005 communicating the existence of a website I thought they should be paying attention to, called YouTube).

Since then, one of the seismic forces shaping media planning and strategy has been fragmentation. But it wasn’t channel fragmentation – which has been more than countered by consolidation within digital platforms over the last two decades.

2024 global advertising revenues surpassed $1 trillion. Major technology companies—specifically Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Alibaba, and ByteDance — collectively accounted for over half of this expenditure source. EMarketer reports that in the US, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet last year attracted nearly two-thirds of digital advertising dollars. The media landscape has many issues, platform fragmentation is not one of them.

What has fragmented is attention. The platforms that now dominate media have distributed audiences – which poses an ongoing challenge for brands looking to leverage Ehrenberg Bassian principles to reach as many light and non-buyers of their products in advance of an many purchase occasions as possible.

Advertisers are chasing, and demanding, scale … which is where Netflix’s potential foray into podcasts comes in. The streamer announced last year that it would stop reporting quarterly subscriber numbers from Q1 2025 – a sign interpreted by many in the industry that future growth from more subscribers was expected to plateau. Growth for Netflix must come next from driving increased time spent on the platform: in particular amongst subscribers to the ad-tier where a consistent source of advertiser-friendly audiences in a strategic priority.

Netflix’s Podcast Move

Enter podcasts … a potentially dreamy next step in their ongoing conquering of the video landscape. Let us count the ways in which Netflix must be salivating over the potential of the video podcast:

• Low barriers to entry and production costs
• In-built reach from influencer hosts (I find it significantly more useful to think of – and plan – podcasters as influencers and creators, rather than hosts) – which at the head drives scale, and into the tail offers relevance for selling on to advertisers
• Long dwell times, creating consistent high volumes of impressions and platform engagement (remember some podcast episodes are longer than the average movie run time).

Netflix are uniquely placed to take advantage of the opportunity. Video content platforms have always largely divided along two lines: professionally-created content (Netflix, legacy broadcasters offering BVOD etc, legacy conglomerates such as Disney+ and Paramount+ etc), and creator content (such as YouTube and the majority of video on social platforms). The former have never really wanted to do the latter, and the latter have struggled to do the former.

Netflix can genuinely move to deliver both professionally-created, and now premium creator content via high-reaching quality podcasts. I’d be stunned if Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway – who are currently in renewal negotiations with Vox Media for the home of their wildly successful Pivot podcast – weren’t talking to Netflix about taking the show to the streamer … opening the opportunities for the Pivot brand itself to expand into a range of video formats and series on the platform.

Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway – of the Kara and Scott Universe – hosts of the wildly popular Pivot podcast … a move to Netflix would make strategic sense

What This Means for Marketers

For marketers – this is all upside. Yes, it will mean more of that fragmented attention being sucked behind the Netflix walled garden, but if packaged up right it opens large swathes of addressable audiences in one targetable place – as well as scale, along with depth and diversity, of those audiences.

To succeed, marketers will need big proprietary data sets to create effective audiences to buy from Netflix, the agency support to build significant and meaningful partnerships and JVPs with the streamer (as well and others) that gets access to the best talent on the platform, and – most importantly – have an idea that can travel.

Because my hunch is that if Netflix push the podcast video door open, and if they can scale it and commercialise the audiences, then it’s the brands with clear, big (sorry) ideas that can be co-owned and co-created with Netflix’s creator community – that will be the brands that succeed. It would be such a shame for Netflix to sit astride a converged platform offering video podcast shows created by such talented influencers – only for brands to spot-buy their way into the party.

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advertising, broadcasting, buying, machine learning, marketing, television

AI vs. AI: Why the Real Battle of Super Bowl LIX Wasn’t on the Field

The Super Bowl isn’t just America’s biggest sporting event—it’s the world’s most expensive marketing battleground. And in 2025, the message was clear: AI is no longer the future; it’s the present. In a year where ChatGPT, Gemini, and Llama competed not just for our attention but for market dominance, AI wasn’t just in the ads—it was the story.

It was December 2009, during my first full month living in Australia, that I penned a post commenting on the fact that Google was using broadcast (paper!) print to advertise to Britons the existence of its Chrome browser. At the time, the albeit new browser was sitting around at 3% (yes, 3%) market share versus Firefox’s 23% and Explorer at almost 60%.

How times have changed. Chrome did just fine in the end (perhaps too fine, as time will tell), and Google never did lose the broadcast advertising bug – yesterday taking part in one of the biggest broadcasts of them all.

Google clearly want to own the workspace. The tech giant used the Super Bowl to launch its “50 States, 50 Stories” campaign, showcasing how small businesses across America are leveraging Gemini within Google Workspace. The campaign features 50 businesses (including a now infamous Wisconsin Cheese Mart) – one from each state – highlighting their use of Gemini as well as Google’s commitment to supporting small businesses through AI integration.

They weren’t alone.

Super Bowl ads give us so much. One of the more valuable aspects is a snapshot of where the world’s largest economy is at when it comes to the evolution and adoption of technology. If in 1984 it was the little Mac that could, and in 2000 it was ecommerce, and if 2022 was very much the Crypto Bowl – then this year resolutely belonged to AI.

Super Bowl LIX saw a host of tech companies compete to showcase their latest artificial intelligence products.

OpenAI made its Super Bowl debut with a 60-second commercial titled “Evolution of Technology.”, using pointillism-inspired animation to depict humanity’s technological progress, from the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel to modern AI applications like ChatGPT.

Under the direction of new CMO Kate Rouch, the ad aimed to present OpenAI’s technology as a transformative yet accessible tool for everyday life; and in doing so cement its position as the market leader in the space.

Meanwhile Meta made a play for fun and accessibility, promoting their new AI-integrated smart glasses in a spot featuring Milano alumni Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth, alongside Kris Jenner. The ad depicted Pratt and Hemsworth admiring then eating an expensive banana artwork in what at first, appears to be a museum.

After an eight-year hiatus from Super Bowl advertising, GoDaddy returned with a commercial promoting their AI-powered tool for small businesses, GoDaddy Airo. The ad featured actor Walton Goggins portraying various roles, emphasizing how GoDaddy Airo assists entrepreneurs in building and managing their online presence efficiently.

Taking a different approach, Perplexity AI ran a contest in which a lucky user could win $1 million. Eschewing the traditional commercial, they invited users to engage with their AI chatbot for a chance to win the jackpot. Participants were required to download the Perplexity mobile app and ask at least five questions between 1500 and 1930 PT during the game. This distinctive approach was clearly designed to more specifically boost user engagement and app downloads by leveraging the Super Bowl’s massive audience.

Whilst Perplexity seems to have taken the more direct route, all the AI advertisers in this year’s ad-fest are playing the same game – user adoption and usage of generative models and their evolving interfaces. The arms race now well underway by the owners and significant customers of LLMs may seem expensive – with a 30-second spot this year hitting a cool $8 million – but the rewards to the winners of the AI game far surpass that – just ask Google Chrome!

OMG projections led by the awesome JP Edwards (shout out to JP!) published in November demonstrated the huge potential for generative technologies and applications over the next three years. The Coming Wave: Generative AI (Gen AI) report projected the growth of core Gen AI services in a typical developed market from 2024 to 2028. Using expert predictions, it analysed current penetration rates, identified growth potential, and forecast key inflection points where market forces accelerate adoption.

Source: OMG’s ‘The Coming Wave: Predicted Penetration of GenAI Development 2024-2028’ Report – available to download here

This is the real game – and what Super Bowl LIX’s ads demonstrated was just how intense the competition is. My prediction is that whilst this year the models (Gemini, ChatGPT, Llama, Perplexity) took centre stage – by the start of 2026 we’ll be 12 months further into the Cambrian explosion of new utility now underway.

Expect next year’s Superbowl to be full to the brim not of the models, but new and emerging products and services vying for our adoption and usage. The question for brands and marketers won’t be just how they use AI – it’s how they will stand out in an AI-saturated world. Super Bowl LX won’t be about who has AI; it’ll be about who wields it best.

Buckle up people, we’re just getting started.

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conferencing, innovating, machine learning, marketing, retailing, trending

Embracing the Agentic Age: What Mobility Commerce tells us about the Future of Marketing

AI in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

Walking the convention floors at CES last month, it was impossible to ignore the bigger, brighter screens, smarter cars, more intelligent home devices, and increasingly agile robots. There was a bit more of everything, everywhere, and – because of the impact of AI – it’s all happening at once.

Technologist Shelly Palmer has suggested that “2025 is the year of the realization of AI’s promise,” and it’s hard to disagree. Artificial Intelligence has shifted from hype to reality, becoming deeply embedded in consumer electronics, interactions, and commerce.

Samsung’s SmartThings appliances displayed on the showfloor at CES

Samsung’s SmartThings Automotive now seamlessly connects EVs to broader smart ecosystems, while Richtech Robotics’ autonomous delivery robots are redefining service efficiency. Meanwhile, LG’s AI home hub and Samsung’s Home AI System illustrate how intelligent agents are integrating into everyday life, transforming how we live, work, and move.

But the most pivotal force behind this revolution is Nvidia. At CES, they launched their RTX 50 GPUs, pushing AI-driven gaming and content creation to new heights. They also introduced the Cosmos family of foundational AI models, designed to train humanoid and industrial robots, as well as vehicles for autonomous mobility. The era of agentic AI is here.

The Emergence of the Software-Defined Vehicle

The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental shift, evolving from hardware-driven machines into software-defined experiences. Nvidia’s Cosmos AI model is at the forefront of this transformation, enabling advanced self-driving capabilities. Trained on 20 million hours of human activity footage, it generates photorealistic simulations that help self-driving cars better understand and navigate real-world environments.

By leveraging synthetic data, developers can train AI systems more efficiently and cost-effectively, reducing reliance on real-world testing. Companies like Uber are already using Cosmos to accelerate their autonomous driving efforts, while Waymo expands its self-driving taxi operations and Honda’s ASIMO OS introduces “ultra-personalized” vehicle interfaces powered by over-the-air updates.

This shift has given rise to the software-defined vehicle (SDV), where traditional metrics like horsepower and acceleration take a backseat to comfort, connectivity, safety, and sustainability. SDVs—along with their supporting ecosystems—were everywhere at CES, signaling a future where cars are more than just a mode of transport; they are destinations in themselves. Think relaxation spaces, content hubs, gaming centers, and even commerce platforms on wheels.

The New Marketing Canvas of Mobility Commerce

Mobility commerce is fast becoming a frontier for innovation, and CES showcased the technologies set to power it. Take SoundHound AI’s voice-based commerce platform, for example—it allows drivers to order food, pay for services, and access real-time data directly from their car’s infotainment system.

The SoundHound booth at CES demonstrated a custom voice commerce ecosystem

AI-powered interfaces like these go beyond convenience; they enhance the ownership experience while unlocking new revenue streams, increasing the lifetime value of car owners. As vehicles become personalized media and commerce hubs, they create fresh opportunities for brand engagement.

In-car voice assistance is also evolving into richer, multidimensional conversational experiences. The private environment of a vehicle provides a unique space for seamless content consumption and commerce through natural voice interaction. This not only enhances the driving experience but also presents new possibilities for marketing—delivering contextual recommendations and unlocking new monetization models.

Marketing in the Agentic Age

The SDV is just one example of how the agentic age—a world navigated and intermediated by AI agents—is taking shape. The marketing implications are profound.

With AI automating interactions across search, content discovery, and customer service, consumer journeys are increasingly shaped by AI-driven recommendations. Whether through home assistants, automotive voice interfaces, or AI-powered search engines, customers will increasingly rely on digital agents to make decisions for them.

For some categories and brands, this means marketing directly to AI agents. Yet, human engagement remains critical. Brands now have unprecedented tools to create Generative AI-enhanced marketing experiences, from producing high-impact advertising that was previously cost-prohibitive to delivering hyper-personalized web experiences.

AI-powered assistants and avatars can guide potential buyers through product discovery, offering dynamic, customized interactions. The ability to generate tailored content at scale will be a major competitive advantage in this new era of AI-first marketing.

The Evolution of Search and Brand Discovery

Search is evolving at an unprecedented pace, moving beyond keyword-based queries to AI-driven, solution-focused interactions. Consumers are shifting from traditional search engines to AI assistants, social commerce, and e-commerce platforms for discovery.

According to Omnicom Media Group, nearly 40% of consumers in key markets now use LLMs like ChatGPT for search, while 76% rely on platforms like Amazon. Even smart TVs are emerging as search engines, enabling users to browse content via AI-powered voice commands. Meanwhile, consumers no longer rely on a handful of trusted reviewers; they can query and analyze reviews across multiple platforms using AI.

This shift demands a fundamental rethink of visibility strategies. Traditional SEO is no longer enough—discovery now happens across a fragmented ecosystem, from social video platforms to generative AI assistants. Brands must focus on “share of model” (how often they are referenced in AI-driven search results), deploy LLM-specific tracking, and optimize structured comparison data for AI crawlers.

Transforming the Marketing Experience

The shift from SEO to GEO (Generative Experience Optimization) is just one part of a larger marketing transformation, which was on full display at CES. As homes, vehicles, and workspaces move from smart to intelligent, the entire landscape of brand discovery, purchase, and experience is evolving.

2025 is set to be a landmark year for AI, search, creator-led marketing, and innovation. As these trends redefine consumer expectations, brands must adapt their marketing strategies to align with a world where AI, personalisation, and digital-first experiences drive engagement and growth.

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cinema, streaming

It’s T-Day in Movie Theatres; can Christopher Nolan’s Tenet save Cinema as we’ve known it?

All eyes are on Christopher Nolan’s latest time- and mind-bender, which is released internationally today after a delay due to the ronacoaster. Can it turn around movie theatre’s annus horribilis and save the cinema business from a historical pivot towards home streaming?

Today could turn out to be a crucial day in the history of cinema. Or more specifically, the cinematic release. Of the many shifts that COVID has accelerated, those associated with our consumption of content across screens have been some of the most obvious and pronounced.

Perhaps most notably, streaming has surged. At the start of the pandemic, Netflix reported a record additional 15.77 million paid subscribers globally in the first quarter (that was double the number it expected). The second quarter saw the streaming platform add a further 10.1 million (2.9 million in the U.S. and 7.2 million overseas).

Netflix aren’t alone. At the start of this month, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that there were now 60.5 million global subscribers to Disney+, the House of Mouse’s streaming service which launched last November. Disney+ is now into 60-90 million range it told investors it would get to by 2024.

That puts Disney+ a whopping FOUR YEARS ahead of schedule, and will almost certainly have put to bed any debate about the short-term revenue risk Disney took by pulling their content (and revenues) from other platforms in order to bring the Skywalker, Stark and Oldenburg families under one streaming roof.

That said, the gains in the streaming area of the Disney empire weren’t nearly enough to offset the hits in other parts of the business – most notably in the shuttering of COVID-hit Parks and Resort, which (along with theatrical cinema closures) saw a USD $4.7bn loss in the quarter to the end of June (Disney’s first in two decades). But strength through diversity of revenues (especially in the recurring bundle space) will surely win out.

If the Disney+ news wasn’t enough of a headline, the same announcement also included the showstopper that the long-awaited live action Mulan movie would be available on Disney+ from September 24th, for USD $29.99.

Cinema chains, which have long enjoyed a 70- to 90-day exclusive “theatrical window”, recoiled at the announcement. Theatres were banking on Mulan to be one of the billion dollar-plus big hitters to land in the second half and help claw back what has been an agonisingly bad year for cinema revenues.

In the US, as of yesterday, the year to date box office gross stood at $1,813,328,945. For context, the 2019 haul totaled $11,320,889,639. That tracks as 84% down year on year so far. The likes of Mulan were desperately needed by theatres to mitigate what will be an all-time historically bad year for cinemas.

But the real danger isn’t the historical revenue hit that will be 2020, but rather the potential underlying tectonic shifts indicated by Mulan’s move to streaming. In short, will 2020 be a blip in cinema history, or a pivot?

From a consumer perspective, it will be fascinating to see how Disney’s experiment plays out next month. Will Mulan’s USD $29.99 price tag prove too rich for most, or will there be enough take-up and revenues to enable a sea-change in day-and-date content releases to streaming services?

Additionally, how will consumers perceive the relative value of a one-off payment to watch a new release at home, versus the recurring revenue bundle model that underpins the streaming platforms?

The implications go beyond the cinema industry and land much closer to home in media planning land, where its worth noting the huge consequences for advertisers and media planners should streaming pull the pivot off.

These are valuable and valued audiences and GRPs that, should they jump over and vanish behind streaming’s paywalls, will be unavailable as part of a campaign schedule’s multi-screen reach.

Enter Christopher Nolan, who’s extraordinary directorial CV includes Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Dunkirk and Interstellar.

The director’s latest offering arrives in international cinemas today (it opens in the US next month) and comes with a weight of unprecedented levels of expectation; an expectation that far outstrips that of the movie itself.

The mind- and time-bending, globe-trotting Tenet, see’s The Protagonist fight an nefarious incursion from the future as time flows in both directions at once. Its typically audacious, huge, and spectacular in its ambition and scale. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw describes it as “amazing cinema”.

Its a movie that surely deserves to be seen on the biggest screen and surrounded by the most surroundest of sound; not glanced at from the sofa whilst dividing attention between The Protagonists unfolding fate and the latest feed from the socials. Surely this will be movie for which people return to cinemas?

Watching on eagerly for answers to those questions will be not only the movie theatre industry, but Hollywood and its counterparts around the world, the streaming platforms, the movie production industry… and this media planner.

Will audiences return to cinemas for Tenet? What scale of ticket stubs and revenues will its release be judged a success by the industry? Will the tide of 2020 be turned or will this year be seen as pivotal (in every sense) in the shift to home-streaming? Can Christoper Nolan save cinema as we’ve known it?

Given the director’s fascination with the temporal, it’s perhaps fitting that the only answer to those questions, is that time will tell.

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advertising, celebrating, community-building, innovating, marketing, responding

The five-point Covid-19 Response Playbook; according to the awesome Aesop’s Bangkok

Back in the olden days when we used to get on aeroplanes and visit other countries, one of my favourite places to drop by was the awesome Aesop’s Greek restaurant in Bangkok’s Sathorn district.

The food is just the best, but so is the atmosphere, with owner (and PHD alumnus) John Gamvros, creating a shared social space with dancing, plate smashing, parties, quiz nights, and the occasional Queen singalong party (you can see why I didn’t mind stopping by occasionally).

Like many restaurants, Aesop’s Bangkok has been hugely impacted by this year’s pandemic and the shut-downs that have been introduced around the world to slow its spread.

The fall-out from the closures could be devastating to the industry: Forbes reports that – according to a study commissioned by the Independent Restaurant Coalition – the pandemic could force 85% of independent U.S. restaurants to close by the end of the year. Over on this side of the world in Japan, which is weathering the crisis better than many, that figure is reported to be around 20%.

It was most heartening then when I received, via the awesome Heather, a write up on Chope outlining how Aesop’s Bangkok responded to the challenge of Covid-19 – or, as John puts it – the ‘ronacoaster’.

The article outlines the innovative, creative and generous steps John and the team at the restaurant took to adapt and respond to the crisis. A little WhatsApp banter with John later, and I’d seen and heard what I thought was as great a Covid-19 Response Playbook as any that I’d seen.

I present to you then, the five-point Covid-19 Response Playbook – as inspired by the awesome approaches and actions of John and the Aesop’s Bangkok team.

Step One: Pivot and Operationalise, Fast

Like many restaurants, Aesop’s immediately kicked into gear re-launching their delivery product, creating a dedicated consumer-facing channel at orderaesops.com, as well as accelerating their digital marketing effort to support the platform. They also had to work with their staff to re-engineer the menu, change operations and back that up with training.

In the current moment you have to follow more then ever Nick Fury’s observation to The Cap in CA:TWS that you have to “… take the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be.” What do you realistically need to do right now to capitalise on the opportunities and overcome the barriers to driving revenues?

Now delivering Gyros

Step Two: Play To Your Strengths

Rather than reinventing the wheel, the restaurant found a way to deliver the added magical elements that made the Aesop’s dining experience so special. This included, for example, plate smashing. So the team found a way to deliver orders complete with smashable plates, so you can bring the Aesop’s dining experience to life in your own home (you presumably have to do you own in-home clearing up tho too).

Step Three: Do, Don’t Say

Actions really do speak much louder than words right now. The team built trust with the restaurant’s followers by communicating updates directly and regularly on our social media channels, and responding to specific queries and concerns.

The bigger the brand, the harder this is to do of course, but I couldn’t help but think of the contrast between the personal approach and the – much lambasted – generic response from big brands in the early stages of the crisis.

Film from YouTube creator Microsoft Sam’s supercut shows the striking similarities in the ads made in response to the crisis

Step Four: Pay It Forward

Some of the most heartening stories to have emerged from the crisis have been around brands and businesses retooling and responding by paying efforts forward, and Aesop’s were no exception. They partnered with Ramathibodi Hospital to launch Eat it Forward Fridays, providing much needed fuel to the hard working doctors and nurses on duty. For every order received, Aesop’s donates one meal to Ramathibodi hospital to feed the hospital heroes with fresh, healthy Greek food.

Step Five: Be Honest

As John describes: “… it actually takes a lot more work than you’d expect to maintain the same high standards we set in the restaurant. We have overcome it through teamwork, listening to customer feedback, and constantly tweaking things. I have been honest with my customers, I tell them we are on a journey and that we are learning as we go. More often than not they appreciate that honesty and reward it.”

I think most people would agree that we’ve all at times felt out of our depth over the last six months. Being honest with customers (and with each other) about what we are trying to achieve, along with an equally honest assessment of how we are doing in getting there, will be appreciated and rewarded in kind.

Big thanks to Heather for the share, and John and all the team at Aesop’s Bangkok for the inspiration. We’ll stop on by just as soon as we can.

Stay safe everyone.

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Combining the power of short and long-term effects to improve brand performance
attributing, evidencing, learning, marketing, planning, researching

Getting your hands dirty; mediating the messy reality of combining the long and the short of marketing approaches

There should probably be statues somewhere of Les Binet and Peter Field. Their comprehensive, considered and rigorous work into the effectiveness of marketing has hugely influenced the industry – to the point where its essentially unofficial agency law to reference their findings in your thinking.

I’ve always however found their short vs long-term marketing step chart a little overly-theoretical. The logic is clearly sound and the general findings of course backed-up, but the danger is that its (over?) simplicity misses the messier reality of the real world.

Les Binet and Peter Field’s illustration of the impact – in general terms – of brand-building vs sales activation marketing activities, via Gracious Economics

Happy days then, as Dr Grace Kite from Gracious Economics has recently shared a trove of real-world examples and findings based on twenty years’ worth of economics projects.

The data proves out Binet and Field’s work, with evidence that many real-world brands drive growth via incremental sales when both sales-activation and brand-based activities are deployed.

“This advertiser’s email activity worked well to drive sales in the week it mailed and the week after. But, just as Les and Peter’s analysis predicts, the business didn’t begin to see growth until they increased their investment into longer-lived brand-building activity on TV.” Source

Beyond the general model holding up to real-world analysis, some addition messier and interesting examples were also identified – not all with positive growth stories. For example there were cases where the addition of more brand-based activities were unsuccessful, and unfortunately abandoned in favour of the more immediate wins.

“Four brand campaigns on TV were tried and found to have neither long-lived effects nor a positive return on investment. After evaluation, the advertiser understandably gave up and reallocated budget away from brand and into short-term sales activation online.” Source

There also a lovely example of a case where initial use of social and TV didn’t product long-term effects. When an alternative TV creative was paired with radio however, the advertiser saw incremental sales growth. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again (tho obviously with a considered test and learn agenda and performance benchmarks to ascertain success metrics).

“Initial experiments with social only had a short-lived effect and TV creative X was not strong enough to produce a long-lasting effect. It was only when they switched to creative Y on TV and radio that advertising was able to deliver growth.” Source

Working with Tom Roach (who, as an aside, wrote a great piece on the current state of brand purpose-based marketing worth reading if you haven’t already), they have developed an adapted view of the Binet and Field model – which combines both short-and long term effects as force-multipliers, as opposed to a long and short of it trade-off.

Having real-world examples – with all their sometimes messy and not always first-time successful outcomes – makes for a valuable addition to the general evidence available to support the case for investment in both short-term sales activation and longer-term brand building marketing activties.

And it is both.

As Tom notes on his blog post to accompany the research, “whilst the theory says we should all try to achieve a balanced approach in order to maximise both saleability and sales simultaneously, there’s a massive gulf between the theory and the actual practice, which is increasingly divided between practitioners of ‘brand’ and ‘performance’ marketing.”

Its unfortunately true that the two effects are too often seen as a trade-off. Of course they work hand in hand. If that’s a lesson for the best of times, its an even more important reminder whilst navigating our current moment. Both are needed, and you won’t always get the combination it right first time.

Its also true that all too often the focus is purely on return on investment, rather than growth – an analysis in which its easier for pure short-termist approaches to win out. Ensuring that we optimise to effectiveness goals, rather than to efficiency-based outcomes, is crucial if we are to ensure that we maximise growth opportunities.

Efficiency (including ROI analysis) is a means to an effectiveness end.

My very awesome colleague Malcolm Devoy discussed this, and the broader challenges and opportunities for brands navigating this Covid moment in the first of eatbigfish and PHD’s Challenger Strategies podcast.

Adam Morgan, founder of eatbigfish, and Malcolm Devoy, Chief Strategy Officer at PHD EMEA, discuss how the media landscape has changed for brands and the opportunities to build brand value through creativity and challenger thinking.

Dr Kite’s generous sharing of her work is a reminder – as if we needed it – of the need to mediate the long vs short absolutist elements of media planning and practice; but also a timely reminder that there are very few silver bullets. The combination of media and marketing efforts that unlock growth won’t always be found first time, and never in power-pointed theoreticals.

To navigate, and win, in a messy world – you have to get your hands dirty.

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