LinkedIn, Threads, and Reddit were swarming with posts about AI. Everywhere I looked, another “AI-bro creator” was crawling out of the woodwork.

They seemed to know all the models with the intimacy of someone who’d spent thousands of hours with them. (At that time, I hadn’t calculated that those models hadn’t existed for thousands of hours!)

They knew all the tools. From the hits to the obscure. As someone deeply rooted in the Google ecosystem and tied strongly to Gemini, I suddenly felt like a geriatric Millennial in a world of Gen Alphas.

They knew the prompts. They’d hacked productivity. Hacked consulting. Hacked creativity. Hacked life.

All I’d hacked was… well, I still remembered most of my passwords.

As someone obsessed with learning as a way to grow, this was unacceptable.
So I lit a fire under my bum.

I put a daily, 30-minute block on my calendar called “Meddle With AI.” And followed it diligently for weeks.

I’d face a problem during the workday, wonder if AI could solve it and note it down. Then I’d spend the session figuring out how to solve it with AI.

Most days, that 30-minute window would stretch into 45, then 60… and before I knew it, three hours had flown by.

Then, out of the blue, I had my first breakthrough.

Interlude

I’ll be using the words “coding” or “programming” quite liberally below. For the purposes of this discussion, you may assume that the coding language I’m referring to is English.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled… er… programming.

The Breakthrough

It was September 21st. I was camped near our office barista, gulping coffee and hammering away at my keyboard, crafting some Gems — Gemini’s version of custom GPTs. Five, to be precise.

I’d write some code, test it in action, make tweaks. Switching between Gems, chaining their outputs together.

Two hours later, I got goosebumps.

I sprinted down to my wife Saav’s desk (she’s also in Google Marketing) and started babbling about what I’d built. We both knew I was on to something big.

Cut to October. A series of presentations later — first to my manager, next to my skip — and I had a project.

A creative AI tool, built entirely in Gems. Today, it’s being formally incorporated into our creative workflows across APAC. It’s used by nearly 150 marketers and comms pros, with the potential to fit into our Global MarTech stack.

All of a sudden, I’m a prompt engineer / creative AI architect / product manager.

Who’d have thunk?

It’s been quite the journey since.

Beyond the creative tool, I’ve been experimenting with my own “Chief of Staff.” Artoo (yes, I’m a geek) is coded as an on-demand Gem and a series of automated Workspace Studio Flows. It pings me with reminders and content, helping keep me organised and laser-focused.

I’m now rethinking our team’s entire operating system using no-code platforms.

But this post isn’t about chest-thumping. (Okay, maybe a little.) It’s about what I’ve learned. So you can learn in turn.

You need to learn how to ask questions. Christopher Smith taught me this, through his excellent book To Question Is To Answer, and a session he did for our team last year. The better you question the AI, the better it helps you think.

AI is seductive. It responds to you in exhausting detail, in highly articulate language, with a tone of great authority and confidence. You want to buy what it’s telling you. Be warned — there’s generally quite a bit of snake oil hidden in those responses. How you question it, how you challenge it, is critical. This is where judgement — creative and otherwise — comes into play. Bringing me to my next point…

Slop in, slop out. Antti Toivanen, MD of Superson APAC, came up with this phrase in a recent fireside chat we did together. It’s probably the most eloquent way to say it. The quality of output depends on having the right people in the room, with the right data for the AI to work with, asking the right questions of AI’s answers, and really directing it as opposed to accepting it blindly. Which leads me to…

AI isn’t creative on its own. Ben Affleck said it perfectly: It can get you some ideas, some starting points, but it can’t write you Good Will Hunting. Because AI defaults to the average. And our job as creatives is to escape the trap of the average. So…

Being good at prompting alone isn’t enough. You’ve got to teach AI to think the way you want it to. My colleague (and fellow AI hobbyist) Debbie refers to this as “meta-cognition”. To get the AI to think the way you want it to, you have to understand the way you think. And then arm the AI to do so, in turn. What I’ve been able to do with the creative tool I’ve built is teach it how I think.

There are some things it’s impactful at. And some things the corporate world believes it’s impactful at. It took my team and Antti’s five days of being holed up in a conference room, with thousands of generations, to deliver our first AI-generated piece of content. And that was merely 80 seconds. I know other teams have taken as much as two months to deliver a fully AI-generated commercial. Consuming millions of tokens — at a cost — through hundreds of thousands of generations. Did it save time as opposed to traditional production? Probably not. But can it save you time — with quality output — in the upstream thinking? Yes. We’ve seen that in the pilots we’ve run with my creative tool.

As a creative, it’s not cheating to use AI to help you think. It wasn’t cheating back in 2003 to scroll through Getty Images for creative inspiration for a print ad. So why should it be anathema to use AI to support you today? It’s simply a tool, like your computer, like those creative frameworks all of us grew up with. A tool that can help you break the shackles of a blank page, get you started, get those creative juices flowing faster.

You will spend more time scrutinizing and critiquing than creating. This is true. And I do feel a bit of sadness here. However, in that scrutiny lies the genesis of further creation. Nothing has stopped me from blending a few thought starters from AI, or building on them, or playing Creative Director and bombing them…or simply starting with my own idea and speedily refining it to sell internally with AI. And the end of the day, I’m paid to deliver great work. Nobody’s paying me less (yet) if I use AI to do it.

Finally, AI is going to reshape you think. I read about a Harvard-MIT study recently. There are three kinds of AI users:

1. The Delegators, who outsource everything, including judgement and agency, to the AI. And lose those skills over time.

2. The Cyborgs, who get good at using AI to improve their work product or workflows, but don’t really evolve on the whole.

3. The Centaurs, who use the AI to do better work, and learn in the process.

I’m trying hard to fall within 2 and 3 for the most part. Working with the creative tool has taught and re-taught me things about marketing, creativity and effectiveness, enabling me to build fresh knowledge and skills.

To paraphrase Thanos: AI creeping into the workplace is inevitable. You either accept it, adopt it, and adapt — or fade away. 💨

The way I think about my work has changed significantly. I no longer manage just a human team — I manage and creative-direct a hybrid squad of humans and machines.

Understanding people isn’t enough.
Understanding the tech isn’t enough either.
The key to success is understanding your own ways of thinking.

That is the insight.

Samit

And I’ve been brewing some big plans for what it’ll evolve to in the years to come.

But, before that, it’s critical that I learn what you think about it.

So here I am, asking you to take a minute from your busy day, and tell me what you think.

Honestly, constructively.

So I can make my newsletter better, for you.

Thanks in advance.

Samit

And here are Part 1 and Part 2, in case you' missed them.

On to Part 3!

🧑‍🎄 Natura: The Amazon Greenventory

🥷 Africa Creative DDB, Sao Paulo

🏆 Sustainable Development Goals

Customer-centric? 🤔 It’s definitely cause-centric. The positive: the connect to long-term income for local families. The negative: the question on whether this was a real problem.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Climate change is a big topic.

Gets noticed? ✅ I’ll argue that the pickup was amongst policymaker circles.

Measurable results? ❌ I’m not so sure. The business impact is unclear; and the impact to preservation, even more so.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌

🧑‍🎄 Viatris: Make Love LAst — Bedroom

🥷 Ogilvy, Shanghai

🏆 Pharma

Customer-centric? ✅ ED is a real issue, and the film captures the product benefit in a compelling way.

Rooted in culture? ❌ Nothing here that would classify as a cultural connection.

Gets noticed? ❌ No evidence here either.

Measurable results? ❌

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ It’s a nice ad, but that’s where it stops.

🧑‍🎄 IDOMED: Nigrum Corpus

🥷 ARTPLAN, Sao Paulo

🏆 Industry Craft

Customer-centric? ✅ Racism is a no-brainer issue. And racism in a medical context is a common, yet, oft-ignored problem.

Rooted in culture? 🤔 Racism is a cultural issue. The case study, however, doesn’t draw that connect to local culture.

Gets noticed? ❌ No evidence.

Measurable results? ❌ Not even mentioned.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ This is beautiful work. It also feels like it’s #MadeForCannesLions.

🧑‍🎄 Museum For The United Nations — UN Live, Spotify: Sounds Right

🥷 AKQA, Copenhagen

🏆 Innovation

Customer-centric? ❌ I…don’t see it.

Rooted in culture? ✅ I like the connect to global music artistes.

Gets noticed? 🤔 What’s unclear is, how many of those claimed impressions and streams were driven by the music and not nature?

Measurable results? ❌ Hell no. The level of overclaim — “Fans of music become fans of nature” — is staggering.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ This is an interesting idea, but I’m just left shaking my head.

🧑‍🎄 LVMH: The Partnership That Changed Everything

🥷 Havas Play, Paris

🏆 Luxury

Customer-centric? ❌ This feels like a B2B challenge, not a real customer problem.

Rooted in culture? ✅ I do like how they hacked the Olympic guidelines, by weaving their product into the performance. Is this new, no? Is this smart, yes.

Gets noticed? 🤔 I’ll bet not. This is an advertising innovation, and worth an award in a different category

Measurable results? ❌ Unclear.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ Contrary to the claim, this was advertising, this was sports sponsorship, and this did not change the Games forever.

🧑‍🎄 Indian Railways: Lucky Yatra

🥷 FCB India, Mumbai

🏆 PR

Customer-centric? ✅ Yes. Anyone who’s travelled in Mumbai’s locals knows that ticketless travel is a real scourge.

Rooted in culture? ✅ The connect to lottery tickets is genius.

Gets noticed? ❌ I’ll look beyond the case study to the news around it. The client admitted they didn’t see enough impact — as a result of not promoting it enough. The initiative is currently paused.

Measurable results? ❌ See above.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ With the deepest respect to my friends at FCB, this doesn’t pass muster.

🧑‍🎄 Penny: Price Packs

🥷 Serviceplan, Munich

🏆 Print & Publishing

Customer-centric? ✅ Inflation is a massive issue today.

Rooted in culture? ✅ See above.

Gets noticed? ✅ I love the packaging change. Ridiculously genius level idea.

Measurable results? ✅ Availability across 2K+ stores. Selling out. Media coverage.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅ Take a bow, Penny and Serviceplan. I wish I’d done this work.

🧑‍🎄 Budweiser: One Second Ads

🥷 Africa Creative DDB, Sao Paulo

🏆 Radio & Audio

Customer-centric? ✅ The job of brands like Budweiser is simple — recall. This one did that job, and well.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Bud and Music go hand in hand.

Gets noticed? ✅ Sharp influencer seeding and a novel format got the audience’s attention.

Measurable results? ❌ “Zero ads skipped” doesn’t quite sound like a claim that’ll resonate with the CFO.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌

🧑‍🎄 Apple: Shot On iPhone

🥷 TBWA\Media Arts Lab, Los Angeles

🏆 Creative Effectiveness

Customer-centric? ✅

Rooted in culture? ✅

Gets noticed? ✅

Measurable results? ✅

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅ I’m really not sure I need to say much about a campaign that created culture…and copycats.

Enjoyed Part 1 of the series? Pleasantly surprised to not see a rant about Cannes Lions in there?

I must’ve been in a strange mood.

Without further ado, here goes!

🧑‍🎄 Ziploc: Preserved Promos

🥷 VML, New York

🏆 Creative Commerce

Customer-centric? ✅ With the US entering its tariff era, and prices spiralling, they’ve cracked a brilliant idea that is uniquely connected with the brand.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Definitely. Budget hacks and finfluencers are all over socials these days.

Gets noticed? ✅

Measurable results? ✅ Yes. Yes. A thousand times, YEEEESSSS!!!

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅ And I wish I’d done this.

🧑‍🎄 Consul Appliances: Efficient Way To Pay

🥷 DM9, Sao Paulo

🏆 Creative Data

Note: This entry is under investigation by Cannes Lion. At the moment, the award still stands — and hence the analysis below.

Customer-centric? ✅ It’s simple enough, recognising a real problem consumers face. The payment mechanic is bloody smart too.

Rooted in culture? ❌ Not really. It solves a need…but lacks the cultural fluency that’d have elevated it further.

Gets noticed? ❌ Not surprising, given there’s no cultural currency or virality-driver.

Measurable results? ❌ I’m honestly shocked that this was awarded for helping 1280 families and showing one news headline. (Is it the Causevertising effect?)

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ And it feels a bit scammy to boot.

🧑‍🎄 KitKat

🥷 VML, Prague

🏆 Outdoor

Customer-centric? ✅ KitKat’s long-running proposition never gets old.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Phone addiction continues to plague us all.

Gets noticed? ❌ Nothing here to make me want to share.

Measurable results? ❌ Nothing mentioned.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ This doesn’t feel like a fresh, breakthrough idea. In fact, it gives me the old-school scammy feels. It’s work like this being recognised so highly that gives Cannes a bad name.

🧑‍🎄 Paris 2024

🥷 Paname24, Paris | Auditoire, Paris | Double 2, Paris | OBO, Paris | Havas, Paris | Havas Events, Paris

🏆 Outdoor

Customer-centric? ✅ The Opening Ceremy was acknowledgement of the challenges facing humanity, and a reflection of the things we think, feel and talk about.

Rooted in culture? ✅ By default.

Gets noticed? ✅ Yes, though I have to add that it had high tailwinds, simply by dint of being an Olympics Opening Ceremony.

Measurable results? ❌ It’s hard to quantify the impact of something like this.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ While it ticks many boxes, the Opening Ceremonies of the Games feel more like formulaic pageantry, not breakthrough marketing for the host nation. This was more of that.

🧑‍🎄 Dove: Real Beauty Redefined For The AI Era

🥷 Mindshare, New York

🏆 Media

Customer-centric? ✅ A timeless insight.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Yes. With all the conversation around AI and AI-manufactured slop, this campaign has legs.

Gets noticed? ✅

Measurable results? ❌ There’s nothing in here to suggest meaningful impact on the brand.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👎 I struggled to like this execution of Real Beauty, and was kind of glad to nix it on less subjective grounds. At the end of the day, I couldn’t find a good answer to the question, “What was the point of it all?”

🧑‍🎄 Hyundai Motor Company: Night Fishing

🥷 Innocean, Seoul | Hyundai Motor Company, Seoul

🏆 Entertainment

Customer-centric? ❌ I panned left and right, tilted up and down, zoomed in and out, but still couldn’t capture an insight. (See what I did there?)

Rooted in culture? ✅ Yes. Pretty cool idea to produce a short film, shot on a car’s cameras.

Gets noticed? ✅ Though I’ll confess I don’t understand the “100% media coverage” claim.

Measurable results? ✅ Clear growth in dealer visits and test drives makes this an effective case.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👎 Only because the insight or customer need isn’t clear. Great PR stunt, though.

🧑‍🎄 Mercado Livre: Call Of Discounts

🥷 GUT, Sao Paulo

🏆 Entertainment Lions For Gaming

Customer-centric? ✅ Excellent idea — connecting gamers to shopping.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Gaming. Football. Discounts. Nailed it.

Gets noticed? ✅

Measurable results? ✅

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍 Nothing more to read here, great idea, move along.

🧑‍🎄 Rimas Music: Tracking Bad Bunny

🥷 DDB Latina, Puerto Rico

🏆 Entertainment Lions For Music

Customer-centric? ✅ Very sharp. The idea to connect with scorned and angry Puerto Ricans, and reverse the perception politicians had build around the island, was smart.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Doubtless.

Gets noticed? ✅ Excellent execution.

Measurable results? ✅ The album sold. Mission: accomplished.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍 You bet. Patriotism sells, and this idea sold it beautifully.

🧑‍🎄 Clash of Clans: Haaland Payback Time

🥷 David, New York

🏆 Entertainment Lions For Sport

Customer-centric? ✅ I like how this connects with Haaland’s fans — and his enemies. A win for the game, either way.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Yes. A smart use of the celebrity.

Gets noticed? ✅ Smart partnerships. Smart use of celebrities — and rivalries. A recipe for success.

Measurable results? ✅ 150% growth in new players? Byron Sharp would be proud.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍 Unmistakably.

Time for a break. Get off that phone and go stare at a KitKat instead.

Part 3, coming soon.

In the most tumultous year the ad industry has had in recent memory; in a year when the knives have been out for the Cannes Lions festivals, sharpened and deadlier than ever before; in a year when AI stands poised to change everything…it’s back.

My take on the biggest winners of the year, through the lens of Modern Marketing.

The parameters I’ll be using are the same as last year:

• Work that’s customer-centric. Based on a strong understanding of real customer needs, using data and insights to personalise the work.

• Work that’s deeply rooted in culture.

• Work that gets noticed and talked about, on social and in the press. Even if it doesn’t begin there.

• Work which has measurable results, driving tangible business outcomes.

The only difference is this:

I’ve written at length about what I consider meaningful value when it comes to advertising. (Hint: It’s not a Lion.)

So, it’s only fair that I don’t just evaluate creative winners…but effectiveness winners too.

This year, I’m committing to writing a similar evaluation of the Global Effies.

So that we get a holistic view on what the best work in the world looked like.

Here goes…once again.

🧑‍🎄 AXA: 3 Words

🥷 Publicis Conseil

🏆🏆🏆 Dan Wieden Titanium, Creative Business Transformation, Direct

Customer-centric? ✅ The team found a truth that didn’t just determine the advertising — it shaped the product.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Sadly, domestic violence remains a concern, and a hot topic of discussion the world over.

Gets noticed? ✅ The campaign was clearly well-seeded, and well-received. It’s no surprise that it was picked up. The magic, IMHO, was making the change retroactive — a genius move, and honestly, the right one. This is a classic case of actions speaking louder than words.

Measurable results? ✅ Waiter, get me one of them 9% uplifts please!

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍

🧑‍🎄 Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Rakish, Chicago Hearing Society: Caption With Intention

🥷 FCB Chicago

🏆🏆🏆 Brand Experience & Activation, Design, Digital Craft

Customer-centric? ✅ There’s something to be said about identifying a small yet important aspect of the lived experience of deaf people.

Rooted in culture? ✅ The connect to the Oscars and filmmaking is key to the concept.

Gets noticed? ❌ A quick Google News search — various keywords — showed that only advertising publications picked this up. So while captioning won an Oscar, I’m not sure it won attention.

Measurable results? ❌ None worth talking about. Snippets of UI and supers talking about impacting major studios isn’t enough. I’d have liked to see adoption by streaming services or the number of titles being recaptioned by studios as an indicator of true impact.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👎 I’m sorry to say, but this smells just a wee bit like it was #MadeForCannesLions.

🧑‍🎄 Vaseline: Vaseline Verified

🥷 Ogilvy Singapore

🏆🏆 Health & Wellness, Social & Creator

Customer-centric? ✅ I love that the team decided to take up a real challenge — harmful beauty trends — and address it head on.

Rooted in culture? ✅ I have a soft spot for campaigns founded in social insights. But this one needs no special treatment. Vaseline hacks are part of beauty culture, and the team did a great job picking it up.

Gets noticed? ✅ No-brainer, this. Brand responses to community content often perform better than owned brand content.

Measurable results? ✅ Undeniably. They had me at “43% sales increase” and “7.1M organic reach”.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍

🧑‍🎄 Dove: Real Beauty — How A Soap Brand Created A Global Self-Esteem Movement

🥷 Ogilvy UK, London

🏆🏆 Glass: The Lion For Change, Creative Strategy

Customer-centric? ✅

Rooted in culture? ✅

Gets noticed? ✅

Measurable results? ✅

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍

PS. There’s not much to write here. We’ve all grown up applauding Dove’s work. It’s brilliant, and has, for years, defined what great looks like. I do question awarding essentially a multi-year compendium of work that’s already won a ton of awards. But then, who knows what Cannes jurors think?

🧑‍🎄 New Zealand Herpes Foundation: The Best Place In The World To Have Herpes

🥷 Finch, Sydney | Motion Sickness, Auckland | NZ Herpes Foundation, Auckland

🏆🏆 Grand Prix For Good, Lions Health and United Nations Grand Prix For Good

Customer-centric? ❓ This one comes out of left field a bit. I struggled to find an insight here — apart from the cultural stigma here. In further research, I read somewhere that 80% of New Zealanders suffer from herpes in their lifetime. Other than that…meh.

Rooted in culture? ❓ Years ago, Lowe Lintas India had done the legendary Balbir Pasha to break the taboo about wearing condoms. That became cultural. I’m not sure the use of a celeb qualifies.

Gets noticed? ❌ I had to go to the graveyard of the Internet — page 6 of Google Search results — to find the first, non-award-related mention of the campaign.

Measurable results? ❌ Nope. Getting to #1 on their own “Stigma Index” doesn’t count.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👎 To my cynical eye, this looks like an opportunity to cash in on a moment in a rather old-fashioned manner.

🧑‍🎄 Channel4: Paris Paralympics 2024 — Considering What?

🥷 Channel4, London | 4Creative, London

🏆 Film

Customer-centric? ✅ Good insight.

Rooted in culture? ✅ Yeah.

Gets noticed? ❌ 729 views on YouTube, 99 comments. Decent video (undone by that voiceover-driven idea), but the engagement simply isn’t good enough.

Measurable results? 🖐 Let’s be fair — this is the Film category. I don’t expect a case study film about the film. So…hard to judge.

Is this Modern Marketing? 🖐 Not knowing the full context of the campaign from the entry, I’m going to give this an N/A.

🧑‍🎄 L’Oreal Paris: The Final Copy Of Ilon Specht

🥷 McCann, Paris

🏆 Film

Customer-centric? ✅ Surprised? Me too! What I liked about this was that it deconstructed one of the world’s most recognised slogans, peeking behind the scenes to do so.

Rooted in culture? ✅ No-brainer, right?

Gets noticed? ❓ The TED talk about the video got 231K views — but the trailer, a mere 1.4K.

Measurable results? ❌ None mentioned, apart from some earned media.

Is this Modern Marketing? 🖐 I’m going to give this an N/A given that it was the documentary that was entered in this category.

🧑‍🎄 Telstra: Better On A Better Network

🥷 Bear Meets Eagle On Fire, Sydney

🏆 Film Craft

Given the category, I’m going to award an N/A and move right along.

🧑‍🎄 GoDaddy: Act Like You Know

🥷 GoDaddy, Tempe, AZ | Quality Meats, Chicago

🏆 Creative B2B

Customer-centric? ✅ Yes! Looking professional is a huge driver for small businesses to sign up for a website or a professional email address. Nailed it.

Rooted in culture? ❌ Use of a celebrity doesn’t really count, does it?

Gets noticed? ✅ Definitely. The earned placements and impression count is pretty damn high.

Measurable results? ❌ Traffic to GoDaddy doesn’t count. That’s not a metric businesses should be focused on.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👎 Worse, the idea doesn’t feel original. Neil French did this years ago with XO Beer…and the formula’s been repeated — and rewarded — several times since.

That’s all my tired fingers can bear to type. Part 2, coming your way pretty soon!

I’ve had this post in drafts for nearly two months now, and I’m sort of glad I did. Because every day has seen new headlines, new stories…and even greater indication that the industry many of us know and love is in a state of chaos.

I won’t say the dust has settled. That’s going to take a while. But a chapter has come to an end, with the announcement that Mark Read would be stepping down as WPP Chairman by the end of the year; hot on the heels of progress with the Omnicom-IPG merger.

And while I’ll never be in the “advertising is dead” camp — I mean, it’s the second-oldest profession, born out of the needs of the oldest — I will say that it needs a reboot.

The evidence couldn’t be more clear.

A few months ago, Campaign Asia put out their annual Agency Report Cards. This year’s report begins with a damning indictment.

2024 was a year that asked hard questions of the ad industry—and didn’t wait around for easy answers.

And then goes on to admit that it’s time for all of us to abandon Ostrich Mode and pull our heads out of the sand.

Few agencies fired on all cylinders, and while some proved the value of bold ideas, the bigger picture is harder to ignore: the industry’s challenges are no longer just financial, they are existential.

And finally, it predicts a tumultous future.

…2025 will redraw the map The impending IPG-OMG merger will redraw boundaries, business models will be torn down and rebuilt, and client loyalties will be tested in ways we can’t yet predict. Will true blue creativity stand out, or the might of scale and size? One thing is certain: those clinging to outdated practices are guaranteed to fail.

A few of us have been less sanguine, calling for change for some time now. I enjoy following pundits like Ivan Fernandes, who writes quite passionately about the ad agency business model and how it needs to change. And he’s not the only one.

But when Campaign Asia, a publication I’ve always perceived as more optimistic than realistic, says we should worry — then we should worry.

It’s really the perfect storm.

In conversation over the last year with current and former holding company leaders — some of whom are happy to have gotten out when they did, and some of whom have since set up their own independent shops — the challenge facing advertising isn’t simple. In fact, it’s probably more like a flywheel.

I’ll admit I’m still thinking much of this through…so bear with me as I wander down this rabbit hole.

Exhibit A: Value

In a LinkedIn post some time ago, I wrote about how most Marketers don’t even feel like they’re part of the advertising ecosystem.

And that’s probably because they place little to no value on their agencies.

Because, since the beginning of time, creative agencies haven’t yet figured out what their work is worth. Staggering down the path of media commissions to consulting-style, worker-hour based billing…and still not answering the fundamental question:

What is advertising worth to a client?

The typical creative agency fee pitch breaks down to two aspects:

• The quality of the work presented, by…

• …the talent they’re able to put on the business.

I’m not sure these are the same metrics Marketers are being evaluated against — in the market or in the boardroom.

After all, these are first-level input metrics, not outcome metrics — and we live in an outcome-oriented world.

I’d love to see a pitch where, somehow, agencies include second-level input metrics (more closely connected to outcomes) in their pitches. Some thoughts:

• It’s not just about the idea. It’s about how much the idea scores on a pre-launch industry or client-standard creative test. This could be System1’s rating scale, or a test-and-control based brand tracking, or some kind of proven proprietary modelling the client has built. I mention running these before the campaign launches, so as to purely isolate the impact of the creative work.

• It’s not just about the resourcing. It’s about how you can provide cost-efficient ways of working. This could mean leaner teams — always a win in my book — but also the right tooling — you didn’t think I'd skip talking about AI, did you? If done right, this could mean real dollar savings for clients, to be ploughed back into the campaign, or into other ventures — which hopefully the agency would be part of.

Both of these ideas link back to dollar outcomes — helping Marketers prove the value of their work, in turn, to those that control the budgets.

Exhibit B: Revenue Models

Naturally, proving Value has a direct impact on the Revenue Model an agency can operate with.

So far, the converse has been true. Margins have gotten finer, as agencies have struggled to justify why they should be paid the amount they’ve asked for. A few can get away with premium pricing — but they’re the exception, rather than the norm.

We’ve reached a point where agency remuneration has to be closely linked to clear business outcomes. There are two challenges I’ve experienced here, and an area I’m looking to learn more about.

Not every marketing objective is easily measurable. It’s easier to develop this model for campaigns focused on leads, clicks, conversions, and the like. It’s much harder when it comes to brand; and even more complex when you have to attribute impact across multiple creative agencies that contribute to a campaign. Maybe the answer lies in setting one overall goal — e.g. uplift in unaided awareness — and equally attributing it to all partners?

Do you reward high performance or penalise low performance? It’s all well and good to tell an agency, “Hey, we didn’t hit the goal, so you only get paid x% of your fee.” The truth is, the Marketer has been equally responsible for the work that went out the door. So it’s much fairer to say, “Hey, we didn’t hit the goal, so you only get your base-level fee, not the bonuses for achieving and over-achieving. We need to see better for the next campaign, or we’ll have to consider changing partners.” Of course, one hopes the Marketer is also held accountable for the work…

There are brands that have done this well. And agencies that have broken the model entirely — Spring Marketing Capital springs to mind (couldn’t resist).

But regardless of the how, agencies need to recognise the goal they play in helping businesses grow. And, collectively and fearlessly, beat the drum for change.

It’s the only way they’ll become growing businesses themselves.

Exhibit C: Talent

It’s easy to boil the talent crisis down to one statement:

Advertising doesn’t pay well anymore.

It’s much harder to acknowledge the multiple issues making up the talent crisis.

Yes, pay is one. And unless agencies solve for Revenue, they’ll continue to bleed talent. We’ve seen so many great people leave the seemingly secure network agencies to start their own shops, or go client-side. They’re thriving. Earning way more than they used to, making smart (and valuable) exits and…

Operating without constraints. Over the years, I’ve had several conversations with agency leaders working on our business, that have boiled down to, “I wish I could [do xyz] but my agency network’s seniormost leadership won’t let me.” And for senior folks to be held in chains, to not serve their clients to the fullest, because of HoldCo constraints, is criminal.

So many of those that are left don’t want to be in advertising. This to me feels like the saddest part. I was having coffee with the Chief Creative Officer of one of India’s leading agencies recently. This CCO is a partner-in-crime turned friend, and someone I admire and respect deeply. Among the many things he brought up was the fact that advertising people tend to look down upon what they’re doing. And are constantly aspiring to something else.

I’ll paraphrase our discussion:

Creative people are struggling to adapt to this “social-first” world. Nobody’s excited about making Reels. Everyone still wants to do that long-form emotional film. But that kind of work just doesn’t work anymore — it’s incredibly hard to get right.

Worse, every creative still wants to make a feature film. They aren’t in love with the business of commercial creativity — they still see advertising creativity as a pure art form.

It’s made worse when you think about what we’re rewarding. The kind of work Cannes awards and celebrates. We’re incentivising the wrong thing altogether. And that, in turn, sends the wrong signals to marketers — making it harder for us to communicate the value we bring.

It’s inexcusable that advertising hasn’t addressed a talent crisis that’s been in the making for decades. And the writing’s on the wall. When I started out, we all aspired to be the next Balki, Piyush or Prasoon. Is there anyone in India today, 22 years on, that commands that same level of aspiration?

It’s going to take a couple of years for the dust to settle.

I can only wonder what the landscape will look like in 2027. What the industry buzz around Cannes will be. What Campaign Asia’s Agency Report Cards will show up.

Every industry goes through churn. Some businesses make it out the other side transformed, stronger and more adaptable. Others stagger out, a ghost of a once-glorious past.

I have no insight to offer on where advertising will end up. All I know is that it will not look the same as it does today.

Samit

That’s exactly half my career spent client-side, at one company — a far cry from what I’d imagined and planned when I set out.

Eleven years have passed in the blink of an eye. And yet, it could have all gone horribly wrong, right at the start. Not many people know this, but I came close to putting in my papers at least three times in that first year.

Looking back, what drove me to the brink of despair was the fundamental, often unspoken differences between the agency world I was so deeply familiar with, and the massive galaxy that’s Google.

And so I thought I’d reflect back upon that first year. And delve into the 10 things I wish someone had explained to me as a corporate naif, about those critical differences.

But there’s a twist.

1. The Calendar

a. Your calendar is important…one tool among many. It’s flexible and fluid, giving you the agility you need.

b. Your calendar dictates your existence…the non-negotiable OS. You quickly learn to be punctual.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

2. The Hierarchy

a. Titles can be unclear. Levels can be opaque. Understanding these take time and effort.

b. Titles often give a clear sense of role, level and remit. You generally know who does what.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

3. Ownership & Accountability

a) Ownership is highly individualised. You may not actually execute everything a project entails; but you are responsible to make sure it gets done.

b) Ownership is shared across different people. Each owner is ultimately accountable for their share of the project.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

4. Structure & Process

a) Reporting lines are clear. Your boss and skip boss are your key stakeholders and the only ones whose feedback matters.

b) Reporting lines are clear - however, your list of stakeholders is much broader, and often not obvious. Navigating the Global, Regional and Local teams is key.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

5. The Pace

a) Intense sprints driven by external factors. Adrenaline-fuelled. Highly exciting.

b) Marathon requiring sustained effort. Pace often dictated by internal processes. Highly exciting.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

6. Creativity

a) Big idea thinking is encouraged…but with a focus on driving impact on the world and value to the business.

b) Creativity is often about big, transformational ideas, and taking the world by surprise.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

7. The Vibe

a) Highly informal. What you see is often what you get.

b) Casual attire masks a more formal work etiquette.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

8. Performance & Advancement

a) Performance is tied directly to visible outcomes. Advancement feels more straightforward and linear. Feedback from others may not always factor in, though visibility and influence often do, especially at senior levels.

b) Performance is tied directly to visible outcomes as well as how one achieved them. Feedback from others is a key factor, as are visibility and influence at more senior levels. Advancement isn’t always linear.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

9. Communication & Decisions

a) Communication, especially upwards, is usually more formal, with thoughtful wording as one navigates stakeholders and sensitivities. Decisions involve building alignment across the org, using data to create strong rationales.

b) Communication can be incredibly direct, informal and blunt. Decision-making is usually quick, instinctive and driven by a few key people.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

10. Resources & Budget

a) Resourcing decisions are made more fluidly, often tied directly to current and projected cash flow in the business. A direct conversation with leadership is often all it takes to get what you need, though this has evolved significantly over the last few years.

b) Resourcing decisions involve formal planning cycles, with detailed business cases to justify ROI. Approvals from leadership and finance chains are required.

Which is Agency, which is Google?

The Answers

1. The Calendar
   a) Agency
   b) Google

2. The Hierarchy

   a) Google
   b) Agency

3. Ownership & Accountability
   a) Google
   b) Agency

4. Structure & Process
   a) Agency
   b) Google

5. The Pace

   a) Agency
   b) Google

6. Creativity

   a) Google
   b) Agency

7. The Vibe
   a) Agency
   b) Google

8. Performance & Advancement
   a) Agency
   b) Google

9. Communication & Decisions

   a) Google
   b) Agency

10. Resourcing & Budgets
    a) Agency
    b) Google

Hope you didn’t peek 😉 Share this post and your score on your LinkedIn for some good karma.

Samit

Drinks are circulating, but all attention is riveted to a 10-metre stretch of track laid out along the plush floor. At it’s end - a speed gun.

One by one, twenty Twitter influencers take a deep breath, get into their best sprinting crouch, and dash/jog/jog very slowly across the track.

The speed gun scores their effort. These bakers, brewers, lifestyle experts-turned-athletes experience the whole gamut of emotion. Triumph - often fleeting. Anguish. Despair. And, finally, envy - as the fastest amongst them are crowned.

For a few short hours, these twenty influencers have been transformed into Olympic-level athletes, pitting mind, body and soul into simply being the fastest on track.

The Puma #FaasTweetup that my team at Jack In The Box Worldwide executed was my first brush with true experiential marketing. And it’s stayed with me - and those who attended - ever since.

A key component of my Human-Centric Framework is novelty, and it’s linked to declining human happiness. In short, people are spending money to find moments of joy in their lives. As everyday drudgery wears on our minds, bodies and souls, we seek out experiences that are different, that take us out of our realities for just a moment or two, and make life worth living. That could take the form of a trip to the cinema, an amusement park, a Harry Potter experience, adventure sports, go-karting…just about anything we could do that’s fun and exciting.

That’s the opportunity experiential marketing gives us. To break routines, to build emotional connections, to create authentic analog experiences in an increasingly digital world.

I’m not suggesting that a branded experience is the solution to human unhappiness. Just that we as marketers have the unique opportunity to transport our audiences to a different universe, just for a moment or two. And win hearts, minds and wallets in the process.

Take the incredible Audible Sound Experience from SXSW 2024. They took us out of the conference and into a carnival of sound, celebrating audio storytelling. The piece de resistance: a giant yellow ferris wheel, complete with gondolas where you could enjoy stories from different genres.

Hot tip: you don’t need to build a carnival village. This approach - immersion into a new reality - can work at various scales. Here’s what the team did to promote the film The First Omen.

So what does it take to build a beautiful, memorable and highly shareworthy experience?

Architectural design firm Gensler conducted a two-year study that led them to develop The Five Steps To Immersive Engagement. They sought to understand how to drive and sustain meaningful engagement between communal spaces and people; to keep location, identity, ability and literacy in mind while designing; and how immersion creates conditions for meaningful engagement.

The Five Steps they propose are:

Step 1: Awareness. Make visitors aware that an experience is available to them. Help them realise that interaction is possible. The era of “if we build it, they will come” is passe. Marketers must intentionally craft an invitation - through direct outreach, signage, PR, Social, etc.

Step 2: Willingness. Help visitors decide that the experience is “for them”, and that they will participate. The opportunity to experience something must outweigh the execution - which means we must create visible hooks to draw them in.

Step 3: Connection. It’s critical to overcome the expectations people have, and exceed them. Think about what’s on offer - and how visitors might contribute to make it truly responsive and interactive. Onboard them well - guide them in how to experience it to the fullest.

Step 4: Investment. Prove the value to the participant. This creates motivation to stay engaged, because we’ve captured their imagination. Where possible, progressively add to the experience to encourage repeated visits. Seek meaningful feedback.

Step 5: Sharing. Great experiences are experienced by few, but seen by many. Make visitors want to share their experience widely - this helps extend the impact and creates self-reinforcing engagement loops.

The most famous example, which ticks all these boxes, is a project I had a privilege to contribute a (small) amount to.

Apart from these principles, Gensler share more about how marketers can raise the bar further. Some tips:

Include the audience on their terms. Can they see it? If not, can they hear it? If neither, can they feel it?

Think about the “Experience Mode” - it impacts how willing visitors are to engage. Think about whether your experience is a social space, an entertainment space, a discovery space. And whatever you choose, make it a destination, not something people will more likely pass through.

Diverse, inclusive programming builds trust and opens the door for engagement. Represent communities and cohorts well.

Creating psychologically safe spaces enables people to fully immerse themselves and contribute more. Whether it’s getting them to dance or share their data. Observing others feel safe can help with this.

Subtlety will most often be lost. Clear and immediate responsiveness drives sustained engagement.

Finally, community networks may be a key to engagement loops. Being mindful of a particular group can help drive a ripple effect. Remember, there are people just waiting to be invited in.

Knowing there are things we can do to really elevate immersive experiential marketing, why are marketing teams so cautious about doing more?

Simple.

Marketers are increasingly becoming familiar with developments in marketing science as propounded by Binet, Field, Sharp, Wood, et al. But there’s far less evidence-based study about the impact of experiential marketing on business. Despite several days of digging, using both Google Search and Gemini, I couldn’t find any credible research on the impact of experiential marketing on sales (apart from lead-gen and retail promotions) and brand.

The entertainment industry gets it instinctively though. Their job is to create cultural cachet - and having an experience swiftly go viral equates directly to word-of-mouth for cinema releases, video streams, album launches and more.

Measurement of new-age brand building continues to be a challenge. While I usually look for social conversations and press pickup, it’s hard to quantify the business impact of these metrics. Which in turn hampers investment.

But there’s one recurring thought I’ll leave you with.

This simple truth suggests that the true role of experiential marketing is to help people truly feel the brand. In a multisensory way that advertising simply can’t deliver. When done right, it has the potential to drive advocacy, induce trial and deepen loyalty.

Great campaigns grow brands by by creating memory structures.

Great experiential marketing grows brands by creating real memories.

That is the insight.

Samit

Then we began to prepare for the arrival of a whole new person in our home. And ran into the baby industry.

Suddenly, we found ourselves being pressured to buy:
- All kinds of strollers with all kinds of bells and whistles. From coffee cup holders for those long mom-baby walks or enough storage space for a two-week holiday in Europe.
- Sleep solutions designed to help your baby sleep brilliantly. From self-rocking cribs to bassinets that expanded as our baby grew to high-tech cribs with all kinds of sensors and an overhead camera so we could stream our sleeping baby to our devices 24x7.
- Furniture and accessories for literally everything. From a feeding pillow to a diaper-changing stand.
- Toys that promised rapid brain development. Active toys that whirred and moved. Passive toys that encouraged baby to whir and move.

The common thread across all of these? The implicit message that not buying what they were selling would somehow negatively impact your child. Their health, their happiness, even their potential to become a billionaire when they grow up.

Tl;dr:

What should have been a time of nothing but joy was dampened by worry and stressed-out Internet window shopping.

In other words - unhappiness.

The 2023 Gallup World Happiness Report suggested that human beings are the unhappiest we’ve ever been. Happiness seems to have been declining since 2021, and negativity peaked in 2023. It’s easy to brush this off - “We just lived through a pandemic, duh!” - but there’s more to it than that.

2023 saw the world in they eye of the perfect storm. We were exiting the pandemic; war raged in Europe and the Middle-East; economic uncertainty loomed large.

The 2024 Report suggests that negative emotions are on the upswing globally. As is, unfortunately, inequality of happiness, driven by generational and geographic factors. One thing that’s clear is that this isn’t just about the perfect storm noted in 2023. Lack of social support, loneliness, perceived corruption, constraints on freedom and health challenges have all contributed to deepening unhappiness.

The results of last week’s US Presidential Elections aren’t helping. The outpouring of grief, fear and frustration on social media has been unprecedented - arguably even more than when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. To be fair, there would have been a similar reaction from the other side of the aisle had Kamala Harris been elected; polarisation runs deep. Given how these elections impact the world, it’s no surprise that these feelings are going viral, accelerated by algorithms…and contributing to greater unhappiness that we’ll probably see reflected in the 2025 poll.

It’s kind of obvious to say that Unhappiness is no longer a fleeting thing - it’s Endemic.

A panel I attended at SXSW delved deeper into unhappiness, and its causes. The panelists represented different industries - fashion, food and fintech. And each of them was brutally honest about the contribution of brands/companies to negative emotions - particularly stress and fear.

I scribbled furious notes through the talk, and here they are:

Food: What we eat is affecting how we feel. It’s no secret we’re eating more processed food than ever before, which is disrupting our natural, healthy gut microbiomes. Dysregulated microbiomes lead to lower stress regulation, contributing to unhappiness. There’s too much food available that undermines our happiness at a large scale.

Work: Dissatisfaction at work is unreal - we’re going through a cycle of slower growth. Financial stress is high, which impacts worker peformance - a vicious cyle. The gig and freelance economies are growing, as workers at all levels seek greater control. With that control comes uncertainty - there are no more guraranteed monthly paychecks - leading to yet another vicious cycle of stress. Even full-time jobs are becoming more and more gig-ified. In the US, 1 in 3 people leave their jobs in the first 6 months. Globally, we’re changing jobs faster, inducing more stress and fear.

Fashion: Fashion has evolved beyond the “work wardrobe” and the “personal wardrobe”. Gone are the days when it was just that simple. Today we have the sports wardrobe, the airport wardrobe, the tourist wardrobe…and so many more. All of this adds more decision-making to our lives, leading to higher stress as we juggle more and more. Fashion used to sell confidence. Today, fashion is selling no more than plain survival.

The panelists were unanimous: brands can and should do better. Happiness is good for business. We’re spending more money than ever before on things that give us even fleeting moments of joy: be it ephemeral experiences, wellness, food and just about anything else we can think of. So if we’re able to pivot our businesses to bring true happiness to our customers, we’ll do even better.

So how do we do this?

I wish I had all the answers. But I do have some thought starters.

First, and foremost, change must begin at the top. If C-suite leaders can adapt their company’s mission and values to address Endemic Unhappiness, the business would have to adapt. Starting with changes in product strategy. I can already see what a few determined people are able to do to influence this change in certain categories.

As Marketers, we’ll need to think harder about how we position and promote our products and services. We’ll need to think about how our categories contribute to Endemic Unhappiness - and then flip that on its head. We can only do this if our product truly can make the world slightly happier - so let’s beware of “happy-washing”.

System1 research suggests that “positive emotions link to the brand build mental availability and propensity to buy in the future.” Ending our ads on a happy note, or creating content that sparks positive emotions, is probably a good place to begin. It kinda makes sense now that purpose-based advertising is on its way out, and humour is resurgent - who couldn’t use an extra laugh these days?

On a related note, I wonder whether this marks the end of FOMO-based advertising. Marketers love this approach to spur growth - in fact, the first S in the STEPPS Framework that I’m such a fan of stands for “Social Currency”. However, FOMO also adds to unhappiness, by heightening the feeling of not fitting in, leading to more stress as a response.

So where did we end up when it came to preparing for parenthood?

From being overwhelmed by FOMO and fear-based marketing that pushed us to spend more, we shifted towards being simple, minimalist and waste-conscious. And ended up buying less versus more. A philosophy that continues to serve us well.

That is the insight.

Samit

Then, sometime around 4 April, something began to show up in people’s social feeds. The phenomenon had begun in Korea that January, but it took the early days of the pandemic to become a global story. Everyone was doing it; everyone was experimenting with their own ways to make it; everyone was Instagramming it. Indonesia embraced it fully, with Singapore only a whit behind, India a mere #18. Searches for “how to make it” spiked between 12 and 18 April…convenient for us sleep-deprived new parents.

And then, suddenly, it started declining. Its popularity spiked again in October 2021, but then quickly declined and was confined to social media history.

You could say it was “Dalgoing, Dalgoing…Dalgona!”

But before it was Dalgone for good - yes, I’m going to unashamedly milk that one - it had become social media fodder for brands. Who saw this as the next new trend to jump on to.

But was it, really?

In a previous post, I’d written about how important it is to understand what impact your human’s mindset and behaviour on a daily, weekly, monthly or even lifelong basis. Understanding the “Trending → Trends → Culture” model is key.

It’s easy to look at Dalgona coffee as a great trend. Viewed in isolation, it seems to fit. Social feeds were packed with pictures of peoples’ brews and variations. Search trends surged. News media used it to bring a ray of sunshine to a terrible moment for humanity.

You could forgive brands for jumping on to the bandwagon.

But there was something we were all missing.

The screenshot above is what Google Search trends around Dalgona coffee have looked like over the last 5 years.

In isolation.

Because there was something else spiking at almost exactly the same time.

#sourdough and #bananabread were trending topic that brands were quick to latch on to.

But now step back, put on your consumer planning hat and ask yourself…

Viewed together, and in the context of the pandemic, Dalgona coffee, sourdough bread and banana bread were merely symptoms of something deeper. They helped us bond over shared interests and recipes, and helped us feel connected. For those fleeting moments each day, we no longer felt as isolated as we were.

Dalgona coffee, sourdough bread and banana bread were Trending.
But the real Trend was that hunt for community, during the isolation forced on humanity by COVID-19.

There are several examples of how Trending topics are mere symptoms of deeper Trends.

#girlmath is a Trending symptom of a larger Trend around GenZ’s search for financial independence.

The plant-based food movement is a Trending symptom of a larger Trend towards sustainability and wellness.

#cottagecore is a Trending symptom of a Trend towards escaping the complexities and anxieties of modern life.

The list goes on.

At some point, Trends grow so deep-rooted, so everyday, that they simply become part of culture.

Who amongst us didn’t post using #wfh #wfhlife, #remotework and #homeoffice?
Who amongst us didn’t post about being interrupted by kids or pets?
Or about speaking on mute?
Or about going to work in our pyjamas?

Today, WFH has tipped over and become part of Culture. So smoothly, seamlessly and all but unnoticed. It’s something we now expect and take for granted.

You also know something’s part of Culture when a Culture War begins around it. Amazon’s (IMO, rather short-sighted) move to go back to 5 days in office is probably the biggest acknowledgement of how work culture has changed.

So how do you use Trending, Trends and Culture differently in your Marketing strategy?

Here’s one approach that’s (so far) worked for me:

• Trending topics are for short-term engagement. Tap into the theme, drive some (relevant) engagement, exit. Where possible, keep this to Social.

• Trends can fall into two types.

  • Repetitive trends you can predict will drive engagement. Use these to drive short-term relevant engagement, knowing that this is an area you can commit to for the long term. Sport (tournaments, critical games) and entertainment (concerts, movies) are good examples of such trends you can activate through Social or even integrated campaigns.

  • Deeper trends that you can leverage for short-term sales activation or long-term brand building, at whatever scale is right for the brand.

• Culture is something you leverage to build your brand. It’s something you want your brand to be deeply associated with, and repeat over the long-term, at scale.

Like most short-term focused marketing activities, a Trending topic is easy to get into and leverage.

But unless you’ve gone deeper to understand and leverage the larger Trend it taps into, and the Culture it could become, your brand will stay stuck in a vicious cycle of driving short-term engagement, and eventually fall by the wayside.

That is the insight.

Samit

There we were. Four clients, including their GM Marketing. And about eight of us from the agency.

I remember Account Management taking about a thirty minutes to set up the business context in great detail, demonstrating their understanding of the category, competition and brand. Planning took over, going into qualitative and quantitative research, leading up to the core consumer insight. That took an hour. A coffee break, and then my boss took over for over an hour, leading the client through a creative presentation spanning the Big Idea, TV, print, OOH, radio and guerilla. Throwing to my art partner and myself at key moments.

I remember enacting the film using the GM and his baby-bald head as my canvas. He was a sport, and much laughter ensued.

And then the discussion and dissection began. Continuing over a working lunch. Until we arrived at clear alignment, feedback and next steps.

That five-hour meeting led to one of my favourite pieces of work (built on the principle that when a benefit wasn’t claimable, distinctiveness was what mattered, but I digress) and yet another highly successful campaign for Johnson’s baby by Lowe Lintas.

Back in the day, such meetings weren’t unusual. We’d do this for almost every campaign, for almost every client. Spending the better part of a day working towards marketing success.

And that got me thinking - are we doing enough of this today?

Over the weekend, I posted a straw poll on LinkedIn, asking folks who work at agencies a simple question:

How much time do you generally get with your clients for a a campaign/event presentation (creative, strategy or media)?

The (not surprising) response:

• 8% said they get between 15 and 30 minutes.

• 78% said they get between 30 and 60 minutes.

• Only 14% of said they get more than 60 minutes.

Now, here’s a fact to put this into context.

Depending upon which study you read, you’ll realise that 55-70% of your campaign’s creative success depends upon the…creative work itself.

Not product.
Not pricing.
Not distribution.
Just.
Sheer.
Fucking.
Creative.

Sit back and let that sink in a minute.

The creative work you and your agency will produce will drive the lion’s share of your campaign’s success. And, increasingly, Marketers are spending less and less time on this critical aspect.

From what I’ve gathered from other conversations, this goes beyond just the time spent on presentations. But into writing strong briefs as well.

Has marketing lost some of its rigour?

The world has changed significantly since 2007, when I gave my client a head massage to sell him an ad. Speed-to-market has become more important. CMOs are spending more and more time trying to justify Marketing to CFOs. Budgets have tightened up. Stakeholder management, influencing and leadership in a fast-changing world are taking up more and more bandwidth.

Separately, to use a quote from R. Balki: “Everyone’s in Account Management.” The lines between who handles client relationships have blurred, resulting in less bureaucracy - with some potential for broken information flow on the agency side.

So, in the absence of time and in the face of change, what does it take to enable Marketing success?

A strong system: Built around the right people, on a foundation of mutual trust, enabling fast information flow, designed to reduce red tape.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned.

A System of People

Advertising is a people business.

It’s easy to trust an institution. No one person is greater than the whole, right?

Well…not always.

Picking your agency partner is similar to picking your life partner, in that it all comes down to…chemistry.

<aside>
💡 Chemistry: The intense feelings of connection, passion and romance that people in relationships share. A complex mix of feelings, interests and interactions that can make people feel drawn to each other.
</aside>

You can’t have that chemistry with all the thirty-odd people who’ll end up servicing a reasonably large account. Three to four at best, in my experience.

So your first job is to find the three or four people you can have chemistry with. There are a few personas I look for:

• The Fixer: Your go-to person to solve anything - from clogged pipes to creaky systems. The one who gets you, your business and your personal goals…and organises the agency to deliver. This could be your VP of Account Management…but I’ve also had this relationship with my agencies’ CCOs and Deputy CEOs.

• The Muse: Ideally the senior creative leader - think CCO or ECD. This is the person who you can inspire with your vision for the brand (for fuck’s sake, have a vision for the brand!), and who will inspire their teams in turn. When 💩 has hit the fan, they’re the ones who step in and deliver that bit of genius, saving your butt and delivering the work you needed.

• The Partner-In-Crime: The CD or ECD working on your brief. The one you pick up the phone on to bounce harebrained ideas off. The one who calls you to sense-check an idea their team has come up with. With complete trust in each other, and a shared purpose.

If you’ve found these people and cultivated them, then, more often than not, information will be shared; problems will be solved; things will move faster.

But when one or more of them up and leave, things break. Often affecting the overall relationship. It’s (sadly) happened to me more times than I can count.

So if I’ve learned one thing from all of that, it is to follow good people.

A System of Teams

Your work is only as good as the team that comes together to do it.

It’s easy for an agency to promise 20 people on your brief. Much harder for them to promise the right people on your brief.

An example: If you’re doing a Social campaign, do you need a traditional account planner on the team?

Having three people with the wrong skills just makes it three times tougher to get great work out.

So, what I’ve learned to do is focus on casting. Ensuring the right skills and experience are staffed against our projects.

A System For Partnership

If a team were responsible for 70% of your business objectives, you’d probably want to treat them well, right?

Unfortunately, client-agency relationships have (largely) shifted to treating agencies like vendors. A vendor mindset fosters a transactional relationship. It’s all about giving out a brief, receiving some assets, and paying a fee.

The outcome? A disengaged agency, and steadily declining long-term effectiveness.

A good agency has a vested interest in your success. Our longest-serving and most trusted agency partners grew their reputation and Google business with every win they delivered for us. And won significant external new business on the back of the work they did for us.

The core of our relationship has been mutual respect and trust. I choose to be open and transparent with them from the start. They know (almost) as much as we do about the business context; and everything about the constraints we face.

We treat our agencies as an extension of my team. So, we try to be tough, yet fair with them; credit them when we win; and take the bullets when we lose.

We’ve built systems to enable this. An annual Agency Day at the start of the year, to bring our partners up-to-speed on annual marketing plans. A cadence of scheduled catch-ups with senior leaders. An office hours intended exclusively for partners to get time with me when they wish, for an agenda of their choosing. Regular business discussions. A close partnership with our central Agency Management team to keep our agencies up-to-speed on all things Google. And the (less frequent than I’d like) celebrations of good work.

Our best partners have grown to be part of our team, and give more than 100% every time we turn to them.

A System For Getting Things Done

Research suggests that traffic moves faster through traffic circles than traffic lights.

The problem is that systems - client and agency-side - are designed to serve as traffic lights. Hierarchical and risk-averse.

I’ve lost track of the number of days we’ve lost when, after weeks of work, a senior leader at one side has asked for the work to be changed, or completely scrapped, because they weren’t on-board.

So, part of the Brand Manager’s job is to build systems (on the client side) and adapt systems (on the agency side) to maximise the time available.

The simple solve on the agency side is to staff the working team with the appropriate level of leadership time. And empower this “C-Level minus 1 or 2” team to make decisions, with all the accountability that brings.

Let’s face it, you’re not going to need your CCO on every brief. Just the biggest ones. At those times, you’ll be grateful for the additional scrutiny. But not when all you need is a couple of Reels explaining the new feature that just launched yesterday.

The solve on the client side is tougher.

1. Identify your key decision-maker(s) early on. Ideally no more than two people. Best case, one. This is going to be an incredibly hard battle to fight - but the most critical.

2. Build a team-wide workflow for creative approval. Break down campaign reviews into smaller pieces to accommodate busy calendars. Make it clear at what stage work needs to come in, to whom, in what form, with what context. Set those meetings up with a regular cadence, making sure your decision-makers are in the room.

3. Review work upstream, and early, at every stage. From Marketing strategy to brief to idea to assets. This (seemingly) high investment in upstream checks will deliver returns as you get closer to the launch date.

4. Break the norms of the client-agency relationship. Collaborate. Serve as thought partners to your agencies, run working sessions and occasionally organise a hothouse to brainstorm ideas together.

You’ll find that your work won’t get progressively worse and risk-averse; that you and your team, as well as your agencies, won’t get burnt out; and that you can save money on agency hours over the medium-to-long term.

It’s easy to believe that a Brand Manager’s job is about brand custodianship and creativity.

The secret superpower, however - the one that nobody thinks about or talks about ever - is the ability to organise.

That is the insight.

Samit

Balki was best known for his famous disdain of creative awards, and his drive and motivation to do work that worked; that built great, long-lasting brands; that brought in revenue for his clients and his agency.

His obsession - and that of his lieutenants - was to cut through the clutter. He’d do that with work that was rooted in culture, specific to the category, specific to the audience and highly populist. He was unrestricted by the history and “norms” of advertising, and had absolutely no fear of cringe or cliche.

As long as it sold.

And entertained while doing so.

That ethos, has influenced me deeply. And it came to mind strongly some time ago, when I read about this study in AdWeek:

I mean…

The formula most of these ads followed?

I can only imagine Balki’s reaction to the work the study covered.

I’ve spent 95% of my career working on B2C marketing; about 4% on Policy marketing; and just about 1% on B2B marketing. (Obviously this excludes time spent on Internal Marketing, if you know what I mean.)

And so I wondered - could the Human-Centric Approach I’d previously written about apply to B2B Marketing as well as B2C?

(If you haven’t read my previous post, I suggest you do and then come back to this one.)

So I spent some time digging through great B2B creative work, and thinking about what made it great. Here goes.

Umault - Possessed

Distinctive, memorable…and two-pronged cultural relevance: the horror movie cues and a clear call out to the community of passionate B2B marketers.

Spoiler alert: As I dug deeper, I also noticed (and read about) a trend towards using celebs the way consumer marketing would. That’ll become more evident as you read further.

Heineken - Pub Museums

I loved this work because it had strong customer-centricity (the customer being the pub), a strong sense of community (pub owners), built for headlines and a delightful experience. And it drove impact by doing good - a gold star in my book.

Spotify - Spreadbeats

I’ve written about Spreadbeats before. This campaign has a high cultural relevance, deep customer-centricity and a surprising experience that drives sharing. And a level of execution that I cannot yet fathom.

Heinz - Ketchup Fraud

This one scores on so many levels. It picked up something that was trending, worked to cement the brands’ place in food culture, drove headlines, and created a great flywheel for success.

Trucker Napp

This was work rooted in strong consumer insight, centred around a delightful experience, targeted at a community. And drove business results by doing good for its core constituency.

Crowdstrike - Troy

This was an idea just waiting to be done. Fantastic cultural relevance, highly memorable. There’s always room for a great 30 second commercial in the world of Modern Marketing.

Matomo - Googleheimer

(Disclaimer: I do not subscribe to the views of this advertiser.)

But damn, this is good advertising! Massive cultural relevance, rooted in the unhappiness of confused web analytics professionals and built for headlines, with its direct attack on an industry leader.

Adobe - Click, Baby, Click

And, finally, the ad voted as the world’s greatest B2B commercial. I loved this for its simple, powerful insight and sheer shareworthiness.

So, to conclude, it’s clear to me that the Human-Centric Approach certainly applies to B2B Marketing.

So what went wrong with all those B2B ads that System1 studied?

I suspect the problem lay in the brief. That the audience those marketers sought to target was the business…when it should have been the human behind it.

That is the insight.

B2H Marketing, anyone?

Samit

It’s the middle of the day. A young man is going about his business in the office, absent-mindedly picking his teeth, when we hear a loud squawk.

A chicken has appeared on his head.

Through the day, it stays there. While he’s at work, at play, at rest. Looking around, squawking every now and then. Like it belongs.

Then, a voiceover kicks in.

“Aksar daant mein atka khaana dimaag mein atka jaata hai.”

(”Often, the food that’s stuck in your teeth gets stuck in your mind.”)

And goes on to explain how Pepsodent’s Flexipic “toothbrush with toothpick” knocks out food stuck between teeth. Cut to product demo…and voila! The chicken disappears at that very instant.

Now that is an insight!

As a young copywriter at Lowe+Partners (now MullenLowe Lintas), I was taught that the best work we could ever do was rooted in deep consumer insight.

“The insight - the unthought known,” as expert planners put it. “The undeniable truth that everyone knows, but seldom thinks of. The truth, that once surfaced, has its audience nodding their heads, asserting its veracity.”

The ad for Pepsodent Flexipic that I described above, wonderfully crafted by Shriram Iyer of Lowe+Partners, still stands out to me as one of the finest examples of the unthought known. Even nigh on two decades later.

It broke the clutter, sold a bunch of product and won us a bunch of Effies (if memory serves me right).

It also inspired me to begin tackling every brief by putting myself into my consumer’s shoes, and looking for a powerful insight to build my work on.

I didn’t always succeed; but when I did, the end outcome was really, really good.

Times, however, are changing.

The advertising we grew up consuming - and, indeed, creating - is less and less relevant today.

Trust in advertising has been on the decline for a long time now. Enough has been written about this subject, by smarter people than me, that I don’t need to waste your time repeating all the factors that have contributed to this.

But I will call out one specific conclusion I’ve come to:

Humanity, Post-Covid, is a different species altogether. As of this writing, we’re staggering drunkenly from one crisis to another. The pandemic itself; the subsequent economic fallout; the resulting mental health crises; increasing polarisation - religious, political and racial; Russia’s unhinged invasion of Ukraine; further economic meltdowns; Hamas's inhuman attack on Israel and Israel’s equally inhuman response; layoffs everywhere; the AI explosion; the list seems unending.

As the relationship between people and brands changes irrevocably, as brands come under the brightest sunlight they’ve ever been exposed to, people are becoming more discerning about the brands they choose.

And choosing brands that look at their whole context, not just their buying context.

With that, the consumer insight becomes just one window into a person’s life, and just one route to engage with them, rather than the only one.

At SXSW earlier this year, I heard from a variety of brands and agencies on how the mental model of a consumer seems to be evolving rather rapidly. I’ve since synthesised this into a model I’m beginning to put to use in our work.

Welcome to the Human-Centric era.

What does it mean to look at your audience with a Human-Centric approach?

First, it doesn’t mean the Consumer Insight is dead. It just means that you don’t stop thinking once you’ve found a powerful insight.

Second, it means you need to look at what impacts your human’s mindset and behaviour on a daily, weekly, monthly or even lifelong basis. I call this the “Trending→Trends→Culture” model.

• Things that are Trending have short-term influence…and could be symptoms of larger…

• Trends. These are mindsets and behaviours that have been established for some time now, and show up in different ways. At some point, the most long-lived trends might tip over into…

• Culture. And become part of the everyday, the way things are always done, taken for granted and understood by all.

Third, it means you need to think about making your human happier. Gallup’s Happiness Study shows that we’re the unhappiest we’ve ever been. (Surprise, surprise.) People are spending more time and money than ever before to find joy. And that’s an opportunity to tap into.

Fourth, it means that you need to think about building experiences that deliver happiness and novelty. You need to think beyond ads, beyond social, beyond film, to create immersive, rewarding, multi-channel experiences that help build relationships with our audiences.

Fifth, it means that you need to step back and rethink cultural relevance. This has shifted over the last decade. Cultural relevance today isn’t just about being seen as cool and desirable, or connecting to pop culture. It’s about understanding your audience’s values and beliefs, and aligning closely to those, fostering community and fandom.

Sixth, you need to start thinking about building for headlines, not conversions. Authenticity, surprise and delight need to become your buzzwords. Real people + real actions = headlines.

And, finally, you need to start thinking of yourself as a content creator and distributor. The era of the 30 second ad is swiftly passing by. We need to find ways to create content at scale and get it out to all our audiences, in the formats, languages and channels that they’d like us to.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people recently, it’s this:

People are tired of being looked at merely as buyers. As mindshare to be gained, as prospects to be mined. The last thing that a human being needs today is to be treated like just another wallet to be opened.

The faster we marketers make that shift in thinking, the more relevant we’ll remain.

That is the insight.

I’m going on summer break later this week. What Is An Insight? will return late August, with a deeper dive into each facet of this model. Miss me, ok?

Samit

I was chatting with a senior ad industry leader in India last Friday. This gentleman knows a thing or two about running industry festivals, owning some of the largest such properties in the country and running them successfully for years. Naturally, our discussion gravitated to Cannes.

His view (and I paraphrase):

I couldn’t agree more.

I was at SXSW earlier this year, attending sessions on Advertising, Design, Brand Experience, Creator Economy and AI. Every panel and keynote was crammed to bursting with young professionals. The average age seemed much lower than what I experienced in my first (and only, so far) visit to Cannes a few years ago.

There’s one reason for C-level agency leadership to attend Cannes, and it isn’t networking, job interviews or client pitches.

It’s about getting the global industry together to openly, transparently and constructively discuss where the industry is and how we might collectively transform it to overcome the challenges it faces. And find a way to thrive, not just survive, in the years to come.

But we all know that’s a pipe dream.

Until then, if you’d like to truly learn and build your skills, visit SXSW. And just sign up for a Love The Work account to stay in touch with the work that’s being discussed at Cannes.

We now move on to our regularly scheduled programming.

Creative Strategy: KPN - A Piece of Me

Customer-centric? ✅. The campaign latched on to a very real problem and unmet need of young people. It does a great job of showcasing the very real challenges that young people face when their nudes are forwarded by the original recipient.

Culturally relevant? ✅. Same as above.

Gets noticed? 🤔. This is a good story, if a bit predictable. Well written, well told. But I’m not sure what here would make me want to share - or even hold my attention as I swipe through my feed.

Measurable results? ❌. None mentioned.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. Apart from not proving impact, I don’t know that the work did the best possible job of keeping me engaged or making me want to share. As I reflect further, this feels more like an ad than the kind of work we need to be doing to cut through.

Innovation: KVI Brave Fund - Voice 2 Diabetes

I’m not going to evaluate this one - it’s a product, not a campaign. And an incredible one at that.

Luxury & Lifestyle: Loewe - Loewe x Suna Fujita

I’ll skip this one too, for similar reasons.

Glass Lion For Change: Unilever - Transition Body Lotion

Customer-centric? ✅. Oh my God, yes!

Culturally relevant? ✅. Who hasn’t been to Thailand and remarked on its large transgender population? This idea is truly rooted in culture and community.

Gets noticed? ✅.

Measurable results? 🤔. So far, the numbers seem all about reach. But I love that the client wants to keep this on shelves forever - so it feels like they’ve got the right input metrics.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. Not a doubt in my mind about this. Fabulous work by the Vaseline and Ogilvy teams!

Sustainable Development Goals: Renault - Cars To Work

Customer-centric? ✅. What an insight! What a terrific insight! I can almost see someone connecting the data dots to the human ones. Take a bow, just for this.

Culturally relevant? ✅. There’s a community here that Renault empowered with this programme. And potentially turned into fans.

Gets noticed? ❌. I don’t see how Renault might have spread the word about this initiative.

Measurable results? ❌. None to speak of.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. It’s a damned clever way to sell cars, though!

The Dan Wieden Titanium: DoorDash - All The Ads

Campaign details

Customer-centric? ✅. See product on TV, want product on TV, DoorDash product on TV.

Culturally relevant? ✅. DoorDash showed up during the biggest cultural moment in the US and totally owned the marketing.

Gets noticed? ✅. Duh.

Measurable results? 🤔. I read elsewhere that the campaign earned the brand nearly 12B impressions, but that’s about all I could find.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. It’s a bit of a no-brainer, actually. I do expect the work to show up in the Cannes Creative Effectiveness category next year.

And with that, this series is done.

I’m kind of sad as I reach the end - I had one more rant about Cannes Lions written out in my mind.

But then again, there’s always another newsletter for that!

After what seems like quite a sprint over the last 2-odd weeks, I’m going to give my weary keyboard a bit of a rest. See you in your inboxes, a week from now.

Samit

The past few days have been packed with interesting conversation and interesting reading about Modern Marketing. A few thoughts:

• Modern Marketing still feels like an ambiguous area. The majority of people I spoke with accepted the parameters I defined for this series without a second thought. For the most part, they just seemed relieved that somebody they see as an expert is thinking about it, so they don’t have to.

• Measurement is still an area of worry. It’s hard for most marketers to convince their CFOs that what they’re able to measure does add up to incremental impact. The jury is still out here, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to connect work that’s largely social-first to business impact. I find Avinash Kaushik’s newsletter good food for thought if you’d like to chart your own path. Ideas on what metrics we could adopt, most welcome.

• I’m about a quarter of the way through Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book, Day Trading Attention. GaryVee has inspired much of my thinking in the last couple of months - particularly around cohort-driven marketing and flipping the script on how to build TV commercials out of social data.

And now, on to the work.

Creative B2B: JCDecaux - Meet Marina Prieto

Customer-centric? 🤔. I’m not entirely convinced. It’s not clear to me why spends declined. However, the results at the end suggested that building high-level awareness for subway advertising worked. Was it the right insight? Or did the sheer ubiquity of the medium work? Or

Culturally relevant? ✅. People are always looking for interesting social accounts to follow. By creating intrigue around Marina Prieto, the team created a cultural artifact that powered their campaign.

Gets noticed? ✅. You can’t just credit the sheer ubiquity of the medium did the trick here. The creative itself was designed to draw eyeballs and drive attention and sharing. Which makes me wonder - was the decline in subway media buys down to poor creative that didn’t drive the results clients had hoped for?

Measurable results? ✅.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. It’s good to see B2B brands finding engaging ways to sell. On an aside though, this should never have won at Cannes. It’s a straight rip-off from Neil French’s iconic XO Beer campaign, which had the same brief, just for print. Poor form by the jury, IMHO.

Creative Data: MasterCard - Room For Everyone

Customer-centric? ❌. I can’t imagine the hardship and heartbreak that Ukrainian refugees are facing. But despite how clever the use of data in this work is, it isn’t born from a strong insight or need - it’s opportunistic and superficial.

Culturally relevant? ❌. Again, MasterCard seem to have jumped on to a global issue without having any real justification. I don’t see them providing low-cost business loans or upskilling programmes to refugees, for example, that justifies their participation in this conversation. This is wokewashing all over again.

Gets noticed? ❌. Nope.

Measurable results? ❌. Nope, nope, nope.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. I still have a few “nopes” left in my keyboard. Far from Modern Marketing, this feels scammy and opportunistic. And a great example of when not to stand up for an issue.

Direct: Xbox - The Everyday Tactician

I covered this campaign in Part 3 of my series. So far, it’s the only campaign I’ve reviewed that I wish I’d done.

Media: Mercado Libre - Handshake Hunt

Customer-centric? ✅. You don’t always need to struggle to find a need - often, the simplest one is good enough to build on.

Culturally relevant? ✅. The team took the world’s biggest shopping moment, one that’s now grown to become a global cultural phenomenon and not just a commercial one.

Gets noticed? ✅. While large moments are tricky given the competition to achieve a high SOV, Handshake Hunt delivered that in spades.

Measurable results? ✅. Great earned media. Sales up. Stock price up. I bet the team were laughing all the way to the bank.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. And a beautiful example of it.

PR: Specsavers - The Misheard Version

I covered this in Part 1, and, to put it succinctly, am a huge fan.

If you’ve enjoyed this series, please do share with anyone who you think might benefit from this analysis. Or anyone that might have an opinion 😉

Have a good weekend, and see you for Part 5 and 6 (the last two) next week.

Samit

Controversy erupted last week about the awarding of the Print & Publishing Grand Prix to Coca-Cola’s “Recycle Me” campaign by Ogilvy New York. Critics, including marketers and climate activists, have accused the Festival of “rewarding greenwashing”, and “contributing to a growing mistrust of the awards overal”.

The Jury President, John Raul Ferero, predictably, continues to back his jury’s choice, offering arguments centred purely on the “creativity” of the work rather than considering its broader role on the business and society.

Adweek’s Kathryn Lundstrom has the full story, including some pretty gory details on Coca-Cola’s “progress” on sustainability. But those who’d read Part 2 of my series would remember my view on the work. Specifically that the campaign lacks customer-centricity, shifting the onus on sustainability to the customer while continuing to be the world’s largest plastic polluter.

For those of us who weep at the ad industry’s downward spiral, it’s far from encouraging to hear well-known senior creatives operate with a narrow view of work. Recently, Sir John Hegarty applauded Apple’s infamous Crush ad for “getting noticed”, completely ignoring the wider ramifications it hints at, as the world undergoes its third Internet revolution.

As long as Cannes Lions continues to perpetuate advertising’s cycle of rewarding work - and the people who build it - on the insular basis of pure “creativity” - the industry will continue to spiral.

And I will continue to weep for the industry I love.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Entertainment x Gaming: Xbox - The Everyday Tactician

Customer-centric? ✅. Fuck, yes! Take the user base, that passionate Xbox x Football community, and bring them into the real world. What a brilliant way to tap into fandom and community. Take a bow, you absolute geniuses!

Cultural relevance? ✅. Take the world’s greatest sport - the subject of a recent, highly acclaimed streaming series - and build something incredible around it? Another “Fuck, yes!”

Gets noticed? ✅. How could it not?

Measurable results? ✅. Earned media. Increase in gamers. The most-played football manager game ever.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. Time for one last “Fuck, yes!” and I’m done. This is one campaign I wish I’d done.

Entertainment Lions x Music: Diageo- Errata at 88

Customer-centric? ✅. Sometimes, great campaigns pick up on insights that customers themselves hadn’t thought of. The results show this is one such example.

Cultural relevance? ✅. Undeniably so.

Gets noticed? ✅.

Measurable results? ❌. The media coverage they display in the case study makes exactly zero mentions of the brand - it’s all about Alaide. The web results are all about her too (rightly). The campaign worked for her. But the impact on Johnny Walker is unclear - the one business metric they mention feels a bit wishy-washy.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. The work ticked the boxes on idea and execution. But without meaningful results, it’s not good enough.

Entertainment x Sport: Orange - Women’s Football

Customer-centric? ✅. Beautiful insight into what holds people back from watching most women’s sports.

Culturally relevant? ✅. Again, tapping into the world’s most-watched sport, just a few weeks before the Women’s World Cup.

Gets noticed? ✅. Yes. The earned media coverage, 200M organic views…it all adds up.

Measurable results? ✅. The campaign clearly drove more attention for the women’s game…and thus for the sponsor.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. Mais oui!

Film Craft: Hornbach - The Square Meter

This one was awarded purely for its craft, so I’ll skip the analysis. But I just had to share it because it’s absolutely gorgeous and totally deserved that Lion.

Industry Craft: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - The 100th Edition

While this is a craft award too, I will spend a moment analysing it. For reasons that will become clear as you read.

Customer-centric? ✅. Continuing the newspaper’s long-running tradition of inspiring its readers through the world’s icons, at a critical moment in German politics.

Culturally relevant? ✅. By default.

Gets noticed? ✅. The distribution and conversation potential for this kind of an idea is baked in.

Measurable results? ❌. The goal of the work was to inspire readers to remain informed and proactive in the face of historical and contemporary challenges (AdsofTheWorld). But they showed no way to measure that.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. Sadly, no. The work is great. But the impact is unclear.

We have three more editions to go, and I hope to close out this series by next week, and get back to my planned publishing schedule after that. See you in your inbox, later this week.

Samit

Welcome to Part 2 of a (previously unplanned) series of Modern Marketing takes on Grand Prix winning work from Cannes. (Part 1 here, ICMYI.)

As I reflected on Part 1, I realised that my choice of Modern Marketing parameters and, indeed, my resulting evaluation of the work, mirrors the kind of work I want to do. (If any of my agency partners are reading this, take the hint 😉)

So…why these particular parameters?

Customer-centricity: This should be the most obvious one. If our work as marketers needs to lodge in our customer’s mind, we need to find a way in. We need a deep understanding of our customer - quantitative and qualitative - to help us get there.

Cultural relevance: I picked this because I believe that’s the opportunity we’ve forgotten as marketers, and are only now beginning to remember. I’ve had a few pieces of work in my career resonate this way - the original Jaago Re series, the campaign for Why This Kolaveri Di, #LookBeforeYouLeave and #IniRamadanKita come to mind. Each of these live on rent-free in people’s heads, multiplying the effect of the initial campaign.

Shareworthiness: The best work in the world is stuff that becomes part of dinner table conversation and Whatsapp forwards. It gets an earned media boost that multiplies reach and frequency beyond what your paid spends have purchased. And, in this economic climate, that’s a huge win.

Measurable results: Brutally simple and clear. I come from a school of advertising that believes our job is to persuade and drive business results, not amaze people with how clever we are. This is the biggest issue I have with Cannes - the industry seems to be rewarding work without consideration of the results it drove. And hence, it’s impossible for me to take Cannes completely seriously. Especially in this economic climate.

There. I feel better having got that off my chest. On to the work.

Pharma: Siemens Healthineers - Magnetic Stories

Customer-centric? ✅. Definitely. I love that this group noticed how kids react in an MRI, and sought to build a real solution to address this.

Cultural relevance? ❌. The work is clear about who it targets, but it certainly doesn’t bring alive a sense of community or embed itself into culture.

Gets noticed? ❌. Nothing in the case study suggests that this drove earned media.

Measurable results? ❌. This was a pilot. The client talks about how this will roll out to “millions of MRIs” worldwide due to the “success” of the pilot. It’s unclear what success meant.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. Primarily because this isn’t marketing - it’s product. What they did to build awareness and drive sales remains unclear.

Print & Publishing: Coca-Cola - Recycle Me

Customer-centric? ❌. It bothers me that Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest plastic polluters, is shifting the onus for cleaning up to the customer.

Cultural relevance? ❌. This one’s not going to get into pop culture. Neither does it foster community.

Gets noticed? ❌. To be frank, it took a video to explain the idea. The day of “build it and they will come” has passed. I’d really like to understand how many customers got the message in a jiffy - there’s no way I’d be standing around an outdoor installation trying to decipher it. Even if it were in Times Square.

Measurable results? ❌. Enough said.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. I’d really like to see the brief on this. Right now, this reeks of scam - made to win awards versus driving meaningful outcomes.

Design: Cemento Sol - Sightwalks

Customer-centric? ✅. A very clear target audience and a very strongly identified need.

Cultural relevance? 🤔. I’m unsure about this. Thoughts?

Gets noticed? ✅. The first part of the video had me thinking “Scam!” And then they spoke about creating a training programme to educate people on how to use these Sightwalks; and even had the mayor inaugurate it. Leading to good earned media.

Measurable results? ✅. While a pilot, the impact was clear - 75K square metres of Sightwalks installed. I questioned the “people impacted” number - but I can live with it.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. Yes. While the award is for the product, the way the team developed a programme and engaged with elected leaders shows intent to scale and depth of thought.

Digital Craft: Spotify - Spreadbeats

Customer-centric? ✅. Heck yeah! The observation that media planners pretty much live insight spreadsheets working on media plans let the team to develop an idea that I still can’t wrap my head around. The message at the end connects the dots seamlessly.

Cultural relevance? ✅. By default, almost anything Spotify does is culturally relevant. Spreadbeats is no different. The track was created by Coachella performer John Summit - who I personally know nothing about - but that’s just another way into cultural stardom.

Gets noticed? ✅. Shareworthiness is baked into this idea. Ask yourself - if you received this, wouldn’t you want to forward it to everybody you knew?

Measurable results? ❌. The work is recent - results are yet to be seen.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. Definitely. While results are pending, the work ticks all the boxes. I love to see brilliant B2B work, and this is God Mode stuff.

Entertainment: Whatsapp - We Are Ayenda

Customer-centric? ✅.

Cultural relevance? ✅.

Gets noticed? ✅.

Measurable results? ❌. Not mentioned in the case study, though I’m willing to wager a few bucks that it moved the needle on brand perception, as well as raised awareness of what’s going on in Afghanistan.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. Definitely. This is storytelling at its finest - powerful and engaging. Enough said.

Part 3 should hit your inbox early next week. In the meanwhile, I look forward to your thoughts and discussions. Have a great weekend!

Samit

I’ve always approached Cannes Lions with a healthy dose of scepticism. Tempered with a dash of hypocrisy.

Healthy scepticism because of:

• How the industry seems to spend those five days patting itself on the back, without really addressing the challenges that it faces. The amount of money spent to participate is a good indicator of warped priorities. This seemed to be the case this year too.

• The amount of scam work still being entered and awarded. Our industry is about applying creativity to drive commercial outcomes, not creativity for creativity’s sake. A message that still doesn’t seem to have landed, even in this economic climate.

Hypocrisy because if I were to score at Cannes, I’d be patting myself on the back too 🤷‍♂️

But this post series isn’t intended to be a rant about Cannes.

Every year, I gather my team together and we discuss the year’s Grand Prix winners. This year, I decided to bring that analysis to What Is An Insight?, looking at the winners through a Modern Marketing lens. Each post in the series will cover 5 winners, and I’ll aim to get through the series over the next two weeks.

What’s this Modern Marketing lens, you say? Well, after much research, discussion with peers as well as some good ol’ AI deep-dive, here are the parameters I’ll be using.

• Work that’s customer-centric. Based on a strong understanding of real customer needs, using data and insights to personalise the work.

• Work that’s deeply rooted in culture.

• Work that gets noticed and talked about, on social and in the press. Even if it doesn’t begin there.

• Work which has measurable results, driving tangible business outcomes.

(That last point is where I know the Cannes believers will come after me in the comments 😜)

So here goes. Grab some popcorn.

Audio & Radio: Specsavers - The Misheard Lyrics

Customer-centric? ✅.

Rooted in culture? ✅. The misheard lyric is a late night (and TikTok staple). And nothing is more cultural than the Rick Roll?

Gets noticed? ✅. I loved how they seeded this in a manner that started the conversation.

Measurable results? ✅. There’s a direct correlation between the work and the spike in Google Search volume. Share of Search is fairly accepted as an input metric to brand growth. The fact that it led to bookings - icing on that cake.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👍

Health & Wellness: Dramamine - The Last Barf Bag

Customer-centric? ❌. This feels less about a customer need or insight and more about an opportunity to tell the brand story through hyperbole. Nothing wrong with that.

Rooted in culture? ✅. Initially, I didn’t get it. But some quick research unearthed a niche community that collects barf bags, and even a barf bag museum! Cultural relevance today is shifting more and more towards communities and fandom, which makes this one hugely relevant.

Gets noticed? ✅. I love that the team embraced the absurdity of the idea and launched it in the manner they did - with a documentary and the on-ground experience. With creative, social and PR all coming together to drive results.

Measurable results? ❌. I’m sorry, but impressions and brand engagement aren’t strong enough business KPIs. Neither are sales of barf bags. I’m missing the link back to Brand Lift. And let’s not get started on incrementality - the experts in this space would be losing their minds!

Is this Modern Marketing: 👎. It is really clever advertising, though.

Health x For Good: UN Women - Child Wedding Cards

Customer-centric? ❌. This case doesn’t pretend to begin with one. Yes, the team identified a real problem - but it’s not a new one and not an unknown one either.

Rooted in culture? 🤔 Given that child marriage is a cultural issue across the Indian subcontinent, the issue does feel culturally significant. The idea of hand-drawn wedding cards however…not so much.

Gets noticed? ❌. I couldn’t discern any shareworthy elements baked into the work.

Measurable results? ❌. The case study mentions how these cards “will be used to support a law”. “Will be”, not “has been”. The outcomes are yet to be determined.

Is this Modern Marketing? 👎. I’d give this one multiple thumbs down. It reeks of scam and I still don’t get how unreleased work made it to Cannes.

Outdoor: Magnum Ice Cream - Find Your Summer

(Aside: Why does an outdoor ad need a music video to sell it to a jury?)

Customer-centric? ✅ Ice cream is seen as a summer treat. (Unless you’re me.) I do like that they looked to tackle a business problem based on a real customer issue.

Rooted in culture? ❌. Not really.

Gets noticed? ❌. There’s outdoor ads, and there’s outdoor ads that people talk about. This one falls under the first category. Forget getting noticed - I don’t know how people would even notice or read the copy about the app they built in the top-left corner.

Measurable results? ❌. I’m glad they didn’t even attempt to fit results into their case study.

Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. This feels more like the traditional “festival of creativity” kind of work that’s plagued Cannes forever. Could easily pass for scam too - I’d like to see the brief and the budgets before I give this one a pass.

Outdoor: Pedigree - Adoptable

Customer-centric? ✅. While the campaign has the brand’s purpose at its core, it taps into every dog owner’s love for their furry friends. And touches the hearts of some non-dog owners too.

Rooted in culture? ✅. Pedigree are very clear about tapping into a community of dog lovers - whether owners or not - and appealing to their emotions.

Gets noticed? 🤔. I love the idea - it’s one of those obvious ones that should’ve been done years ago. I love how they used adtech to enable it. Not quite sure how this drove earned media, so a lot would’ve depended upon the media plan.

Measurable results? ✅. These may not be the kind of results businesses usually report - but they’re strong results for what the brand intended to do.

Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. I’ll repeat, there should have been a larger earned media component to this, but it’s great work that deserved its moment in the sun.

I do have 27 more winners to cover, but that’s way too much to write (or read) in post. Stay tuned for Part 2, later this week. And please do leave your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to learn from what you think.

Samit

If there's one thing I've learned from eleven years on the agency side and ten on the client side, it's this.

You aren't a Marketer unless you've said: “I just want three things from my agencies: Great work... Faster... And cheaper.”

Now, it's pretty much an unwritten law on the agency side that, when faced with this demand, a good Account Director and Creative Director will look at each other, then back across the table at their client, and respond:

We'll give you two out of three.

This is usually accompanied by side-eye glances of either condescension or sheer panic between the two, depending upon the current state of the client-agency relationship.

And sure, it makes sense.

Need to do something great, quick? Pay us the premium to staff the team with additional resources or block out a director's time.

Want something fast and cheap? Settle for good enough, in that case.

Want to win a Cannes Lion, but don't have much money? Cool, we'll tackle that in our breaks from real work that drives business results and earns the agency money.

That summed up my approach during my agency-side time.

But here on the client side at Google, there's a healthy disregard for the impossible.

Most Googlers seek to produce great outcomes while working at breakneck speed.

In fact, speed and responsiveness were amongst the first lessons drummed into me in my first year at Google. Here’s what my first CMO at Google said to me in an early 1:1:

Time is the only resource you can't get back. So find money and find people to throw at the problem…but keep moving fast.

A couple of years ago, as I reviewed our agency engagement approach in the light of team feedback and evolving business needs, I asked myself, "What would it take to do all three?"

Most marketers I've spoken with, even those like us with excellent agency partners, face similar challenges in a marketing environment that's rapidly changing. Here’s what they had to say, co-written with Gemini and sung to the tune of the Hogwarts School Song.

Clients crave the wild, the bold, the new,
From minds that sparkle, visions bright and true.
They yearn for numbers neat, for budgets tight,
For diverse teams that champion what is right.

They fume at filters, at ideas tamed,
At safe bets played, while rounds of review go unblamed.
They're tired of treadmills, of endless toiling,
Of agency red tape, of endless recoiling.

And always, the question, a nagging refrain,
"Are we getting our money's worth? Is it all in vain?"
This is the client's lament, a tale old as time,
The dance of agency and brand, a complex paradigm.

On paper, these seem like separate issues with separate solutions.

But are they really?

Much like Archimedes, I get most of my brainwaves while bathing. And one such epiphany struck me when I was all lathered up and singing in the shower.

Let me explain by picking some of these issues and root causes as examples.

🔥 Our agencies need to present more radical work.
😣 Root cause: they still bring the same traditional-minded staff to work on a brief. 🤔 Ergo, agency teams need more diversity, in terms of people and skills.
😮 So, better work is an outcome of staffing…which can be addressed at a contract level.
🤑 Which means we can also get more business value for the resources we pay for!
🧠 Brainwave: Creative output and value for spend are connected.

Let’s try another one, shall we?

💸 We’re paying our agencies too much.
⌛ Surface cause: They’re charging us a lot of hours.
😩 The data shows they’re actually spending way more hours than they should.
🤦 Root cause: Because they’re doing too many rounds of revision because they’re getting feedback from too many people.
😢 And the work just feels more watered-down with every revision.
😮 So, we can save money by streamlining our process and reducing the time our agencies need.
🤯 And that can help us get to better work too!
🧠 Brainwave: Spend and creative output are affected by execution.

Last one, and then I’ll stop, I promise.

📅 Our agencies need more operational rigour to deliver on time and on budget.
🔧 Root cause: Agency layers and processes, especially senior management review, are slowing us down…
😭 …and burning us out.
😮 So, by reducing layers and senior management time at the agency, we could operate faster…which can be addressed at a contract level.
❤️ And save some money along the way by buying less senior management time!
🧠 Brainwave: Execution and spend are connected.

Wherever you begin - Great Work, Faster or Cheaper - you can find a solution by looking into one or both of the other spaces.

It’s not a pipe dream.

But it can only become a reality when you look beyond the problem you think you see, to see the whole problem.

And that, my friends, is an insight.

Samit

What Is An Insight? was born in 2009, during that critical period when I was making the shift from traditional to digital marketing.

My teachers at the time were Techcrunch, Mashable and the handful of people who made up India’s nascent digital marketing flag-bearers. And as I navigated uncharted waters, I realised I needed to find new ways to reflect and learn.

And so I started writing. Putting down thoughts, ideas and frameworks around advertising and digital marketing.

And slowly, I began to learn. Largely from the conversation my posts sparked amongst fellow practitioners, but also during those intense periods of writing and reflection.

Over the years, What Is An Insight? gained a following. And opened doors I’d never dreamt of.

It helped me land a job at Yahoo!, where I had one of the friendliest interviews and quickest hiring processes of all time.

It then helped me land one of my most memorable gigs, leading the creative team at Jack In The Box Worldwide.

And then contributed significantly to my joining Google, way back in 2014.

And then, What Is An Insight? died.

It’s easy to say that I just didn’t have the time or mind space to write anymore, in a challenging new role that would take me some time to figure out.

But the main reason was that I simply hadn’t figured out what I wanted to write about.

Sporadic attempts to revive the blog from its comatose state failed.

Then, a few months ago, something clicked in my mind.

Ten years after putting What Is An Insight? to sleep, I’m waking it up. To share my experience and knowledge on topics covering the modern marketing spectrum. Brand management and marketing; marketing effectiveness; social media marketing; integrated marketing communications; agency relationships; creative; career and development; and more.

The first newsletter will hit your inbox in a week. After that, I’m committing to showing up in your inbox at least twice a month.

Why am I doing this again?

I’m a lifelong learner. I set myself a learning agenda every year, and try to follow it religiously. The way I see it: as I learn, I’ll write and share. Curating your personal learning and development, and accelerating my own.

Because learning comes from reciprocity. Giving back is getting back.

And that, my friends, is an insight.

Samit