TRENDSETTERS
Bob Liodice and the View from the Center of Marketing’s Transformation
After more than three decades at the ANA, a rare perspective on what marketing has become—and what it takes to lead through reinvention. When Bob Liodice concluded his opening remarks at this year’s ANA Masters of Marketing, the audience rose to its feet. It was a fitting acknowledgment of a leader preparing to conclude more […]
When Global Reach Is No Longer Enough
As multinational B2B marketers confront regionalization, AI and increasingly complex growth challenges, Tony Riley, President and CEO of MX, believes the future of agencies may depend less on their size than on their ability to solve the right problems. For decades, the promise of global marketing was built around scale. Multinational companies wanted consistency across […]
Joanne Davis: Walk in the Other Guy’s Shoes
Why seeing the marketing, procurement, and agency triangle from all three sides matters. For decades, the marketing industry has talked about improving the client-agency relationship. Joanne Davis thinks we may have been leaving someone out. In her new book, Walk in the Other Guy’s Shoes: 25 Lessons for the Marketing, Procurement, and Agency Triangle, Davis […]
When Efficiency Becomes Easy, Difference Becomes Scarce
After 17 years of studying what makes brands meaningful, Havas’ Mark Sinnock is asking a different question: What makes them worth choosing… and, in an age of AI abundance, worth choosing again? Marketing has never had more ability to make more things. More content. More personalization. More optimization. More precise targeting. More interactions across more […]
Patrick McLean: Turning “Highway Hospitality” Into a New Engine for Growth
As the first Chief Marketing Officer of Love’s, Patrick McLean is helping one of America’s largest family-owned businesses move from decades of growth through expansion to its next stage of growth through marketing—without losing what made the company successful in the first place. When most people think of Love’s Travel Stops, they probably think of […]
Global Marketing Fails Operationally Before It Fails Publicly
Kevin Freedman on AI, brand drift—and the growing risk of “international marketing debt.” Great global marketing tends to be celebrated for the things we can see: the idea, the creative, the media, the results. Kevin Freedman thinks we should pay considerably more attention to what happens underneath. “Creative often gets the credit for campaigns and […]
Cause Marketing Grows Up: From Campaign to Collaboration
For Momentum’s Mollye Rhea on why the strongest cause partnerships are becoming more integrated, more enduring—and more valuable to everyone involved. Cause marketing has come a long way from asking consumers to add a dollar at checkout or promising that a percentage of every purchase will go to a good cause. Those approaches haven’t disappeared—and […]
Are Movements Becoming the New Media?
When content is abundant, participation may be the harder—and more valuable—thing for brands to create. What if the next important evolution in media isn’t another channel? It may be something people choose to join. That’s the provocative possibility that emerged from a recent Internationalist conversation with Scott Goodson, Founder and Chairman of StrawberryFrog and creator […]
The Future of Marketing Depends on Better Questions, Not Just Faster Answers
AI & Humanity | Before becoming a technology entrepreneur by founding quantilope, Dr. Peter Aschmoneit spent more than a decade making the same kinds of decisions that today’s CMOs face. His experience as a brand marketer at Unilever, Danone and Fuchs—and his doctorate in marketing—led him to a simple conclusion: the future of AI depends […]
Jared Belsky: Trust, Collaboration—and Why Marketing’s Best Days May Still Be Ahead
When Jared Belsky decided to return media rebates to Acadia’s clients, he knew people would notice. The decision challenged one of the marketing industry’s least-discussed practices. Instead of keeping rebates earned through media buying as agency profit, Acadia redistributed them to nearly 50 clients based on their share of spending. “It wasn’t my money in […]