The Drum
Discover the latest news, events, and industry insights in the marketing and media arena with The Drum.
The work from David Miami will run throughout April.
Coca-Cola is doubling down on personalization with the launch of its latest project, ‘Share the Feels.’ The out-of-home visuals transform name pairings into unexpected messages that capture the spark of connections between friends.
The campaign was born from exploring hundreds of name combinations, each carefully chosen to evoke positive messages that reflect the energy and emotion of people coming together. For instance, Finlay and Rebecca create ‘Fire,’ Paul, Arthur, and Daisy form ‘Party’ and Maddie, Craig and Victoria become ‘Magic.’
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Philippe Krakowsky has updated the market on the holding company’s Q1 performance, how it is dealing with the ongoing tariff saga and the latest on its acquisition by Omnicom.
Clients have not changed their marketing investment levels amid the ongoing uncertainty over President Trump’s tariffs, according to the boss of IPG, who today said advertisers remain in “scenario planning” mode as they assess the implications.
“The macro is increasingly volatile, however, so we are staying very close to our clients as they plan for contingencies in light of the rapid pace of change and resulting uncertainty that we are all seeing,” said CEO Philippe Krakowsky.
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Digital media consultant Mark Challinor continues the News Horizons series by talking to the people shaping tomorrow’s media. In this issue, we hear from Kevin Huang, who is the chief operating officer of the South China Morning Post.
Kevin is responsible for advertising and marketing solutions, events, and corporate comms at the Post. Prior to joining SCMP, Kevin was the managing director of Carousell, and before that, he headed Birdie Mobile, Hong Kong’s first digital-only operator. Kevin is a founding member and the Immediate Past Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Hong Kong. He holds a degree in Computer Information Systems from Pace University. Born in Malaysia, Kevin has lived and worked in Hong Kong for over two decades.
The South China Morning Post is a leading global news company that has reported on China and Asia for more than a century. Founded in 1903, SCMP is headquartered in Hong Kong, where it is the city’s newspaper of record, with a growing correspondent staff across Asia and the United States.
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As Donald Trump’s approval ratings hold strong on culture and values, The Drum’s editor-in-chief Gordon Young explores why his messaging is cutting through, until it hits the economy. The gap between what he’s selling and what people feel shows what happens when a powerful brand fails to connect the dots. For marketers, it’s a case study in clarity, contradiction, and the cost of confusion.
Donald Trump’s latest poll bounce isn’t just a warning shot to the Democrats – it’s a wake-up call for marketers trying to read the cultural room. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Stagwell’s Mark Penn and former NYC Council president Andrew Stein unpacked the results of a new CAPS/Harris poll that shows Trump surging on key cultural issues and holding steady on overall approval, even as his economic messaging remains dangerously unclear.
It’s classic Trump: punchy, emotional, and clear on values - until it comes to tariffs. And that tension offers a useful lens for brands navigating today’s fractured attention economy.
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The global work is part of the brand’s ‘Thirsty for More’ platform and comes from ad agency Springtime.
David Beckham is back on screens as a Pepsi ambassador and this time he has a simple message for viewers: “If you love it, it’s never a waste.”
In the film, the camera follows various groups of friends as they spend time together gaming, dancing at a gig, belting out karaoke and taking a road trip detour, just because.
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This week’s edition of Agency Advice asks industry chiefs the literal million-dollar question: what’s their secret to winning a pitch? And in the arms race to impress a potential client, how much is too much?
You’d struggle to find a marketer or agency boss who thinks the pitch process is perfect. In fact, whenever the people who do pitches are polled, it’s easy to get the impression it’s a process that precisely no one is happy with: lots of work for no guarantee of reward; an alchemical, hard-to-pin-down matter of commerce and relationships boiled down to a few meetings and a slideshow; a good chance that the whole process will end in no one at all winning any work.
Still, only a lucky few are able to exist in the marketing business without pitching at all. So agencies the world over still have to suit up (or put a Carhartt painter’s jacket on) and brave the pitch, a room in which infinite possibilities open up, only some of which lead to getting the business. Big and brash or small and quiet? Big picture or detail?
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Spotify playlists to ease migraines, and AI aiding equitable access to healthcare. Daniel Landers of IPG Mediabrands Health says marketers should see media not just as an advertising channel – but as a catalyst for better outcomes.
Patient trust in the healthcare system is at or near its lowest in decades. While this moment is sobering, it also presents a clear opportunity for the industry. Media, which has long driven business outcomes, must now also drive human ones.
In healthcare, where the stakes are personal and emotional, intention must match intelligence. Media that prioritizes empathy and relevance can begin to restore the relationship between patients and the system meant to serve them.
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AMV BBDO, one of the UK’s best-known creative agencies, faces the very first step of an employment tribunal today from a former staff member who says she was discriminated against for speaking out against greenwashing.
A UK employment tribunal will today begin to hear the case of Polina Zabrodskaya, a former creative director at AMV BBDO, who claims “harassment and discrimination” for speaking against contentious sustainability claims from clients. The case, years in the making, will commence with a preliminary hearing where the judge will deliberate on whether the case goes forward, the first step in any employment tribunal action. It is typically conducted over telephone. If the case goes forward, it would likely take some time unless a settlement is agreed upon during the process.
The work comes from director Glenn Kitson through production company The Rig Out and was shot on Kodak film.
Aston Martin has teamed up with the Rolling Stones for a co-branded Formula 1 merchandise collection.
The limited-edition apparel collection features one of the world’s most instantly recognizable symbols of rock and roll – the famous Rolling Stones tongue logo – blended with Aston Martin’s wings.
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The provocatively named Boring agency entered the world of B2B branding after its founder saw a need not being met by consumer-facing design agencies.
Natasha Peskin started her fledgling B2B design agency, Boring, after discovering that design agencies, in general, are either cutting themselves off from a wealthy sector ripe for communicating more effectively or doing the work and not telling anyone.
At the same time, she has found that working with B2B companies takes a real level of commitment, mainly from coming up against clients that haven’t really considered the potential for their brand to communicate anything.
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Can an ad agency truly hold clients to account on sustainability, as so many claim? This account from Polina Zabrodskaya, a former creative partner at AMV BBDO embroiled in an employment tribunal against the agency, casts doubt.
As a child, I thought black snow was normal.
I was born in Tula, an industrial city south of Moscow, in one of Russia’s most polluted regions due to its two hundred factories. These factories didn’t try to contain the damage. The air was thick with vanadium pentoxide, a toxic carcinogen. Vanadium sludge sat out in the open, seeping into the soil and water.
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Flawless design is always the aim. But Bonnie Moss of Moss Networks explains why, when it comes to health tech, getting the details right can mean the difference between life and death.
Technology shapes the way we interact with the world. From smartphones and wearables to smart homes and connected cars, we rarely go more than a few minutes without asking for assistance – or receiving proactive guidance – from our devices.
The best technology is cumulative: we take UX breakthroughs from one sector and apply them to another, gradually building a universal design language that feels familiar, intuitive, and accessible to everyone.
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The European Commission has fined Meta and Apple nearly €700m and ordered them to comply with the bloc’s new digital rules. But beneath the legalese lies a geopolitical power play that could redraw the tech world’s map – and drag the UK into the crossfire.
It was the shot that’s been coming for months. On Wednesday, the European Commission finally pulled the trigger on Meta and Apple, issuing €700m in fines and cease-and-desist orders under its Digital Markets Act. Meta’s ad model and Apple’s App Store both came under fire. But the real story here isn’t just about regulation. It’s about politics. Big politics.
In theory, the fines – €500m for Apple, €200m for Meta – are small change for companies with trillion-dollar valuations. But the real muscle-flexing came with the enforcement orders. Meta must stop forcing users to choose between paying a subscription or surrendering their data. Apple must allow app developers to link to alternative purchasing options. And both firms must comply within 60 days or face daily fines of up to 5% of global revenue.
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Trump’s tariffs could see Meta lose up to $7bn in ad revenue.
Meta’s ad business has long been seen as an unstoppable machine – precision-targeted, relentlessly scalable and backed by a treasure trove of user data. But that engine may be about to hit a Trump-shaped speed bump, as analysts warn the tech giant could lose up to $7bn (£5.7bn) in ad revenue thanks to a return of aggressive US-China trade policies.
At the centre of the issue are Chinese e-commerce giants such as Temu and Shein. While Meta’s platforms – Facebook and Instagram – are banned in China, these companies have become some of its most valuable customers, buying ads to reach American consumers. According to research firm MoffettNathanson, Chinese advertisers contributed around 11% of Meta’s total ad revenue last year and accounted for nearly 25% of its growth over the past two years.
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Healthcare is advancing at a rapid pace. Angelica English of Team Lewis explains how marketers can take advantage of the change – and avoid pitfalls.
Healthcare marketing is at a critical juncture, with evolving consumer expectations, rapid technological advancements, and heightened ethical considerations all forcing brands to adapt. As patients become more informed and empowered, marketers must rethink their strategies to stay relevant and build trust, whether selling business-to-business (B2B) or direct-to-consumer (D2C).
The global healthcare advertising market is estimated to grow from $44.6bn in 2025 to $67.9bn in 2033. With the average cost for an organic healthcare lead standing at $320, the need for personalization is more prevalent than ever. And while the future prognosis of budgets might be good, last year marketing budgets hit a five-year low.
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The agency’s tech and creative chiefs tell The Drum how things are shaping up five months after their holding company exit.
Three years ago, Huge had a huge problem. It was averaging a year’s tenure for every CEO that took the hot seat.
The agency that had been lauded for boundary-pushing work like the Pepsi Refresh Project or the HBO Go campaign was faced with clients significantly cutting spend, leading then-chief exec Mat Baxter to embark on a round of layoffs. A year later, another round. Baxter overhauled the group’s structure and brought in a productization model to radically change the way it worked with clients before he too left the business. Baxter was replaced, in January 2024, by Lisa De Bonis, who has since overseen its sale from Interpublic Group to private equity firm AEA Investors.
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The work is from the tech giant’s dedicated agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab and award-winning director, Andreas Nilsson.
Apple is touting the ‘clean up’ feature on the iPhone 16 with a kooky spot that shows a young man determined to show off his muscular physique. The trouble is, his mother is taking the photos, and she can be seen in the reflection of the bedroom mirror. Thankfully, viewers learn that the impromptu photographer can be edited out of the final images with ease.
The comedic spot comes from director Andreas Nilsson, who is known for contributing to music videos for the likes of The Knife, MGMT and Goldfrapp.
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Agency leaders could be forgiven for letting the gloom get to them. Elvis’s Tanya Whitehouse isn’t letting it chip away at her optimism, however.
It can be very easy to focus on the doom and gloom, especially when there’s so much of it around (despicable men in power, financial chaos, extremely poor taste space travel, to name a few). But after a glorious double bank holiday weekend, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate the innovation, creativity and sense of progress that’s bubbling away in the creative industry right now. Here are five things I believe are helping to bring a little joy to the industry.
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Real creativity. Whether you like them or not, the recent KFC ‘All Hail Gravy’ and Deliveroo ‘Octoman’ spots are prime examples of bold and memorable ads. They are clever, surreal, funny campaigns that have captured the public’s imagination and made headlines. In the case of KFC, elevating a humble condiment to divine status has not only sparked mass conversation but also demonstrated the power of humor in effective advertising. There’s a real idea at the heart of the work and I’m here for it.
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What did the doctor say to the patient? While there’s a time and a place for humor, says Edd Southerden of Bray Leino, more of it in healthcare marketing might be a welcome addition.
After years of purpose-driven storytelling and serious, socially conscious messaging, the return of humor in advertising is a breath of fresh air.
First, Kantar revealed that 56% of TV ads used humor in 2023, then 75% of last year’s Cannes Lions went to campaigns that incorporated humor. And, while there’s a certain amount of risk to taking the funny route, the payoff can be great.
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Meet the judges of The Drum Awards, which celebrate the best in brand-building and creative strategy. Our Judge of the Day series gives you a closer look at the experts behind our prestigious panels. Get to know the industry leaders who recognize excellence in marketing.
At Hasbro, play and creativity are not just central to product development – they’re at the very heart of the company’s marketing philosophy. For Jessica Murphy, Hasbro’s VP of global marketing strategy and operations, and this year’s vice-president of the jury for The Drum Awards for Marketing (Americas), play represents more than just entertainment. It’s a vehicle for emotional storytelling, community-building and, ultimately, brand longevity.
“As an emotion-driven business, we need to remain top of mind by offering something meaningful,” says Murphy. Leaning into the purpose of play and recognizing its importance has become essential to our brand’s identity.”
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Google has officially backtracked on its long-standing pledge to eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome, further delaying the shift to a post-cookie ad world. But despite the change in stance, insiders say the writing’s on the wall – and the clock is still ticking.
Announced Tuesday, Google said it will no longer introduce a long-promised “user choice” prompt in Chrome – originally expected this year – that would have allowed individuals to opt out of third-party tracking. “We’ve made the decision to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome,” said Anthony Chavez, VP of Google’s Privacy Sandbox. “We will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies.”
It’s a major moment in a years-long saga that’s seen Google attempt to juggle two increasingly conflicting goals: build a more private web, and preserve the commercial infrastructure that funds it. And while adtech insiders weren’t shocked – Google’s cookie deprecation timeline has slipped repeatedly – this latest stall underscores just how politically, technically and economically tangled the path forward remains.
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Bad news comes in threes, they say. Leagas Delaney UK CEO Gareth Davies would probably settle for that few. He offers leadership advice through turbulent times for adland.
Do black swans exist?
Up until the late 1600s, it was widely believed in Europe that they didn’t. It was only when a group of travelling Dutch mariners saw them in Australia that conventional wisdom was upended. Fast forward to the early 2000s and to the professor, economist and writer Nassim Nicolas Taleb, who popularized the term ‘black swan events’ to describe unexpected moments of magnitude that have the power to reshape our individual lives and broader society.
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Until recently, it might’ve seemed that experiential marketing didn’t have a place in the healthcare sector. That’s changed, explains Virginia H. Ocampo of Spiro, as consumers now expect more from brands.
Today’s healthcare brands face a new reality: clinical expertise isn’t enough. Consumers want brands that reflect their values and fit naturally into their lives. Traditional marketing alone can’t meet this moment.
What can? Bold, experience-led strategies that turn passive audiences into active brand advocates.
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The comedian has teamed up with the brand once again for a rendition of Go Your Own Way as he shows shoppers all the ways they can pay with the app.
PayPal is back with the sequel to its 2024 ad ‘Everywhere’ with another catchy spot, once again, featuring Will Ferrell.
The Elf actor is testing his vocals once more to a remake of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit Go Your Own Way as he shows anyone who will listen all the benefits of using PayPal. His distinctive humor brings to life that customers can pay “their own way” using debit card, credit card, bank account, PayPal balance, or with a PayPal Buy Now Pay Later option
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The work from BBH London depicts various text conversations shown across outdoor ads.
Weetabix has subverted its ‘Have You Had Yours?’ line with a cheeky out-of-home campaign that has been unveiled in key sites in London.
The visuals play on a familiar feeling: those moments in life when where you really need to dig deep into those energy reserves from bus Replacements, helping your nan with her new phone or accidentally hitting reply all.
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The work from 72andSunny attempts to avoid cliched casino tropes in the campaign, instead opting for comedy.
Hard Rock Bet has unveiled a two-minute mockumentary that features a couple who are downright obsessed with ‘Jackpot Season’.
The long-form spot introduces a host of kooky characters who are committed to playing casino games and was inspired by mockumentaries that follow characters deeply embedded in niche cultures.
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The pressure on Google is mounting. Just days after a landmark ruling declared its adtech stack anti-competitive, the US Department of Justice has returned to court – this time urging a federal judge to consider something even more radical: the forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser.
The latest hearing began on Monday in Washington, DC, and is scheduled to run for three weeks. It marks a critical new phase in the DOJ’s long-running case over Google’s dominance in the search market. The focus now shifts from whether Google broke the law (Judge Amit Mehta has already ruled that it did) to what should be done about it.
The DOJ isn’t holding back. Its lawyers argue that anything short of structural change – like breaking up Chrome and ending default search deals – won’t restore meaningful competition.
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The data landscape is shifting. Nick Beckingham and Tom Carter of Space & Time explain how healthcare brands can get the most from their analytics.
In 2025, you'd be hard-pressed to find a health marketer who isn’t talking about data, analytics, and insights. We know this because we asked – literally. In a recent poll of our health and pharma network, one theme dominated: data is the biggest challenge marketers are facing right now.
It makes sense. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has shaken things up, cookie consent is a regulatory minefield, and capturing first-party data isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore – it’s survival. But despite knowing how important data is, the industry still hasn’t figured out how to actually use it.
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Meet the judges of The Drum Awards. We celebrate the best in brand-building and creative strategy and our Judge of the Day series gives you a closer look at the experts behind our prestigious panels. Get to know the industry leaders who recognize excellence in marketing.
Today we highlight Wendy Duggan, director of marketing at Primark and a judge for The Drum Awards EMEA. Since joining the fashion retailer a decade ago, Duggan has climbed through the ranks – launching Primark into the US market, building global press showrooms, embedding influencer strategies and introducing high-profile celebrity collaborations.
In her current role, she leads a team of more than 100 across marketing operations, communications, creative and visual merchandising. Her deep understanding of brand-building, combined with a hands-on, global perspective, makes her one of retail’s most dynamic marketing leaders.
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At a pop-up coffeehouse in Miami, under the chandeliers of the Moore Building, the design world gathered not to celebrate the past but to wrestle with the future. Amid fears of AI taking over creative jobs, one thing became clear: craft can be automated, but true creativity remains irreplaceable.
There’s nothing like a good night out to restore your faith in the human race – even if that night out involves a few terrifying stats about AI stealing your job.
That was the mood at a recent gathering in Miami, hosted by the brilliant folks at design agency Lemon Yellow. To mark its 20th anniversary, they didn’t just throw a party – they opened a pop-up coffee shop inside the Moore Building in the Design District and turned it into a month-long creative salon.
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In the first installment of The Drum’s new series ‘Special Sauce,’ in which agencies tell us what sets them apart, Lindsey Pittser at Mediasmith explains how office pets provide insights that data alone can’t. With plenty of cute animal pics thrown in.
Mediasmith has discovered an unconventional secret to success: a workplace culture where four-legged team members are as valued as their two-legged counterparts. As the agency of record for PetSmart, this philosophy isn‘t just good fun – it’s good business.
Ctrl+alt+woof
Walk into one of Mediasmith’s offices on any given day, and you’ll notice something: the soft padding of paws accompanies the click-clacking of keyboards. As the agency of record of PetSmart, being a pet lover is in the team’s DNA.
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The work, titled ‘Hiders Keepers,’ by Ogilvy New York was shot by Argentinian photographer Ale Burset.
Stella Artois has unveiled a new campaign that is encouraging people to be clever when it comes to stashing its beers at parties. In a series of print ads, the drinks can be seen hidden behind large cakes, in the depths of freezers and camouflaged amid packs of foods.
To coincide with the photography, ad agency Ogilvy New York has also released a short film that sees just how each of the beers were stashed.
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If you think AI will ‘make’ ads, you don’t get advertising. Leading industry consultant and new The Drum columnist Tom Goodwin believes the real gains will come in less obvious ways.
I remain convinced that every AI tool claiming to “make ads” has been built by people with no actual experience working in advertising. Your agentic AI Marketing solution might be impressive – if you knew what marketing is, or how it works.
Show me someone who says AI is game over for a profession, and I’ll show you someone who knows nothing about that industry and isn’t burdened by curiosity. The more some people know about technology, the less they seem to understand reality. People don’t buy legal contracts; they buy advice. They don’t buy solutions from McKinsey; they buy career insurance – or plausible deniability.
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Created in tech labs, many AI brands risk drowning in visual monotony. How can AI identities become as groundbreaking as their tech? And what does this tell brands about thriving in the intelligence age? We sat down with branding specialists R/GA to find out.
Efficiency, scale, speed – for years, these have been the calling cards of AI-enabled brands. But, amidst the streamlined processes and faster execution, marketers have largely overlooked the real branding battleground: the consumer interface. It’s not about how quickly AI can deliver; it’s about how intuitively, engagingly, and meaningfully it interacts with consumers.
It’s one of the great ironies of the intelligence age that some of our most groundbreaking innovations look so uninspired. Many risk blending into an indistinguishable blur that lacks emotional resonance and does little in the way of building brand equity for the parent tech company that’s investing in them. And that’s a growing problem which needs solving fast, given the amount of new, AI-enabled brands and products entering the market and consumers’ lives every day.
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Magazine covers by artists including Kadir Nelson, David Hockney, Art Spiegelman and Maira Kalman were shown in the video, none of which were manipulated in any way.
The New Yorker is celebrating its 100th year with a short video showcasing 700 of its 5,000 covers in all their glory. The work honors the publication’s current editorial staff, with the script written in partnership with editor David Remnick and the voiceover is by staff writer Jia Tolentino.
George Gershwin’s 1924 musical composition Rhapsody in Blue, which also just celebrated its 100th anniversary, served as inspiration for the soundtrack.
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From storytelling with Iris Apfel to purpose-led cacao sourcing in the Ivory Coast, Magnum’s global brand director Tugce Aksoy shares how passion, community and sensory branding power the grown-up ice-cream brand.
You’ve had a diverse career across journalism, pharma and personal care, and spent the last decade in Unilever’s ice cream division, including seven years with Magnum. Can you walk us through your career journey and key milestones?
My first job was writing in a magazine when I was only 16 years old. I was just transcribing interviews with celebrities. One day, I handed them a piece I had written. The editor really loved it and they published it.
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