People want to hear from people, not faceless corporations, explains Harriet Mumford of Nelson Bostock (part of Accenture Song). And B2B marketers would do well to remember it. If the last decade has proved anything, it’s this: the B2B marketing space is becoming more about people, stories, and meaningful connections. No more is it simply about product manuals and sales sheets; the landscape of B2B communications is taking on creative traits typically reserved only for B2C brands. And this development is a constantly accelerating force, fueled by the social media revolution that’s made brands and professionals more visible, accessible, and human than ever before. Platforms such as LinkedIn have morphed from a digital CV storage space into buzzing hubs of authentic personal and professional interaction. LinkedIn is a place for funny people to be funny, creative people to be creative, and interesting people to be accessible. Suddenly, it’s not just about what you do, it’s about who you are, what you stand for, and how you make others feel. Read more here

He's worked at some of the world's best agencies, won numerous global accolades, and now runs his own agency. But Vico Benevides still lives by the advice he was given at the start of his career: be humble, be passionate and work hard. To Sao Paolo, as 10 Questions on Advertising continues its round-the-world trip (I only wish we could actually do the trip in person – we’ll see what budget we can ask from The Drum for season two). And we visit Sao Paolo for good reason – to learn from Vico Benevides, one of the world’s most decorated, most passionate and most interesting creative leaders. Read more here

Digital media consultant Mark Challinor continues the News Horizons series, which features interviews with the people shaping tomorrow’s media. Today, he speaks with Thomas Jacob, COO of the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The news business isn’t just evolving – it’s undergoing a rapid, technology-driven redefinition. That’s the view from Thomas Jacob, chief operating officer of the global press association WAN-IFRA, who believes media companies must move past platform dependency, diversify revenue streams, and leverage AI responsibly to secure their future. For publishers, the key to survival isn’t just about going digital; it’s about going authentic, consultative, and hyper-relevant. AI: a game-changer built on values According to Jacob, AI is proving to be a game-changer across nearly every function in the media. It’s not just a back-end tool; it’s transforming operations from the newsroom floor to the commercial engine. Read more here

AI is tearing up the search playbook. In the first of a three-part series on the changes underway, Aengus Boyle at VaynerMedia explains how to get ready for zero-click search. For the past two decades, search (both organic and paid) has been a cornerstone of virtually every successful media and marketing plan. While this remains the case, the rapid proliferation of AI answer engines has led to a paradigm shift, with these tools fast becoming a key touchpoint across the consumer decision-making journey. A major change in how consumers discover, interact with, and receive information online is underway. This shift requires brands to fundamentally reevaluate how they approach organic and paid search. And while these changes present risks, it’s important to remember that they also open up significant opportunities for brands. Read more here

Brands are finding fresh ways to surprise us, from MINI’s Halloween mischief and Johnnie Walker’s sly humor to Good Housekeeping’s long-awaited holiday spotlight. Wit, warmth and a little absurdity prove hard to resist this week. Garage Beer invents the most American rake ever The brand known for BeerBed doubles down on dumb genius with its latest fall “innovation”: a rake that holds your beer so you don’t have to. Why it works: Read more here

The brand’s North America CMO says steady brand work builds pricing power and that true growth comes from consistency, not clicks. Todd Kaplan thinks marketers have fallen a little too in love with data. “It’s everywhere,” the Kraft Heinz North America CMO told the crowd at ANA. “But while data shows us when a purchase took place, we need to remember there’s a person on the other side of that click.” The zeros and ones, he said, can help sharpen targeting and efficiency, but they can also create an illusion of understanding. “We’ve mistaken the signal for the story.” That story, according to Kaplan, is where real brand building begins. He drew a line between short-term product marketing and long-term brand work. “Product marketing is a push that drives a transaction,” he said. “Brand-building is the pull. It creates intent and emotional connection over time.” Then came his favorite test: “People tattoo brands on their body, not products. Only the ones that mean something make it that far.” Read more here

North America CMO Hernán Tantardini is digging for growth through creativity, community and the ground in a strategic shift to embed in food culture. When you already feed almost every American household, growth doesn’t come easy. “Our portfolio has a household penetration of 99% – how do we start to grow?” asks Hernán Tantardini, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Foods North America, on stage at the ANA Masters of Marketing in Orlando, Florida. It’s a question that sounds like a riddle only a marketer with a global perspective could answer. Argentinian by birth, Tantardini has spent more than two decades inside PepsiCo across Latin America, most recently in Mexico, before taking on the US food business – home to more than 40 brands including Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos and Fritos. Read more here

Piyush Pandey died this morning (October 24) at the age of 70. The advertising legend joined Ogilvy & Mather India (now Ogilvy India) in 1982 and went on to become one of the agency’s most revered creative leaders. We revisit an interview that first ran in The Drum in December 2018 after he was named global chief creative officer. 1982 was the year Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi won eight Oscars, the year India showcased its confidence as a nation by hosting the Asian Games for the first time and the year color TV was first introduced in the country. It was also the year Piyush Pandey made his first foray into advertising, joining Ogilvy as a suit following stints as a cricketer and a tea taster. “I come from a city called Jaipur in Rajasthan and can still remember my first taste of advertising,” Pandey tells The Drum, prior to his appointment as global creative chief. For him, that was the sound of vegetable sellers in front of his mother’s house. Read more here

The Drum caught up with CEO Adrian Tuck and CMO Marie Bahl at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference 2025 in Orlando to learn why marketing was the last department in the enterprise without an operating system – and how their platform might finally change that. For years, marketing has been the messy backroom of big business. Finance had its ERP. Sales had its CRM. But marketing? Just spreadsheets, consultants and endless decks explaining where the money went. That’s the blind spot Adrian Tuck, CEO of Uptempo, and Marie Bahl, its CMO, are attacking. Their software promises to give CMOs and CFOs something they’ve never had before: a single, universal source of financial truth for marketing. Read more here

Rich Silverstein’s new exhibit, 13 Days: The Musical, turns cold war panic into art satire and a test of AI’s creative conscience. Rich Silverstein has never been one to sit still. The Goodby Silverstein & Partners co-founder has spent a lifetime turning ideas into cultural shorthand, from ‘Got Milk?’ to Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy.’ His latest project doesn’t sell products but provokes questions, such as, what happens when AI helps write a Broadway musical about the end of the world? That’s the premise of 13 Days: The Musical (Or The Most Dangerous Moment in Human History), now open at The Cube at ICA San Francisco. The exhibition reimagines the Cuban missile crisis through the lens of a Broadway rehearsal with original songs, floor-to-ceiling visuals and an AI orchestra of tools like Suno, OpenAI and Google Veo3. Read more here

The must-attend event for B2B marketers is just around the corner. Here’s what to expect when the industry’s biggest brands and brightest minds gather in London on November 4. B2B marketing is evolving fast. AI is rewriting the rules, customer expectations are higher than ever and every decision must deliver both quick wins and long-term brand impact. Enter B2B World Fest, the event designed to help B2B marketers stay ahead in this ever-changing world. This one-day festival brings together global brands, innovators and marketing leaders for a dynamic exploration of what’s next in B2B – from AI and creative technology to the evolving expectations of millennial and Gen Z buyers. Read more here

Glassview’s partnership with Cogwear uses EEG headsets to capture emotion in real-time, hinting at a future where campaign testing starts with brain data, not surveys. The same device that can detect the first signs of Alzheimer’s is now being used to test car ads. That sentence reads like science fiction, but it’s very real. Glassview, a digital media company that works with Fortune 500 brands, has partnered with Cogwear, a neuroscience startup from the University of Pennsylvania. Together, they’re using clinical-grade EEG headsets to measure how people feel when they watch ads. The collaboration began when Glassview chief executive J Brooks noticed the limits of data-driven advertising. “Marketing has always lived in the softer sciences,” he says. “Sociology tells us who people are, psychology tells us why they buy. But we wanted to move into the hard sciences, biology, neurology and chemistry to understand what really drives connection.” Read more here

People want to hear from people, not faceless corporations, explains Harriet Mumford of Nelson Bostock (part of Accenture Song). And B2B marketers would do well to remember it. If the last decade has proved anything, it’s this: the B2B marketing space is becoming more about people, stories, and meaningful connections. No more is it simply about product manuals and sales sheets; the landscape of B2B communications is taking on creative traits typically reserved only for B2C brands. And this development is a constantly accelerating force, fueled by the social media revolution that’s made brands and professionals more visible, accessible, and human than ever before. Platforms such as LinkedIn have morphed from a digital CV storage space into buzzing hubs of authentic personal and professional interaction. LinkedIn is a place for funny people to be funny, creative people to be creative, and interesting people to be accessible. Suddenly, it’s not just about what you do, it’s about who you are, what you stand for, and how you make others feel. Read more here

Marketers are drowning in tools, tabs and to-do lists, but not necessarily getting more done. For Dropbox, the next wave of productivity isn’t about adding more tech, it’s about making the tools we already use work harder for us. Being busy has become a reluctant badge of honor in marketing. Agencies and brands are managing more channels, more workflows and more collaboration tools. And sometimes, we just want. Less. Noise. It’s the paradox of productivity: we’re working harder, but not always working better. Research from Dropbox found that less than half (46%) of the workforce has enough time for creative work, and almost a third (30%) say they feel less creative today than before. Read more here

The WHO very almost made alcohol marketing a lot harder, with a proposed advertising crackdown. Thankfully, says Jason Tamanini of Green House, it failed – but brands should think about who might be best-placed to market their drinks. In late September, global health officials came dangerously close to redefining alcohol marketing as we know it. Following the World Health Organization’s 2023 position that no level of alcohol consumption is safe, the UN draft proposals pressed for stricter regulations and alcohol warning labels – a move that would have aligned alcohol messaging with that of tobacco. This would have meant a near total media blackout: television and radio, outdoor ads, event sponsorship, branded merchandise, online placements, and more would be off the table. If that sounds dramatic, remember what happened to tobacco. Joe Camel disappeared. Marlboro billboards came down. Free samples at clubs? Gone. Read more here

He's worked at some of the world's best agencies, won numerous global accolades, and now runs his own agency. But Vico Benevides still lives by the advice he was given at the start of his career: be humble, be passionate and work hard. To Sao Paolo, as 10 Questions on Advertising continues its round-the-world trip (I only wish we could actually do the trip in person – we’ll see what budget we can ask from The Drum for season two). And we visit Sao Paolo for good reason – to learn from Vico Benevides, one of the world’s most decorated, most passionate and most interesting creative leaders. Read more here

At the ANA Masters of Marketing in Orlando, EY’s director of digital marketing says a crisis of confidence in marketing has less to do with AI and more to do with accountability. His prescription? Brand discipline, better data and real AI literacy. Lou Cohen isn’t interested in more AI hype. He’s interested in restoring something rarer – confidence. Not the keynote-stage kind, but the kind you can take into a boardroom when the CFO asks what marketing actually delivered. “The ANA’s new ‘Confident Marketer’ research hit a nerve,” he says. “Most companies can’t see the real impact of their work. That’s a confidence killer. We’re entering an era where outcomes, not activity, define credibility.” Read more here

The spot is by ad agency MA+ Group and Cadence Films, with JJ Stratford behind the camera. Johnnie Walker has announced a global partnership with Sabrina Carpenter, bringing one of music’s most talked-about artists to the whisky brand. The collaboration coincides with Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet Tour and the release of her album Man’s Best Friend. The hero film from the campaign opens with Carpenter seated at a bar, offered a glass of Johnnie Walker Black Label. A voiceover teases that “whisky wasn’t her drink” and that it’s a “man’s world,” before she flips the script with a knowing look and a raised glass. It’s a simple setup that challenges old ideas with humor and composure, reframing whisky through a more inclusive, modern lens. Read more here

The owner of the UK franchise of Pizza Hut went into administration on Monday, with 68 sites closing and global owner Yum! Brands swooping in to save the remainder. But it’s not a local problem, says Jon Tipple. Once the go-to for children’s birthdays and family outings, Pizza Hut has lost its way in a dining market defined by clarity and speed. While brands like Greggs, KFC and McDonald’s thrive by knowing exactly who they are, Pizza Hut’s been going through an identity crisis. It just goes to show: indecision can kill even the most recognizable brand. Read more here

Digital media consultant Mark Challinor continues the News Horizons series, which features interviews with the people shaping tomorrow’s media. Today, he speaks with Thomas Jacob, COO of the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The news business isn’t just evolving – it’s undergoing a rapid, technology-driven redefinition. That’s the view from Thomas Jacob, chief operating officer of the global press association WAN-IFRA, who believes media companies must move past platform dependency, diversify revenue streams, and leverage AI responsibly to secure their future. For publishers, the key to survival isn’t just about going digital; it’s about going authentic, consultative, and hyper-relevant. AI: a game-changer built on values According to Jacob, AI is proving to be a game-changer across nearly every function in the media. It’s not just a back-end tool; it’s transforming operations from the newsroom floor to the commercial engine. Read more here

With a management-consulting spine and agency muscle, MarketBridge says it has cracked the code for B2B growth. CEO John Shomaker and European leaders Fiona Shepherd and Fiona McKenzie tell The Drum why they believe a single-firm model – not another roll-up – is the future of marketing’s most complex category. Everyone in B2B says they “do strategy”. MarketBridge actually starts there. With a management-consulting spine and agency muscle, chief executive John Shomaker and senior European directors Fiona Shepherd and Fiona ‘Fee’ McKenzie are building a rare beast that aims to fix the messy, fragmented go-to-market machine. For two decades, we’ve pretended the buyer journey is a tidy little waterfall. Spoiler: it’s a whirlpool. Sales split into channels, partners, call centers and web. Marketing splintered into a thousand tactics. The customer seized the steering wheel. Cue potential chaos. Read more here

AI is tearing up the search playbook. In the first of a three-part series on the changes underway, Aengus Boyle at VaynerMedia explains how to get ready for zero-click search. For the past two decades, search (both organic and paid) has been a cornerstone of virtually every successful media and marketing plan. While this remains the case, the rapid proliferation of AI answer engines has led to a paradigm shift, with these tools fast becoming a key touchpoint across the consumer decision-making journey. A major change in how consumers discover, interact with, and receive information online is underway. This shift requires brands to fundamentally reevaluate how they approach organic and paid search. And while these changes present risks, it’s important to remember that they also open up significant opportunities for brands. Read more here

Verizon’s SVP of media, marketing effectiveness and agency management and Drum Awards Festival juror for Media says AI may reshape everything from creative to optimization, but human judgment remains the industry’s sharpest tool. Haley Paas has spent her career at the intersection of media, creativity and data, and she’s convinced that while AI is transforming advertising, it can’t replace human intuition. “AI is reshaping every corner of our industry,” says Paas, senior vice president of media, marketing effectiveness and agency management at Verizon. “In creative, it’s speeding up idea generation and enabling production at scale. In media, it’s making optimization faster and more predictive, helping us allocate dollars with greater precision. But the limit lies in judgment. AI can process data, but it doesn’t know our brand values or the cultural nuance of a message. That’s where vision, human creativity, leadership and taste will still be essential.” Read more here

Are you listening closely? Good, then let’s begin. With the attention economy a hot topic, The Drum polled its members for their thoughts on the right way to catch your audience’s eyes (and ears). And, what to do once you have them. US consumers spend about six hours daily on media and entertainment content, while the average UK adult spends over half their leisure time (26 out of 50 hours) consuming digital content. In this environment, fatigue is very real – and brands must try hard to cut through. So, is attention really the most important commodity? Do brands risk putting audiences off by chasing them too hard? Might there be a case in fact for playing it cool, and waiting for customers to come to you? All pertinent points to consider in discussing one of the most salient marketing topics of the day: the attention economy. Here’s what The Drum members had to say on the subject. Read more here

Gareth Davies, UK Group CEO at Leagas Delaney, argues that amid AI disruption and shrinking budgets, strategy should be the creative industry’s loudest voice. ‘If you don’t speak, someone will speak on your behalf.’ It’s a maxim that Tim Delaney holds close and one that I hear regularly from him. It is, naturally, a point well made. All brands should aim to be part of ‘the conversation’. But in today’s fragmented media landscape, simply speaking up is not enough to guarantee being heard. So, what’s your strategy to get heard? Read more here