Becky Owen, CMO at social agency Billion Dollar Boy, joins Contagious to challenge the received wisdom about how brands should work with creators – from the three-second rule to the idea that good content is all that matters.

Drawing on new research, the latest Contagious podcast explores how brands should work with creators, from using emotion and microdramas to build audiences, to deliberately creating imperfection to fight AI slop. We also look at why creator fandom can now come before the streaming deal, and how brands are having to rewire themselves to keep up.

We’ll explain:

• Why the three-second rule may be tanking your campaign performance
• Why creators are deliberately embracing messy bedrooms and mistakes to prove they're human
• How the same emotion can boost performance in one category and tank it in another
• How creators have become data-driven marketers, not just media channels
• Why some brands are exploring equity and longer-term relationships to make creators genuinely invested in their success
• How social creators are using micro-pilots to build fandom before getting picked up by streaming platforms
• Why Argos turned everyday kettles into gallery-worthy objects
   

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

Dirty mattresses. Giant hairballs. Bad Bunny. The Pope. This CFO-friendly episode explores how brands can overindex on impact by investing in creativity rather than throwing money at the problem.

The Contagious team analyse some of their favourite low-budget marketing campaigns, unpacking the creative principles behind them and asking how brands can turn tiny budgets into big ideas, big conversations and even bigger earned media.

We’ll explain:

• How to weaponise your audience as a media channel
• Why withholding information can be more powerful than broadcasting it
• How an ick factor can make out-of-sight products impossible to ignore
• Why the WTF factor works so well in outdoor
• How to turn existing infrastructure into emotion and engagement
• How one tiny physical change can become a huge media event 
• How shoplifting can become brilliant PR

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

Mary Kish, Head of Community at Twitch, joins Contagious to break down why people are flocking to Twitch – and why brands should care. 

As a streamer herself, Mary doesn’t just work at Twitch, she lives the culture. In this conversation we explore why experiencing things together matters more than ever and how participation kicks the ass of passive viewing when it comes to building engagement. 

We also explain: 

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

Tracing a line from Tolkien to Mattel’s toyetics, the Contagious team explores why brands are moving beyond storytelling to create richer, more immersive worlds. 

We look at the rules that make fictional worlds believable and how worldbuilding can help brands escape commoditisation, fuel always-on creativity and give people something to believe in, belong to and buy into.

Along the way, we explore:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

Kory Marchisotto, the president of E.l.f. Brands, joins Contagious to unpack how a scrappy startup selling premium cosmetics at affordable prices evolved into a beauty powerhouse. 

This episode explores the ideology, marketing and organisational culture behind E.l.f. Beauty’s explosive growth. We dig into how its biggest innovations were led by its community, how the company encourages healthy conflict and why its mantra is ‘anything is e.l.f-ing possible’.  

We also explain:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

AI companions. Lonely cities. Yakult Ladies. 

In this episode, Contagious investigates the rise of loneliness and why brands as diverse as Heineken and Games Workshop are winning by becoming the new facilitators of human connection. 

Along the way, we explore lonelygenic cities, discover what brands can learn from 19th Century Parisian architecture, asking whether boyfriends are embarrassing and whether we’re trapped in the Me Operating System.

We’ll explain:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

The Contagious team returns from Cannes Lions 2026 to deliver our sunburnt take on the awards, the talks and what it all means for the industry. 

Hot from the Croisette, we find out whether How Brands Grow is a brutally boring read, why the UN needs marketers more than ever, how the industry's best work is turning problems into opportunities, and how creative treasure can be found everywhere - from a dot-matrix printer receipt to a 12-tonne chocolate heist.

Along the way we delve into:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

Budgets will be wasted. Brands will be ruthlessly filtered out. The real game starts after full time.

James Kirkham, founder of Iconic and ex-head of Copa90, joins Contagious to unpack why the 2026 World Cup is fundamentally different to previous tournaments - and what brands need to do about it.

This episode explores the new playbook for World Cup marketing, where winning isn’t about owning the biggest moment, but creating the conversations, emotions and cultural ripples that keep spreading long after the final whistle. .

We’ll explain:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

In this episode, Contagious investigates what happens when content supply completely outstrips human attention, and how brands can win in a world dominated by infinite scroll, clip farms, AI slop and algorithmic overload.

Along the way, we’ll explore why Universe 25’s infamous rodent utopia experiments feel eerily relevant to modern media, why today’s attention panic may simply be history repeating itself, and why the real problem might not be shrinking attention spans but a zero tolerance reaction to boring content.

We’ll explain:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.

Pokemon. Meatball lollipops. 17th Century silk traders. In this episode, Contagious explores weird and wonderful brand collabs, why they’re so effective, how to use them as a shortcut to cultural relevance and which brands are doing them well.  

Discover the psychology behind ‘optimal incongruence’, how brands like Supreme and Crocs turned collaborations into a business model, and why technology has raised the cultural bar for collabs.

Along the way, we dive into:

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.