Phil Rowley, Head of Futures for Omnicom Media Group UK, admits that the Metaverse is both overhyped and underappreciated. While a lot of marketer attention is now on the “shiny objects” of AI with products like ChatGPT, he has recently focused on “Avoiding the Regretaverse” or, perhaps better said, “how not to mess up in the Metaverse.” Beginning with definitions, we discuss how brands can best take advantage of the biggest change to the media landscape in decades.

Few would disagree that an agency’s greatest asset is its people. Tim Ringel, ad veteran, serial entrepreneur, and one of the founders of agency group-- Meet The People, is on a mission to ensure that an improved work culture is front and center for ad agency employees.

He describes Meet the People as the world’s first people-centric agency group, based on a better work/life balance, no glass ceilings, and a commitment to DEI. Today he talks about the evolution of the ad agency, as well as how a better employee experience leads to stronger work and greater efficiency for clients.

Kate Goodall has spent a good portion of her adult life supporting women and women-led companies. As Co-Founder and CEO of Halcyon, an incubator for early-stage impact ventures, she has formed several strong opinions about business. Kate often talks about “the inevitable impact-driven future of business” and “the rise of values-driven consumer behavior.”

An advocate for startup accountability through determining the right metrics and continually measuring progress, she also believes that marketing needs to improve by moving beyond promises and optics to having a more deliverable role in brand building and ensuring that all actions live up to mission statements.

Eric Feinberg is a leading expert on cyber information warfare and is Vice President of content moderation for the Washington, DC based nonprofit, Coalition for a Safer Web. There, he works alongside former Ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg, to shed light on terrorist extremist content, hate speech, violent activity, and illegal drug sales on social media.

Eric has also invented a unique cyber research tool called Ai2, for which he received a patent. He describes it as an evolution of artificial intelligence or “anticipatory intelligence” that enables a user to observe social media posts and identify trends that can better anticipate activities from bad actors, malevolent organizations, or extremist groups.

Joanne Davis of Joanne Davis Consulting has a reputation for helping to find a still point in the constantly churning world of client – ​​agency relationships. From concepts like Can This Agency-Client Marriage Be Saved to specific ideas on how to repair relationships, she has proven that while change may be constant, it doesn't have to break industry partnerships.

We asked her to make sense of these times—from the departure of top talent to new ways of working, from the rise of highly specialized agencies with focuses on Web3 and AI-powered Media to layoffs, combining creative shops, and suggestions that the agency business may no longer be about creating ads…

Joanne shares her thoughts.

A well-known drinks marketer for much of his career, Colin Westcott-Pitt turned his attention several years ago to the global development of the Glanbia Performance Nutrition Brand Portfolio, which includes Optimum Nutrition, Slimfast, Body & Fit, Isopure, among others. Its flagship global brand, Optimum Nutrition, has just been certified as the world’s #1 sports nutrition brand, according to Euromonitor, and has achieved the extraordinary milestone of becoming a Billion Dollar brand.

Today Colin discusses the marketing of the brand and how it was driven by a purpose of helping consumers everywhere to achieve their performance and healthy lifestyle goals. Plus, he shares the lessons he learned along the way.

The WFA, with Kantar Research, Offers Imperatives on Marketers’ Role in Sustainable Actions. Özlem Şentürk Explains…

The World Federation of Advertisers has been proactive in linking sustainability with marketing imperatives. At their annual Global Marketer Week Conference in late April, they presented new research in partnership with Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice. Entitled Sustainable Marketing 2030, the study highlights the current gap between intention and action on sustainable marketing practices. Furthermore, the results consider the critical role marketing can play as businesses continue to transform to satisfy climate concerns.

Özlem Şentürk, Senior Partner at Kantar, presented the WFA research. She covers a series of thought-provoking topics ranging from product innovation to circular frameworks to recognition that current concepts of growth may have to be reconsidered if businesses aim to be compatible with a sustainable future.

The Internationalist (https://the-internationalist.com/) focuses on the continual reinvention of marketing by highlighting the ideas of inspirational marketers around the world as they move the industry forward. Internationalist Marketing TV shares these perspectives through video with case studies, interviews, discussions, and personal stories.

Ask branding expert Allen Adamson his perspective on the most important shift in contemporary marketing, and he’ll tell you it’s the need to focus on the consumer’s experience, rather than stressing product differentiation. His new book, Seeing the How: Transforming what people do, not buy, to gain market advantage explores why today’s most successful businesses are those that have significantly transformed our daily routines, or literally, “made life as we live it better.” He stresses that “successful experience disruption is the de facto new competitive advantage across all categories.” Allen is also Co-Founder of Metaforce, a consultancy that helps clients identify growth strategies and then activates them in market. His new book debuts on May 2nd. Today we touch on some of marketing’s most significant topics—from growth strategies to the changing role of the CMO, and how the entrepreneurial mindset and marketing innovation should be better aligned.

It’s not every day that someone champions a global redesign of an iconic brand. PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer Mauro Porcini led the process to refresh Pepsi’s logo and visual identity to make it more relevant for today and tomorrow. Most of the marketing world has now had a glimpse of the new logo, revealed earlier this month with new colors—electric blue and black, a bolder, all-caps font, and a striking Pepsi wordmark within a larger globe. However, most may not realize how and why it came about. Today, Mauro Porcini talks about innovation, design, what inspires people to buy brands… as well as the very long, inclusive process to get a major global rebranding right…

Nick Bayer, Founder and CEO of Saxbys®, a certified B Corp with a mission to “Make Life Better,” has always been in the business of bringing people together. When he created Saxbys in 2005, he never considered it to be just a chain of coffee cafes, but rather a social impact company fueled by great food, beverage, and hospitality.

Ever driven by his company’s mission, Nick Bayer introduced Saxbys’ pioneering Experiential Learning Platform® (E.L.P.®) in 2015 in partnership with Drexel University as the nation’s first entirely student-run cafe where participants earn full academic credit and wages through a university cooperative education program. Bayer’s vision is to embolden the next generation of entrepreneurs, providing undergrad students with tangible experience as a supplement to traditional classroom learning.

Today we talk about the entrepreneurial mindset, being purpose-driven, and the future of business.