MAD//Insight
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Louis Theroux to headline MAD//Fest London
Louis Theroux, fresh from his Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere, will take to the stage at MAD//Fest London on 7th July to challenge brands and marketers on their role in shaping culture and combating toxic content in the age of AI.
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BEWARE OF PHISHING EMAILS CLAIMING TO BE MAD//FEST
We are aware of a number of phishing emails circulating claiming to be us and offering free tickets to MAD//Fest. Spoiler alert: It's a scam!
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AI can be both so clever and yet so dumb
Here's how the search history of an aging surfer, MAD//Fest's very own co-founder, Dan Brain, revealed a flaw in Amazon Prime Video’s ‘smart’ ads.
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Efes Named Official Beer of MAD//Fest London 2026
This year's MAD//Fest London just got even more refreshing as Efes has been announced as the official beer of the 2026 festival, ensuring festival-goers can enjoy an ice-cold lager while soaking up the biggest ideas in marketing, advertising and creativity.
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Nicholson's Gin & Tonic Named Official Ready-to-Drink Partner for MAD//Fest London 2026
This year's MAD//Fest London is set to serve up even more flavour, with Nicholson's Gin & Tonic joining as the festival's official ready-to-drink partner. Find out more.
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The creator economy isn’t broken. Your measurement is.
Creatormarketing has become the industry’s favourite bet. More brands, more creators,more formats, and more money. The momentum is real. But let’s be honest: a lotof it is still being bought on faith, believes Lynne Deason, Head of Creative Excellence at Kantar
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CASE STUDIES: How retail, travel and auto brands are nailing display ads
When display campaigns are well planned and executed they can drive reach, brand consideration and conversion. StackAdapt share 3 case studies from brands getting results.
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Football. Brands. And Englishness. Complicated Pride in the World Cup of Advertising.
The World Cup isn't just football's biggest tournament—it's advertising's biggest stage too. While some brands chase attention, the best campaigns tap into something deeper: pride, identity, nostalgia and what football really means to people.
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Sports Marketing is Having a Reset: From Sponsorships to Storytelling
Most sponsorships fail because brands use sport to borrow relevance instead of building their own. The best partnerships start with a clear brand story and use sport to amplify it, not replace it. A logo on a shirt can't fix a weak brand strategy, believes Brand and Marketing Director, Martin Dyhouse.
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The World Cup audience is not who you think it is
64% of World Cup viewers will stop watching the moment their national team is out. Adlook's research across six markets reveals why the tournament audience is more fragile than most brands assume, and what to do about it.
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The Peripherals
For decades, we treated screens as the main event and everything else as peripheral. Now, the most valuable parts of culture are happening around them, in communities, rituals and experiences that algorithms can't replicate. The peripheral has become the point, writes Founder of ICONIC, James Kirkham.
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From Keywords to Conversations: Why Brands Need to Rethink Digital Discovery
The landscape of search and discovery is changing. As consumers turn to new discovery mediums, it’s time for brands to take a fresh look at digital discovery, says Firney co-founder, Marc Firth.
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Augmented Creativity: How Coke combined art with AI to create marketing magic
MAD//Fest + Frontify’s Augmented Reality report spotlights brands that seamlessly merge AI and the human touch to produce brilliant campaigns. Here’s how Coke does it.
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The World Cup: What Actually Happens When the World Tunes In
Marketing is more fragmented than ever. Mass attention is rare. But the FIFA World Cup starts this Thursday and suddenly, the world is watching. Not as one audience, but millions of different ones sharing the same moment, writes Rexona's Global Brand Director, Em Heath.
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From Google to FC Juarez - The FootbalCo Business Podcast episodes you need to listen to now
Ahead of the start of the World Cup, Footballco’s Paul Rayment highlights ten standout podcast episodes featuring leaders from football media and marketing. The conversations explore the trends and strategies shaping fan engagement and commercial growth. Together, they offer a snapshot of football’s rapidly evolving business landscape.
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Roots That Rise: Why Community Matters More Than Ever
In the first of Bloom’s monthly columns, Nafissa Norris, Bloom's current President, reflects on this year’s theme, Roots that Rise, and why communities like Bloom matter more than ever. With spring finally here after a false start, it feels like the perfect moment to explore the meaning behind the theme and the strength that grows from connection and community.
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REVEALED: Where brands are investing for the next wave of personalisation
A survey of 500 brand marketers uncovers personalisation plans
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Brands take note – these are the men of the future
What if the role models young men need aren't influencers, but ordinary people showing extraordinary character? Jo and Kush's victory in the programme Race Around The World, revealed a version of masculinity brands should be championing, writes MAD//Fest event consultant, and Psychotherapist, Alison Fulker.
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How Currys, Vaseline and Others Turned People into Brand Powerhouses
In an age of AI-generated content, authenticity has never been more valuable. The brands thriving today are empowering employees and communities to tell stories no algorithm can replicate, believes Co-Founder & CEO of Aurora, Dawn Paine.
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Be More Octopus
Perhaps the humble octopus offers a blueprint for how brands can stay adaptive, intelligent and connected in a rapidly changing world, argues, Future Platforms CEO and MAD//Fest host Livia Bernardini.
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Going off brief: Why you should give them what they don’t know they want
The best advertising doesn’t always come from following the brief, it comes from challenging it. In his debut column, Trevor Robinson OBE and Founder + Executive Creative Director, Quiet Storm writes why the most memorable campaigns give audiences something they never knew they wanted.
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Why Modern Marketing Has to Start With People
What if the real problem with modern marketing isn't the strategy, the budget or the creative, it's that the customer was never really in the room? A new book by award-winning global marketing leader, Visha Kudhail, makes the case for a third way: one that starts with people, not platforms.
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Did the Brand Deserve the Demand?
Winning the click is the easy part. The harder question is whether your brand deserved the demand it just created, writes Fractional CMO, Ben Stead.
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Risk It: Can Creativity Survive the Performance Era?
Performance marketing didn't kill risk, it just required a committee. Liquid Death built a $1.4 billion brand on creative that would never have survived one, argues Marketing Director, Dhiren Patel.
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The Leaders Who Thrive Under Pressure All Have One Thing in Common
With no time to think, knowing your default response to high-stakes moments could be your most important leadership tool right now. Here's an exclusive early look at Sally Henderson's Five Lenses of High Stakes.
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How China Is Rewriting the Rules of Marketing
From high-speed rail to hyper-competitive EV markets, China has become the world’s fastest laboratory for consumer change, forcing marketers to rethink speed, innovation and organisational responsiveness, writes Ian Maskell, Founder, P E C O R I N O, and former VP Global Marketing, Unilever.
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Entries for the UK Agency Awards are now open
MAD//Fest are partnering with UK Agency Awards, and you can save 15% off your entry
World Cup fever: How brands can score big
This year's World Cup promises to be bigger and better than ever before. StackAdapt explains how brands can capitalise on this global cultural moment..
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Tech stacks are overrated: It’s the operating model that wins
Most MarTech platforms will underdeliver this year and Emily Latham, Founder of ELS Consulting, argues that's got nothing to do with the technology.
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BT Group: Cutting Through Podcast Overwhelm
This week's partner podcast Shiny New Object Nevra Yagmur, Digital Performance Manager at BT Group,talks about taming podcast overload, the Podsome project, and why clarity of marketing objectives is the foundation of real performance.
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Forget personalisation, customers just want consistency
What if the secret to winning customers wasn't better technology, but behaving more like a decent human being? John Sills, author of The Human Experience, Managing Partner at customer-led growth consultancy, The Foundation, puts data behind that hypothesis and the results are more compelling than even its author expected.
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You can’t make a chocolate cake with just chocolate
Whether you’re fresh off the grad scheme or running a department, busy schedules mean it's difficult for anyone in media to wade through all the evidence. That’s why we built the Newsworks Academy, an online training course that doesn’t ask you to.
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Creative Resilience: How McDonald’s Stays Relevant Through Shocks and Shifts
With MAD//Fest three months out, here’s a taste of the thinking coming your way in July. Last July, Ben Fox, Chief Marketing Officer for McDonald’s UK, and Josh Bullmore, Chief Strategy Officer at Publicis Groupe UK, unpacked how the brand keeps evolving and what it takes to build a legacy that lasts.
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Sport is Marketing's Sharpest Edge: MAD//Sports London 2026 is Where We Prove It.
From a one-day experiment in 2025, to a sold-out Manchester showcase, to three days at the heart of MAD//Fest London this July, Ben Phillips tells us why MAD//Sports has become the conversation the marketing industry can't afford to sit out.
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Are People Writing Songs About Your Brand?
How does a brand become so relevant it ends up in song lyrics or everyday chat? Former Beavertown Brewery marketing director Tom Rainsford argues it’s not ads, but authenticity, shared values, and real cultural belonging that drive fame.
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More than a race: Why the industry just sprinted a marathon in under two hours
A decade of speed, spirit and shared purpose lit up Battersea Park as the Sprintathon marked its 10th anniversary in style. From record-breaking relay laps to a powerful fundraising mission, the industry once again ran together for Stand Up To Cancer. Alice Burgham, Client Manager, Ingenuity+ and Sprintathon Organising Committee, writes about this inspirational day.
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Ruggable: How to avoiding Decorative Data
Segmentation is useless without action. In this week's partner podcast, Shiny New Object, Ruggable's Kajal Patel explains how to turn customer data into decisions that actually drive value.
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Creative Doesn’t Kill Accounts. Account Handling Does.
Great creative might win the pitch, but it’s account handling that keeps, or kills, the relationship. After 30 years in the industry, former Fentimans Marketing Director, Jayne Andrews, shares her unglamorous basics that separate chaotic agencies from those clients trust with bigger briefs.
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Cocoa, Chaos and a Cause: Tony's Chocolonely's recipe for a non-boring brand
With MAD//Fest three months out, here’s a taste of the thinking coming your way in July. Last year, Sadira E. Furlow, Chief of Global Brand & Communications at Tony’s Chocolonely, took the stage with one message: safe is forgettable, and her brand proves it.
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Nominate Your MAD//Fest Female Leader
MAD//Fest has always championed the people shaping the future of marketing and this year we are once again spotlighting the women leading that change.
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The Game is Bigger Than the Game
Most sports organizations think winning creates fans.It doesn’t. Winning accelerates fandom. Experience design creates it, argues former CMO of NBA team Golden State Warriors, Kenny Lauer.
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Uber: Designing for the Now Economy
The funnel is dead. Welcome to the Now Economy, where discovery, decision, and action happen in seconds, not stages, believes Bill Dennett, Regional Team Lead, Uber Advertising
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The Sport Industry Awards 2026
Thanks to our partnership with the Sport Industry Group, (our friends who help us put on MAD//Sports), we're giving MAD//Insight readers the chance to attend The 25th Sport Industry Awards at a massively discounted rate.
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New MAD event in Newcastle to tackle ‘YI: the next frontier’
MAD//Fest has today announced further expansion in the north of England, with the launch of MAD//Toon, which will be held in Newcastle on 1 April 2027. MAD//Toon will chart the shift from AI to YI in 2027.
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Gen Z talent proves Heinz is in very creative hands
"I’ve seen the future for Gen-Z talent, and I liked it", writes Richard Robinson, Executive Director of Ingenuity+. What happens when you hand a brief for the iconic Heinz Ketchup to thousands of students and dozens of universities across Europe for six months? The answer is simple: something truly remarkable.
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SharkNinja: Taking the me out of media
Nick Cedar, Manager, Media Strategy and Planning at SharkNinja, talks to our Shiny New Object, our partner podcast, about treating data as a creative brief by looking beyond numbers to uncover audience stories and human motivations.
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UNICEF: Industry Toolkit on Children’s Rights and Digital Marketing
Children’s lives are deeply connected to digital technologies, exposing them to both opportunities and risks, including widespread engagement with digital marketing. UNICEF’s 2026 toolkit provides guidance for brands and platforms on ensuring children’s rights are respected in digital marketing practices.
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Closing the confidence gap in Retail Media
Retail media is growing at four times the rate of the wider industry, and the IAB forecasts the UK market will hit £8.6 billion by 2030. Yet despite this rapid growth, a significant disconnect exists between spending and confidence, believes Jessica Doulton, Managing Partner for Retail Media at Omnicom, and Rebecca Fry, Managing Partner, Growth for Flywheel
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The HOW of leading well (and living well): they're not the same thing
Many top leaders aren’t failing, they’re exhausted, running two demanding lives on the same tank of fuel. Sustained performance requires mastering how you live, not just how you lead, writes High-Stakes Leadership Mentor Sally Henderson.
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How brands like Footasylum, Very, THG and Yorkshire Tea win on TikTok
Northern brands are thriving on TikTok! Check out our free report, Northern Soul, to see how top brands are creating hits, engagement, and community.