Marketing

Marketing

Pencil's experiment focused on written copy in Facebook product ads rather than big-budget creative. Despite widely held concerns that the tech could cannibalize copywriting jobs, that doesn't mean professional creatives are ignoring the tech. Shruthi Subramanian of Serviceplan Munich (above) was named the most-awarded copywriter in the world in The Drum's World Creative Rankings. She says the tools can be put to good use, albeit with caution.

For basketball fans, a new year means one thing: March Madness is right around the corner. This jam-packed month has historically been a goldmine for brand marketers. The three full weeks of the tournament, not including the lead up, is an opportunity to capitalize on a pool of highly engaged consumers - whether they are the lucky fans watching in-person, tuning in at restaurants and bars, or catching the highlights from their phones or couch.

Strategy and creativity are celebrated in equal measures at The Drum Awards. Across the board, there are plenty of examples of fantastic and innovative work produced by agencies, brands and individuals each year. But what makes a winner? How do you shout from the rooftops that your campaigns are brilliant? At The Drum, there are 22 awards that celebrate the finest work produced globally. Following are seven examples of the best of the best of The Drum Awards 2017 winners.

Only a third of brands fully integrate search into their media mix according to new research from the Internet Advertising Bureau. In its Search Marketing Barometer 2012, which surveyed the top 200 advertisers according to ALF, 72% of brands stated that search is only partially or not at all integrated with the wider media mix. Some 94% said their is a greater opportunity to integrate search.

The stats speak for themselves. In 2015's 'A List', out of 418 executives, 79 (19 per cent) were women and only eight (2 per cent) were BAME. Shockingly, in the second decade of the 21st century, it is still possible to go to a leading marketing or communications industry event and only see a handful of black or Asian faces in the room.

Apple has spearheaded the Super Bowl halftime show since 2023, building a complex array of advertising, teasers, playlists, and other content across its many platforms for Rihanna (2023), Usher (2024), and Kendrick Lamar (2025). Since the start of this $50-million-per-year sponsorship deal, Apple has treated the halftime show like it might be one of its products, with all the marketing and advertising bells and whistles it has at its disposal for things like the iPhone and Apple Watch.

We're 100% independent, answerable to no one, and always free to do what's right. REBEL digital marketing agency was born in August 2018 with a dream of inspiring others to think consciously about the way they do business. Our mission is to embody our REBEL spirit, with a people-before-profit mentality, driving a new era of ethical and transparent digital marketing. We thrive to humanise digital marketing; overthrowing the corruption and politics that came before and replacing them with ethics, transparency & compassion.

We might be exposed to more ads and commercials today than ever before in human history, but the idea of advertising itself is certainly not a new concept. According to Instapage, the first signs of advertisements actually appeared in ancient Egyptian steel carvings from 2000 BC. Meanwhile, the first printed ad was published in 1472, when William Caxton decided to advertise a book by posting flyers on church doors in England.

Despite industry discussions around channel convergence, "most marketers' playbooks are actually not that diversified," said Albert Thompson, director of digital innovation at Walton Isaacson. "They have the appearance that they're diversified," Thompson said, "but, in reality, there's no intersection between their heads of investment." Instead, they deal discretely with agency teams that handle broadcast TV, streaming, social video, etc. Many marketers buy what's familiar or "what they think makes sense," Thompson said, partly because they're beholden to traditional agency holding company structures.

As the market grows increasingly saturated with traditional digital content, brands are exploring new ways to stand out by engaging more than just sight and sound. Advances in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), spatial audio and other immersive technologies are opening the door to richer, more memorable brand experiences that feel interactive rather than interruptive. The challenge is knowing how to experiment thoughtfully and how to use these tools to deepen connection without novelty overshadowing their purpose.

Among critics was behavioral specialist Richard Shotton, who has drawn quite a different conclusion into the viability of purpose-led marketing from the data. The study compared and contrasted 47 brand purpose cases with 333 non-purpose cases over the same period. 57% of brand purpose campaigns studied were deemed to "perform strongly." These "well-executed" campaigns drove 15% more market share growth than standard ad campaigns, a fact many fans of purpose have grasped on to and championed.

For beachgoers hoping to unplug and enjoy the water, the sight of commercial messaging floating through the ocean adds another marketing channel to an already ad-filled world. From phone screens to gas station pumps to the open water, advertising follows consumers into spaces that once provided a break from daily life. This kind of aggressive marketing can encourage more unnecessary purchasing and consumption.

January has been an insane month with Google Search ranking volatility, and I guess it is no surprise to see the most heated time right now, as we end the month. I am seeing a significant spike in SEO chatter and many of the tools are showing very heated Google search ranking volatility over the past 24 hours or so.

Winning a prestigious award, such as our recent Gold at The Drum Awards for PR in the Entertainment category, is always a proud moment for us as an agency. It validates our expertise, builds credibility, and sets us apart in a competitive market. We leverage awards as a key part of our marketing and business strategy in various ways. Sharing the win with clients reinforces their choice to work with us - after all, everyone wants to partner with a winner!

Several weeks after Google rolled out support for Preferred Sources globally, Google added official help documentation for site owners to use to help them understand what it is all about and how to encourage their readers to subscribe to your site as a preferred source. In December, Google rolled out Preferred sources globally after rolling it out in the US and India in August and beta testing it in June. Now the new help documentation is available here if you need it.

When AI tools started taking off, Google faced a serious problem: the risk of its search results being flooded with AI-generated spam. If left unchecked, the world's most-used search engine would lose trust - and with it, revenue. Search drives almost 57% of Alphabet's income, totaling over $198bn annually. And that revenue was at risk. AI spam isn't like old-school SEO spam. It's better written, harder to detect, and convincing enough to fool algorithms.

While we respect the ASA's decision, we fundamentally disagree with the characterisation of a campaign that critically reflects widely reported economic conditions as socially irresponsible,

Any thin hope marketers had that 2026 might calm the turbulence of last year didn't survive January, as political shocks, platform upheaval and fresh economic jitters piled new uncertainty onto an already fragile market. Nobody expected serenity to be clear. The hope was for a more predictable kind of chaos: slower regulatory fights, fewer sudden platform pivots, and an economy drifting rather than lurching.

Crocs unveiled its first new global brand platform in nearly a decade to better appeal to a younger generation of consumers, according to a press release. "Wonderfully Unordinary" centers on self-expression and real-world experiences in a culture "saturated in imitation and algorithmic sameness," Crocs said. The titular anthem spot depicts a pair of featureless store mannequins as they come alive and grow increasingly human after being outfitted in Crocs' signature porous clogs.

If you work in marketing, you might want to look away now. The brutal truth is... the vast majority of people don't care about your brand. In fact, 81% of the brands sold across Europe could disappear overnight and consumers wouldn't be concerned... They probably wouldn't even notice. Various dynamics are at play here. Firstly, abundance. With up to 30,000 new products being launched every year, we're all spoilt for choice. With so much variety on offer, very few brands feel truly indispensable.

In the U.S. - where the market for agentic AI is projected to grow from $2.43 billion in 2025 to $65.25 billion by 2034 - agents are adding value across the marketing funnel, attracting, nurturing and converting leads by personalizing experiences, optimizing campaigns and writing content. Acting as mini-marketers, they are drawing up plans, making real-time decisions, executing and orchestrating campaigns across channels and using results to learn and improve, with little or no human intervention.

While creatives and CMOs watching at home will focus on the celebrities, needle drops and ad gags, media buyers will be keeping a close eye on the quality of Peacock's stream and scrutinizing peak viewership figures - as they gauge whether the NBCU-owned platform can fulfill promises made in its premium pitch to buyers. According to two media buyers, both of whom exchanged anonymity for candor, NBCU's initial asking price for a 30-second ad running on Peacock's Super Bowl coverage was $3 million.

Becoming a Bubble ambassador gave me more than free skincare and content opportunities. It offered a firsthand look at how modern marketing works when brands prioritize authenticity, community and trust over traditional influencer metrics. As a student interested in marketing and media, the experience helped bridge the gap between classroom theory and real-world brand strategy. One of the most valuable lessons I learned is the power of community-driven marketing.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Jamie Dimon explained why JPMorgan Chase is spending billions more on AI. He was making a long-term bet. The same kind of leaders make when they build headquarters, factories or infrastructure that won't "pay off" this quarter but will define competitiveness for decades. It's exactly how marketers should think about and position differentiation in the eyes of the C-Suite.

Imagine a scenario where you've developed some ingenious new widget that costs millions of dollars to design, produce and bring to market. You could have quit numerous times. You probably wanted to, because there's a new season of The Traitors and you have to catch up. But you never surrendered. You persevered, and your brilliant invention is ready for the world. All you have to do now is convince a society besieged by a nonstop cavalcade of crises to care.

I asked Buffer's team of creators - because creating is important to us since our product is for creators - to share what actually helped them get past the fear, overthinking, and blank-page paralysis that accompanies early-stage content creation. And their advice was refreshingly actionable. A bit of backstory: In an initiative spearheaded by Sabreen Haziq, our Senior Brand & Community Manager, Buffer's team has been transforming into a group of creators with real skin in the game.

As UK businesses enter 2026, many small and medium-sized enterprises are taking time to review the systems that support their day-to-day operations. Staffing, compliance, budgeting and customer experience are often top of the agenda, particularly for companies operating in competitive or regulated sectors. One area that is frequently overlooked, however, is workwear. Despite being a daily necessity for many teams, workwear is rarely treated as a strategic consideration. Yet the right work uniform can directly influence professionalism, safety, staff confidence and onboarding speed.

For the better part of the last century, America's largest consumer packaged goods companies ran an undefeated business playbook. All of the iconic consumer brands of our lifetimes- Coca-Cola, Lay's, Cheerios, Oreos, and more--were built on a simple, three-part formula. First, generate massive demand by placing huge national ad buys. Next, create ubiquity by stocking the brand across every conceivable grocery store shelf. Third, harvest as much profit as possible through the economies of scale created by giant production runs.

Elephants, those magnificent behemoths of the wild, have long captivated our imagination with their intelligence, intricate social lives, and, most intriguingly, their phenomenal memory. They remember water sources, recognise individuals, and retain trauma, cruelty, and specific threats for decades. And they are truly masters at holding grudges. Now imagine if the advertising industry had the memory of an elephant. Imagine if we actually remembered scandals for more than two weeks. If we held grudges. If we drew conclusions from repeated failure, acted accordingly, and held others accountable. Instead, we forget. Constantly and/or conveniently.

Understand the changing role of consumers. Take back ownership of the strategic agenda. Review the relevance of 'old world' classifications such as above-the-line and below-the-line. Develop open sourcing for ideas as a viable financial model. To take responsibility for driving a change in pricing models to account for the impact of digital. Move to outcome-based compensation rather than hourly rates and manpower.

Traditional thought leadership is losing impact. Long reports and gated content no longer capture attention in today's zero-click world. As a result, thought leadership is entering a new phase - experiential thought leadership. Engaging formats like interactive webinars, immersive events and podcasts make ideas felt and memorable rather than just consumed. Success depends on cross-team collaboration, testing and building experiences around real audience understanding.