By Mark Tungate When Bertille Toledano was named President of Havas Creative Network, it affirmed the success of BETC – and her vision for what comes next. Bertille Toledano has literally been a headline maker in recent weeks, gazing from the cover of Stratégies magazine in France after being named
We are at a strange moment for marketers. The dashboards look calmer than the real world. The headlines feel louder than the budgets. The tools are getting smarter, but attention is getting poorer. And somewhere in the middle sits the modern CMO, expected to be part growth engineer, part culture
For years, independence was seen as a constraint. Invictus Blue’s transformation suggests it may now be the advantage that matters most. The communications industry is shifting. Platforms dominate, consumer behaviour is fragmenting, and consolidation has reshaped agency economics. Against this backdrop, Invictus Blue completed a full restructuring in 2025, marking
Every Chinese New Year, Apple releases a film that quietly recalibrates what festive brand storytelling can be. Not louder. Not grander. Just more human. This year’s Glad I Met You is no exception and perhaps one of its most emotionally assured works yet. Directed by Bai Xue and created with
To celebrate its 35th anniversary, McDonald’s Indonesia has released The Boat, a campaign film that resists the usual anniversary playbook. There are no milestones, no chest-beating brand claims, and no retrospective reel of achievements. Instead, the film opens at dawn on a jetty — quiet, human, and unmistakably Indonesian. Created
By Mark Tungate What’s the magic formula that makes Thai advertising so entertaining? One of its greatest practitioners shares his thoughts with us. Everybody who loves creativity has a soft spot for Thai advertising. It’s funny, surreal, occasionally dramatic and nearly always over-the-top. It looks like nothing else. So it
Influencer marketing spend is growing, but scrutiny is intensifying: 68% of brands struggle to measure ROI from creator campaigns, while 72% of consumers distrust paid influencer content. Traditional approaches that prioritise follower count over credibility and accountability are no longer enough. With budgets under pressure and CMOs demanding proof, not
By India Fizer Every new year promises transformation. With AI now embedded in nearly every workflow and platform, 2026 marks a turning point: not in what we use, but how we choose to compete. In conversation with AdForum, agency leaders reveal what they believe will truly move the industry forward,
There have been times I imagine waking up in a world where nothing is trying to sell you anything. No billboards lining highways. No sponsored posts slipping between photos of friends. No pre-roll videos before the content you actually want. No jingles, no brand mascots, no carefully engineered desire. At
Somewhere in Yiwu, China, the world’s most industrious factory town, a seamstress stitched a smile upside down. And, she accidentally created the most honest brand mascot of the Year of the Horse. Meet the crying horse: red, plush, vaguely miserable, and inexplicably sold out. It wasn’t conceived in a brainstorm.
