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Cannes Briefing: Creativity is moving beyond the agency model

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Cannes Briefing: Creativity is moving beyond the agency model

Bad AI customer agent bots are a growing brand risk

Last year, a grieving air traveler asked Air Canada’s chatbot about bereavement fares. The bot invented a refund policy that did not exist. The customer acted on it, the airline ended up in court, and the story went viral. The court rejected Air Canada’s argument that its chatbot was a “separate legal entity” responsible for

Aperture Capital | Brand Identity

Numinous Agency built the full brand identity for Aperture Capital, a Chicago-based private equity firm investing in mid-market American industrial businesses. The work spans positioning, mark, typography, voice, stationery, and publication systems.

What Youth Volleyball Taught Me About the PESO Model®

What youth volleyball’s evolution teaches PR pros about PESO Model® integration and building scalable, modern marketing ecosystems. The post What Youth Volleyball Taught Me About the PESO Model® first appeared on Spin Sucks.

How to Stress Test a Staging Environment – Ask An SEO

This week’s Ask An SEO question: “How do you stress-test a staging environment to surface SEO risks before a large-scale launch?” It is one of the most important questions to answer when considering rolling out new websites, migrations, or significant changes to your live site. First, let’s look at the difference between a “staging” site

Marketers grapple with Google’s new suite of AI-powered ad agents

First comes innovation, then comes transparency. At least that seems to be Google’s approach as the tech behemoth enters its agentic era. At Google Marketing Live (GML) yesterday, Google announced a new souped up suite of agentic ad tools backed by its LLM, Gemini. Google plans to roll out more ads in AI Mode in

Instrument agency’s formula for leading the charge in design

Design and technology are two words that are very often thrown together. They’re a subject at school, whole political departments and an entire industry in and of itself. Many creative agencies label themselves as such, but few have these spaces as integrated into their practice as Instrument. From the inside out, the design and technology

Key AEO & Content Trends for 2026

Are you optimizing and aligning your AEO strategy for your top-performing LLM? Does your current SEO strategy put your brand at risk for losing visibility? How do you measure search success when AI answers replace the click? Which AEO tactics actually drive visibility across answer engines right now? 👆 Get a concrete framework for investing

Vox Media’s Unsold Brands Field Penske Interest, Exec Exits

This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here. Following the Wednesday sale of New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and Vox to James Murdoch for $300 million, a key question remained

Thieaudio Cypher headphone: Ordered on the outside, a little unpredictable within

Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. Although Thieaudio is renowned for producing some of the best loved in-ear monitors out there (27 since 2019), the company also has form

Mueller Explains Why Google Uses Markdown On Dev Docs

Google’s John Mueller says markdown pages serve a specific purpose for developer documentation sites but won’t help most websites, even as search becomes more agentic. Mueller laid out his reasoning in a Bluesky thread. He was responding to a question from Lily Ray about why Google publishes LLMs.txt files and markdown pages, even though they

What’s the future of AI and RCS in mobile messaging?

Are consumers at a breaking point with email and text message marketing? In this episode of Conversations with Martech, we sit down with Eric Miao, chief strategy officer at Attentive, to discuss the evolving landscape of mobile communications. Eric and I dive into how brands can move past the “quantity over quality” era of spam

4 Publishing Workflow Fixes That Bring Both

This post was sponsored by WP Engine. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Why are we missing the SERP window on breaking stories we should be winning?How are smaller outlets ranking faster than us on the same news?Why is our ad stack tanking Core Web Vitals on our highest-traffic pages? In

Publicis’ LiveRamp deal accelerated Omnicom’s exit

Omnicom was already planning to cut LiveRamp loose. Publicis buying it just moved up the date. Before the deal, the plan was to let the contract with LiveRamp run its course until the first quarter of 2028 and walk away. Publicis changed that. The acquisition is expected to close by year end, and when it

“Evolving your career into a position of influence is a natural next step”

As you’ve not shared this, I’d love to know: does your manager know of your ambition yet? If you have been sharing your goals with them, but not felt supported, this requires a completely different response – and it also depends on how supportive the agency is in developing staff and emerging leaders. But as

90% Of Brands Have Zero AI Search Mentions, New SEO Study

This post was sponsored by Victorious. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. A year into the shift toward AI search, the marketing industry is full of confident takes about the factors that impact AI visibility. But we’ve seen very little data to support commonly held assumptions. We wanted to see what

Google Revamps Its Iconic Search Bar for the First Time in 25 Years

Google Revamps Its Iconic Search Bar for the First Time in 25 Years The future of brands gets decided here. Join the industry’s top marketers at Brandweek for the ideas, insights, and connections shaping what’s next. Get your ticket. For 25 years, Google Search has trained people to type a few

Sony 1000X The Collexion: Finally some AirPods Pro Max killers?

Sony just unveiled its new luxury Bluetooth headphone, the oddly named 1000X The Collexion. But after sitting through a press briefing, I’m happy to report that its name is the only ridiculous thing about it. 1000X The Collexion will cost $650 and apparently cherry picks all the best bits of a decade of the 1000X

YouTube Expands AI Creation Tools With Gemini Omni And Conversational Search

YouTube brought several AI-focused updates to Google I/O this year, but two announcements stood out more than the others. The platform is introducing a new conversational discovery experience called “Ask YouTube” alongside expanded AI video remixing powered by Gemini Omni. Together, the updates suggest YouTube is putting more focus on helping users discover content through

What marketing can learn from IT about running complex technology

Marketing and creative teams now run technology environments as complex as many enterprise IT systems. But while IT organizations built disciplines around governance, service ownership, and operational management, marketing teams still tend to manage martech through disconnected projects and expanding tool stacks. Today’s enterprise marketing and creative environments are no longer mere collections of tools.

The Six Stages of PESO Model® Maturity

TL; DR The PESO Model® has six maturity stages: Foundation, Pilot, Scale, Systemize, Real-Time, and Leadership. New data from the PESO Model® Diagnostic shows that 91% of teams are stuck in the bottom half of the ladder, even though nearly half describe themselves as “integrated.” That gap between claim and practice is the most important

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