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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

Why are we all obsessed with anti-design?

Over the past decade, anti-design has slowly been creeping its way back into fashion. After a wave of minimalism arrived in response to the vibrant, chaotic nature of 90s/00s design, the creative world soon grew bored of its white space and Helvetica, prompting a counter-movement of imperfect design. But why are brands continuing to embrace

Google Answers Question About SEO For AI Agents

Google’s John Mueller responded to a question about whether Google’s search quality principles will change as AI agents increasingly browse websites on behalf of users. The answer may matter more to site owners than it first appears. Question About Agentic Browsers And Search Quality Principles An SEO asked Mueller on Bluesky whether Google’s guidance around

Rethinking Audience Strategy for an Unpredictable Consumer

This post was created in partnership with GroundTruth Younger consumers are changing retail by blending online viral trends with in-store shopping. During an ADWEEK House Cannes Lions panel co-hosted with GroundTruth, Will Lee, CEO of ADWEEK, sat down with Rosie O’Meara, CEO of GroundTruth, and Katie Comerford, president of commerce and transformation at Horizon Media,

Google’s Spam Update Now Reaches AI Answers. Enforcement Is Hard

Google started rolling out the June spam update, the second of the year. It enforces documented spam policies, and one of those policies now covers more ground than it once did. Google’s spam rules treat attempts to “manipulate generative AI responses” in Search as a violation, and that’s one of the policies the update is

Why AI is making DAM more important than ever

For years, marketers treated automation as the answer to growing content demands. Build enough rules into your workflows, and the system could handle the rest. AI is proving that’s not true. According to Bynder’s “State of DAM Report 2026,” 93% of enterprise organizations face content challenges that their existing rules-based automation can’t solve. The biggest

The Weekend With Ibeyi

Ibeyi are the coolest twin sister music duo filling everyone’s ears with an etherial fusion of alternative R&B sounds and Afro-Cuban jazz. The double act, Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz, have released three albums to date Spell 31 (2022), Ash (2017) and Ibeyi (2015) and today the pair have just dropped their fourth: Offering. This

Bruce Clay, One of the Founding Figures of SEO, Has Died

Bruce Clay, one of the first generation of search engine optimization experts, has passed away. Much of the terminology that he coined and many of the concepts that he pioneered continue to be used today. Thirty Years Of SEO Clay was among the cohort of SEOs who were learning and applying the art of optimization

Inside the infrastructure behind Unilever’s creator force

Creators are no longer a media channel or transaction. It’s an entirely new marketing mode — at least that’s what the infrastructure behind Unilever’s creator strategy indicates. Call it a transformation. Back in 2025, Unilever put the industry on notice after announcing its plans to spend half of its media budget on social channels and increase

We gave this powerful editing controller a 9/10 rating – and now it’s $92 off for Prime Day

If you’re an editor of any kind, you need a TourBox Elite custom control pad. This creative tool can revolutionise your workflow and is essentially a cheat code for accessing software shortcuts to have every function at your fingertips. If you only cave into one deal this Prime Day, let it be this. TourBox is

Google Spam Update Rolls Out, AI Manipulation In Scope

Welcome to the week’s Pulse: updates affect how Google measures its AI surfaces, what its spam rules cover, and where AI recommendations send traffic next. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Google Rolls Out June 2026 Spam Update Google began rolling out the June spam update on June 24. Key facts: Google announced

Interstellar Arc | Part 01: Graphic Systems

Interstellar Arc is a large-scale immersive VR experience positioned between narrative cinema, interactive exhibition, and theme park ride. Set aboard a multi-generational starship traveling toward an exoplanet, the experience unfolds as a continuous environment shaped by systems, interfaces, and the accumulated history of the journey.

A Third Of Fintech Is Invisible To AI Agents

A third of the top fintech websites in the world deliver less than 80% of their homepage content in raw HTML. That is the version of the page an AI agent gets when it visits, before it decides whether to spend the compute on a full browser render. Most of them do not. The Structure

Why your top ranking no longer means you’re winning

Marketers spent years obsessing over rank reports wherever their products appeared. A higher position meant more visibility, more clicks, and more revenue. That mental model made sense when everyone saw roughly the same results for the same query. That world is disappearing. Between geography, shopping history, inventory, and platform-specific algorithms, two people can type the

Rapha’s brand identity is rebooted with six bespoke typefaces inspired by vintage cycling ephemera

This sentiment naturally led the team into typography as a focus for the project, and, consequentially a collaboration with UK-based foundry Frost, in order to build what would become six bespoke typefaces with 48 new styles for Rapha including Rapha Sans, Rapha Serif, Mono and Semi-Mono, in a type-led direction for the brand’s visual world.

How Do I Effectively Measure Campaign Success Across Multiple Platforms? – Ask A PPC

Ad platforms will advocate for their traffic, impressions, and the attributable value they generate. This data plays an important role in helping marketers defend budget investments while fueling conversion-based bidding strategies. However, your brand still needs a clear understanding of what is truly driving value, especially across platforms. This month’s question gets at the heart

Cannes Briefing: Creativity is moving beyond the agency model

Bose CMO Jim Mollica hasn’t used a creative agency in four or five years, he told Digiday. One CPG CMO, overheard at a dinner this week, said they no longer believe in agencies of record. They want ideas to come from anywhere — a creative agency, a creator, even AI. Creator-owned StudioB founder Olly Lewis

As a huge fan of the Arkham trilogy, I’m obsessed with these professional Batman gaming glasses

If you own a handheld console, like the Nintendo Switch 2, one of the best accessories you can get for it is a pair of smart gaming glasses. These wearable displays can be used for ultimate gaming immersion, with your own private cinema thanks to the 201-inch virtual screen and blackout peripherals. Psst – check

81.8% Of My ‘AI Assistant’ Traffic Was Fake. The Googlebot Number Was Worse

I launched CitationIQ.com recently. Over the last two weeks, my logs claimed 33 AI assistants visited, a little better than two a day. That number is a lie. The real number? Six. Googlebot looked worse. Of 799 requests carrying its name, only 107 were real, though we all know scammers love to spoof Googlebot. And

Creating Campaigns That Become Cultural Moments

This post was created in partnership with Adobe Capitalizing on cultural moments is a tried-and-true marketing strategy, but is it possible for brands to create their own moments? During an […]

The Beautiful Game. A World Cup illustration series

The World Cup as I see it: not the matches, but everything surrounding them. The trumpet that blooms into flowers. The cleats that wait. The flag with a dove. The musical note made of two soccer balls. The trophy. The hand. The kick. A personal series of vector and 3D illustrations celebrating soccer as a

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