CreativeX

Perfecting the marketing recipe is no mean feat. Discover new (data-driven) ingredients from Meta, Kantar, and CreativeX in this month's Solve for X. Subscribe to make sure you never miss an installment →

Over and out from DMWF Amsterdam Day 2! 🎀 Looking for 2025's hottest trends? Pinterest's 2025 trend forecast drops next week - over the last 4 years, 80% of the future trends predicted in the annual report have come true. Kitty Neuhaus-Bakker explored how advertisers are using Pinterest to reach consumers actively searching for products, through creator content (47% higher pin rate) and following the 4C's (144% increase in sales lift). 💌 Rethink your creator strategy. Ligia Patrocinio's advice? Brands should stop thinking of creators as a media output, and start placing them as a creative input. Complicating the traditional brand-agency model with creators might be challenging, but the potential pay off is huge. ✨ Scaling AI successfully. At Randstad, Miriam van der Heijden ensured internal buy-in for new AI tools by getting in-house creative teams to train their asset creation model. For Mark Cooper, success at Coty was built on creating a center of excellence, allowing experimentation while ensuring a degree of governance, and democratizing the system once it had been shown to add value. Dennis Ritter and Deepa Ann John advocated a similar crawl, walk, and run approach for Dr. Oetker and Storyteq. Demonstrating that a platform can deliver, running a pilot in a local market, and then finding the right business case to scale. 🖼️ The content question. At Booking.com, consumer behavior drives content production decisioning. Martijn Savenije explained how his teams build content to problem solve, not drive a temporary moment of fame. Sanae BOUKHANA underscored the importance of relevancy: across your target audience, your brand, and crucially the platform you're creating for. Content in 2024 has to meet the demands of the algorithm. On Day 1 Joris Mulders provided an insight into KLM Royal Dutch Airlines's cabin crews creating content for the brand. At DHL, Sanae also underscored the value of employee-generated content, while for Gaston Bernard, some of the most valuable content for Marriott International comes from real-world guests. Have you looked in the archive? Marina Krivonossova encouraged marketing teams to carry out an inventory of existing content and see what could be valuable repurposing. Visual content might be the main focus, but Chelsea Campbell pointed to the untapped value of podcast advertising, where brands can meet consumers in a "leaned in" state, making messages more impactful. That's all from #DMWF Amsterdam 2024 - see you next year...

Sunset on Day 1 of DMWF Amsterdam. Here are our highlights from the talks so far 🌷 ♻️ Economic pragmatism 🤝 Sustainability Andrew Smith explored Vinted's formula for change and the importance of building a brand position with an eye on the future. Vinted aims to harness the economic forces driving consumer culture and turn them into a powerful force for environmental good. The result? 100+ million members in 23 markets, removing the equivalent of 500,000 return flights from London to LA of CO2 from the atmosphere each year. ⚡ Reacting at the speed of social. Tugce Aksoy and Esme Rice underscored the importance of not only identifying a trend quickly but reacting fast enough that your input feels relevant and authentic. Anneli Rispens echoed this - encouraging brands to consider 'ABC' before jumping on a trend. Audience - does it resonate with who you want to reach? Brand values - does it align with your broader purpose? Culture - has the moment passed, or is it still relevant? Ultimately, you don't want to be the brand responsible for "crushing the trend."(Ekin İmge Ceylan) 📱 How can you get social right? Joris Mulders spoke to the success KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has seen from its internal teams of content creators (aka cabin crews), who have been briefed on the KLM brand guidelines as they generate content around the world. Rodrigo Milanez (PVH Corp.) explored the "share of social wardrobe", looking at #ootd posts to discover the brands and items consumers are wearing (and showing off). Evolving social listening to social intelligence, and enabling brands to connect with consumers on an emotional level. 🤖 AI won't take your job... But someone who understands AI will. Quoting Scott Galloway, Heike Lari underscored the importance of incorporating AI into your marketing strategy to best serve your goals. For Zalando, that meant using AI to help build campaigns and assets, especially for content localization and language adaptation. As Elliott Rayner 📚 pointed out - AI prompts function like creative briefs, and marketers are uniquely positioned to get the most out of them. That's all for Day 1, follow CreativeX for our Day 2 rundown. #DMWF

56,984 creatives. 1,295 campaigns. 13.1 billion impressions. In a groundbreaking study, Meta, Kantar, and CreativeX highlight the creative levers brands can use to drive up to a 74% increase in effectiveness. Fewer than half of the ads analyzed were using the creative levers uncovered in the research, leaving a huge opportunity for growth. Discover the findings in full on Ad Age → https://lnkd.in/ekt-PcmK Thanks to: Chrissy D., Maria P., Barry Christie, Kate Muir, Patricia Gregory, Anna Wilgan, Jeff L. Herrmann, Vivek Priyadarshi, Mauro Fusco, Kalyn Des Jardins, Elissa Ha., Shekhar Deshpande, Rebecca Dykema, Abhishek Jadon, and Shardul Wartikar.

This week the LA Dodgers face off against the NY Yankees in the MLB World Series. But while this year the teams have flown cross-country for the games, less than a century ago they were both NYC-based. The latest edition of Solve for X explores the intersection of sports and advertising and asks whether or not this year's MLB World Series could count as an NYC showdown ⚾

Haleon’s Health Inclusivity Screener is a new AI-powered tool to address advertising’s inclusivity gap. Developed in-house and in partnership with CreativeX, it’s the only tool that analyzes digital advertising content for both readability and inclusivity. “This ushers in a new era for creative data, demonstrating its ability to help brands not only lift the floor of creative quality but raise the ceiling to creative excellence. Thank you to Haleon for being brave and curious enough to continuously push the boundaries of how data can enhance creative execution and effectiveness.” Discover the story in full → https://lnkd.in/euAUZSJW Thank you to: Tamara Rogers, Meredith Herman, Vicky Edmonds, Christopher C., Lois Emsley (née Watts), Gina Moletto, Jayme Hervé-Azevedo. 

“You can’t take a TV ad and run that on Instagram. You have to be cognizant of the way that a consumer leverages Facebook versus TikTok versus Snapchat and how you optimize the ad you’ve created to account for that difference.” Our latest Creative Xcellerator is Yasmine Laasraoui (Director, Trends and Foresights, North America Consumer Insights) at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. She discussed her cross-functional role in consumer insights, what creative excellence means to her, and the impact that AI is having on her work. Discover the interview in full → https://lnkd.in/ec-zFA6e

Advertising Week NYC has come to a close -- here are our highlights from the final day. 💚 Building a marketing org. "We started by pausing." Meredith Herman, Christopher C., and Anastasia Leng discussed Haleon's development over the last two years since spinning off from GSK. For Chris, "Creating a new company gave us permission to be more bold and more brave." Meredith explained the process of building the marketing org, and establishing systems to ensure that the basics were being hit every time. "How good are these creative assets? And how do you know?" Improving these basics drove performance. Combining creative ideas with strong execution to realize impact. 📣 Two decades of learning. Matt Scheckner was joined on stage by a whole host of advertising greats for Advertising Week's 20th Anniversary (and Chuck Porter's actual birthday). The highlights? Linda S. on the foundations of good marketing: "A great product makes marketing easy." Jessica Ling on building a global brand: "If all you’re doing is reacting there’s no brand it’s just a series of moments." American Express has scaled through a consistent brand and dynamic products. Richard Edelman: "As long as you’re within your principles, you have every right to make bold moves as a brand." Keith Reinhard the 'Father of the Hamburglar': inventing a nemesis for Ronald McDonald to strengthen the character, with a 4 am burst of inspiration that burger sounds a lot like burglar. And a reminder that - "Your job is not to target people it’s to connect with them." ✨ Doing well by doing good. Linda Bethea and Gemma Hart from Danone reminded the audience that responsibility as a company does not end at the factory gate. At Danone, they've taken a creative lens to their business model to show that investment in sustainable, purposeful initiatives pays off. This mission means that they "have to reach as many people as possible in an authentic and relevant way.” Finding consumers where they are, and offering them value in that setting. 💖 So many 'Dicks'. As Monique Nelson stated, “We’ve got to get better at inclusion across the board.” Sam Rowlands, Simone Foxman, Laurie Lam, Davianne Harris, and Lisa Topol discussed research from E.L.F. BEAUTY that found there were more guys named 'Dick' than Hispanic women on boards. The campaign focused on SO many Dicks, not TOO many Dicks, aiming for inclusivity not exclusivity. As Laurie explained, E.L.F. had a Dick on their board, but their board was also 78% female and 44% diverse. Sam underscored that research into female leadership stats has been ongoing since 1993. To get people to pay attention, these stats need to be reframed from a moral failure to a financial failure. "If you care about profit and success you need to care about diversity." To get our full round-up, sign up for our newsletter - Solve for X.

Good things come on Day 3. Here are our highlights from Advertising Week NYC today. 💛 How to build an unmissable brand. Gulen Bengi and Joy Robins sat down to discuss how they've built Mars and The New York Times into iconic, unmissable brands. For Gulen, winning brands don't only define themselves through their product. They work with their fans and community to co-create experiences with "no dead ends." Every experience leads to another (or the buy button). Her top priorities? People. Creativity. Technology. (In that order). Joy's metric for success is ensuring the NYT is "not an option but the destination." Audiences and brands need to see the NYT as an essential part of their everyday lives and advertising mix. 🤖 Building AI into your brand strategy. Jay Freedman, Tatyana Ilyin, and Andrew Klein on building AI into marketing ecosystems. Tatyana emphasized a crawl, walk, run approach, stressing the importance of engaging thoughtfully with AI's potential. But the risk and reward equation connected to AI shouldn't stop brands from experimenting with it: it's important to see it as an opportunity and not a challenge. 🎀 Building an immersive retail experience. Ted Galperin, Rachel Shechtman, and Kristina Gould Duncan built a retail experience for American Girl Dolls - using scale as a thematic element of in-store design and engaging consumers' senses to bring the store to life. Kristina spoke about the process of translating this physical world into online forums for fans around the globe. 🤝 Searching for authentic brand partnership. Colin Daniels, M.A., Devin Colleran, Justyna Gawlik, and Stef Dag explored the collaboration between Hot and Single and Tinder, and why it's been so successful. Devin spoke about Tinder's appearance in the comment section on TikTok, with the brand showing up in (somewhat) unexpected places to help shift brand perception and reconsider what they think about Tinder. For Lizzie Collins and Christina Najjar, brands need to recognize that consumers can spot an ad from a mile away. What will make them stop and not scroll when they see a brand partnership? And a final shoutout to Cheryll Ocampo Forsatz for managing to get Brat summer, demure, and Moo Deng into one sentence. We salute you.

Tomorrow on the Insights Stage at Advertising Week NYC! Meredith Herman, Christopher C., and Anastasia Leng discuss Haleon’s partnership with CreativeX and work to transform the wider consumer healthcare industry. Join us at 2.50 pm EST. P.S. If you can’t make it in person, but still want to watch, let us know!