A brand has always been a static thing. But now, as AI matures, agencies and brands are experimenting with “brand brains” that turn decades of explicit and tacit knowledge into something teams can actually use in any situation, making the concept of a brand something far more adaptable.
Hannah Bowler
ITV knows it can’t out-Netflix Netflix. Instead, the brand and marketing team at the broadcaster are betting on a sense of belonging: truly British, deeply relatable shows that give its audiences the sense of coming home – and a marketing playbook built to fan the flames when a show catches fire.
Hannah Bowler
Modern sports sponsorships are shifting from logos on shirts to culture‑first partnerships. In a packed Soho pub, Chivas Regal, Snapchat and a Premier League club discussed how brands can build stories that resonate with real fans – and how to actually make it into their closed communities.
Alex Zeevalkink
The signals beneath the noise. We track slow culture, emerging scenes, and values shifts shaping how people live, work, play – and what that means for the products, media, and experiences they choose next.
After two decades of growth, Pinterest is stepping into the cultural spotlight – doubling down on experiential activations, product differentiation, and moments where the platform has a legitimate role to play, on and offline.
Hannah Bowler
Sport has stopped being just a sponsorship channel and has slowly but surely become the operating system for culture. Leagues, brands and athletes can all win if they treat every fan touchpoint as part of an always‑on, integrated experience, rather than a row of logos on shirts or around a pitch.
Alex Zeevalkink
Hannah Bowler dives into Mattel’s slow, deliberate shift from selling toys to building franchises – and asks its head of licensing and partnerships, Ruth Henriquez, about the decision of betting on fans, fast collabs and decades of nostalgia to make the model stick.
Hannah Bowler
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When shopping becomes a process that requires the buyer just to express a single sentence, only the brands that we can actually name will survive. Here’s how to become that default brand... before the algorithms picks one for you.
Naji El-Arifi
Netflix is quietly rewriting the rules of sports media – swapping expensive rights and endless fixtures for scarce, high-impact moments that behave more like cultural premieres than TV slots, and giving brands a smarter way to plug into its ecosystem.
Rich Hewes
A quiet manifesto for marketers who’ve fallen out of love with big numbers, and want to measure what actually sticks, such as the saves, shares and small corners of the internet where fandom, not reach, does the real work.
Cathelijne Noortman
Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Music Watch on YouTube And we're back, this week the Brandmakers podcast dives into the world of ITV, a major UK broadcaster and content studio reaching millions of viewers through its channels and ITVX. Its director of brand and marketing, Paul Ridsdale, has been marketing the British broadcaster ITV for over 17 years, and has been a part of its journey from a TV channel to a streaming service and content creator. In this episode, presenter Hannah Bowl
Hannah Bowler