What’s Next is Everything: marketing with emerging tech
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Perrier-Jouët’s Immersive Campaign: A Holiday Sensation
Perrier-Jouët uncorked an interesting new experiential campaign, partnering with Publicis and immersive tech specialists to turn its bubbly brand into a multisensory spectacle. Two prime flagship locations—one in New York, the other in Los Angeles—were transformed over the holiday season using projection mapping, interactive decals, animated visuals, and an AR mirror that invited passersby to…
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AI Hackathon Reinvents Digital Product Placement
A new generative AI experiment called Halftime cooked up a peculiar cameo for Coca-Cola inside an old episode of “Suits”—without ever rolling film. Created in just 24 hours at an xAI hackathon by three college students, Halftime inserts digital product placements into TV scenes by building entirely new AI-generated moments. Instead of a traditional cutaway…
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Pandora Leans in to AI for Service and Personalized Shopping
Pandora turned to AI not for flash, but for function. With 40% of its yearly revenue riding on the holiday season, the jewelry brand needed scalable service without bloating its call center headcount. Enter Clara, a chatbot that now handles 60% of customer inquiries solo—a 20-point jump over its predecessor. The result? A 10% bump…
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Why Marketers Hesitate to Fully Embrace Agentic AI
Agentic AI has spent 2025 positioning itself as an all-in-one marketing team—thinking, writing, and executing campaigns with minimal human input. But despite the headlines, marketers aren’t exactly handing over the keys. The concept of agentic AI—AI systems with context, access to tools and decision making authority working cooperatively with little oversight—has intrigued brands, yet hesitation…
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Oreo’s AI Power Move: Meet AIDA, the $40M Content Machine
Mondelēz International – the company behind Oreo, Chips Ahoy!, Ritz, and more – is leaning hard into generative AI with a tool it’s calling AIDA (short for AI + Data). With an investment already topping $40 million, AIDA is designed to crank out marketing content faster and cheaper, while also tailoring ads to individual consumer…
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AR Meets Après-Ski: Snapchat’s Winter Village Goes Luxe
Just in time for the holidays, Snapchat has unwrapped its “Winter Village,” an augmented reality experience that brings luxury shopping into the app for users across several regions including the U.S., U.K., and France. Running through December, the activation puts three upscale brands—Chopard, Lancôme, and BOSS—front and center in immersive, branded AR spaces. Accessible via…
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AbelsonTaylor Hits Fast Forward with AT Studio
AbelsonTaylor Group just rolled out AT Studio, its new production-centric division tailored to crank out high-volume healthcare marketing assets at a much faster clip—without dropping the ball on quality. Think of it as a hybrid assembly line and art studio: a production engine that fuses manual craftsmanship with AI-assisted workflows to churn out everything from…
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Meet Nick Jolly: R&R’s AI Santa Can Bench More Than You
R&R Partners just unwrapped “Nick Jolly,” a tattooed, motorcycle-riding AI Santa who’s less about ho-ho-ho and more about flexing his algorithmic muscles. Designed as both a holiday stunt and a preview of the agency’s proprietary AI ambitions, Jolly lives on a microsite where curious visitors can shoot him a message and watch him respond in…
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Lowe’s AI Tool Doubles Conversions — and It’s Just Getting Started
Lowe’s is doubling down on e-commerce (and conversions) through its ChatGPT-powered assistant, “Mylow.” Already live online and in-app, Mylow has delivered double the conversion rate among users, surfacing not just on-brand product picks but also DIY tutorials and how-to guides. And they’re not stopping there. In 2026, shoppers may be snapping pics of their outdated…
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The Debate on AI Ads: McDonald’s Christmas Campaign Controversy
McDonald’s Netherlands pulled its fully AI-generated Christmas ad after it struck the wrong chord with viewers — both in the Netherlands and well beyond. The ad leaned into holiday chaos with a cheeky twist on “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” aiming to show McDonald’s as a calm-in-the-storm sanctuary. But what started as…
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AI Adoption Gap Between Executives and Employees
A new BambooHR survey of 1,500+ U.S. salaried employees shows the AI divide between executives and employees is more Grand Canyon than puddle. While 72% of VP-level execs use AI tools daily, only 18% of individual contributors (ICs) do the same. The gap isn’t just in adoption—it’s in values and perceptions. Execs see AI-generated work…
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Brands wrestle with authenticity vs. AI
As AI-generated marketing proliferates—and fumbles—some brands are reaping rewards by leaning hard in the opposite direction: showing off the real, the tactile, the definitely-not-CGI. A spec Pepsi ad from filmmakers Luke Barnett and Noam Kroll pokes fun at synthetic storytelling with a self-aware script featuring six repetitions of the word “real” in just 60 seconds.…
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“Kevin!” Everywhere: Disney+ Turns Home Alone Into a Holiday Pop-Up Tour
For the 35th anniversary of Home Alone, Disney+ and agency CALLEN are running a nationwide holiday campaign that doesn’t just rely on screens—it moves audiences through pizza shops, TSA lines, and living room remotes. From December 10 to 17, Prince St. Pizza locations nationwide were masquerading as Little Nero’s, complete with branded boxes and that…
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Svedka’s Super Bowl Strategy: Vodka, Robots, and a Dash of AI
For the first time in decades, vodka will return to Super Bowl ad breaks, as Svedka nabs a coveted 30-second slot just after halftime in February’s Big Game. This isn’t just Sazerac flexing its distribution muscle—CMO Sara Saunders says the vodka brand, which had been sliding, is back on the upswing since their 2024 acquisition.…
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A Royal First: Virtual Reality Christmas Address by King Charles III
In a first for the British monarchy—and certainly a surprise for anyone who still imagines royalty in black-and-white—King Charles III’s traditional Christmas Day speech is now available in virtual reality. Viewers with a Meta Quest 3 headset could watch this year’s address while “sitting” in a cozy virtual lodge or enjoying the broadcast in full…
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How Dollar Shave Club Uses AI for a Fresh Marketing Approach
Dollar Shave Club is back to joking about razors—and this time, it’s using AI to do it. The men’s grooming brand, best remembered for its snarky 2011 launch video, has returned to that “rebel-jester” tone with a new 60-second spot titled “We Put Our Money Where It Matters.” Created with Israeli agency Too Short For…
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AI-Savvy Rivals Are Stealing Shelf Space from Established Brands
A new report from IPG’s Agentic Systems in Commerce shines a harsh fluorescent light on just how swiftly traditional CPG brands are losing ground to digital-native challengers. Scraping Amazon marketplace data, the study tracked sales win rates across 18 product categories, and in 16 of them, the upstarts are in the lead—dominating 15 categories outright…
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Stagwell Puts AI on the Line With Voice-First Service Platform
Stagwell has launched NewVoices.ai, a new AI-powered workflow tool designed to handle everything from sales tasks to customer service—using virtual agents that speak any language and never sleep. It’s pitched as a full-stack operating system for enterprise teams that want to automate their appointment setting, lead conversion, customer inquiries, and support issues without sacrificing personalization.…
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Virgin Australia Lands AI Co-Pilot with OpenAI
Virgin Australia is claiming a first for the Australian airline industry with a new partnership with OpenAI, aiming to simplify how travelers search, plan, and book their flights. Now building directly on OpenAI’s developer tools—like ChatGPT’s new Apps SDK—the airline is testing ways for customers to describe travel plans conversationally and receive relevant flight options…
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Publicis’ AI-Driven Storytelling: Reflecting on 100 Years of Innovation
To kick off its 100th birthday, Publicis Groupe released a cinematic short film that retraces its history—not with a dusty corporate slideshow, but using a lion, generative AI, and the voice of an Édith Piaf impersonator. Titled “A Lion Never Gives Up,” the nearly seven-minute film fuses live-action scenes with AI-generated visuals inspired by over…
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How Coca-Cola Blends AI and Emotion for Holiday Success
Coca-Cola is doubling down on artificial intelligence this season, launching “Refresh Your Holidays,” a global campaign built around a retooled version of its AI-assisted “Holidays Are Coming” ad. This 60-second spot opens on Santa cracking open a Coke and follows a fleet of holiday trucks lighting up the snowy streets—and attracting an unusually attentive pack…
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Tom the Turkey Books It: Google’s First AI-Generated TV Spot
Google’s latest ad stars a plush turkey fleeing Thanksgiving via Google Search’s AI Mode—and notably, the entire spot was built using generative AI. Created with Google’s in-house Veo 3 video model, “Quick Getaway” follows Tom, the stuffed bird, as he ditches turkey season for a spontaneous holiday. The prompt? “I need to go somewhere with…
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How Jersey Mike’s Uses AI to Boost Local Ad Efficiency
While AI continues to be tech’s favorite buzzword, the real test for marketers isn’t hype—it’s whether the tech can actually trim waste and drive results. That’s especially true in local markets, where programmatic inefficiencies and ad fraud can gobble up limited budgets. With $26.8 billion in programmatic waste still rattling around the system, advertisers are…
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Holiday Chaos, Now in High-Def AI
McDonald’s Netherlands is leaning into December dysfunction with a fully AI-generated holiday ad that’s as relatable as it is ridiculous. Created by TBWA\Neboko and directed by the MAMA duo of Sweetshop, the 45-second spot rides the fine line between festive and frantic. Think flaming turkeys, exploding trees, and a shopper dragged behind a bus—all set…
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Flo Who? Progressive Lets AI Animals Take the Wheel
Progressive has momentarily nudged its iconic mascot Flo to the backseat—literally—in a new national TV spot that leans fully into AI-generated imagery. The 30-second ad, titled “Drive Like an Animal,” swaps Flo’s on-screen antics for a parade of digitally conjured creatures, each embodying a particular driving stereotype. A lion and hyenas rage behind the wheel, a sloth…
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AI in Advertising: Consumer Reactions and Emotional Engagement
System1’s deep dive into generative AI advertising reveals something pundits love to debate but consumers don’t appear to care about: whether or not AI made the ad. In testing 18 AI-generated spots across three countries and 2,700 viewers, ads created with machine help actually outperformed traditional ones on emotional engagement, scoring 3.4 Stars against a…
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Pepsi Launches Prebiotic Soda, Shoppable From Your Couch
Just in time for holiday gustatory adventures, PepsiCo is cracking open the can on its new prebiotic cola. Following its acquisition of Poppi earlier this year, Pepsi is bringing functional fizz to the masses with a limited release of Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in Original and Cherry Vanilla. Each can clocks in at five grams of…
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CMOs Find Their AI Groove—And Use It Weekly
According to a new report from Dentsu Creative, over 80% of senior marketing leaders are now using AI tools on a weekly basis to bang out copy, surface trends, test ideas, and even summarize insights they’d rather not read themselves. Based on responses from 1,950 global CMOs and senior marketers, the findings signal that AI…
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Mercedes Brings the Heat, Moët Pops Bottles, and Peloton Hits the Strip
As the engines cooled off after the Las Vegas Grand Prix, brands were still revving up their marketing. Mercedes-Benz lit up The Sphere with a 360-degree illusion featuring its AMG GT lineup, rendered across 580,000 square feet of LED real estate. Designed by Merkley + Partners and Nexus, the activation cleverly used opposing perspectives to…
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Nissan Puts AI in the Driver’s Seat with Matador
Nissan USA has officially hitched its digital wagon to Matador AI, naming the company its first-ever preferred AI partner. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision—the two have been quietly working together since 2020, driving some real results in dealership engagement. Matador’s tech helps Nissan dealers not just answer leads faster, but actually turn inquiries into appointments…
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Kroger Launches AI-Powered Agent Monday for CPG Brands
Kroger’s media and data science division, powered by 84.51°, is giving CPG brand partners a little extra time back in their Mondays by launching Agent Monday—an AI-generated email digest tailored specifically for category managers. The weekly report taps into Kroger’s Stratum platform to deliver automatically curated performance insights covering everything from last week’s household trends…
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Stagwell Taps Gradial to Unclog the Marketing Bottleneck
Stagwell is doubling down on AI-fueled marketing efficiency by teaming up with Gradial, a relatively young but fast-scaling player in the agentic AI space. The idea is to connect the dots between creative, design, and automated execution through AI agents that cut down on redundant workflows and crank out personalized content across channels. It’s all…
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Claritin Gets a Lift from a Smarter Algorithm
Bayer is pulling its programmatic strategy tighter to home, bringing control of its custom ad-buying algorithm in-house and into Snowflake’s data clean room. Partnering with Chalice AI, Bayer now runs its model inside its own data ecosystem—one that includes media, creative, and commerce info—without shifting sensitive files all over the place. Previously, integrating the algorithm…
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How AI Helped Corona Cero Find Its Olympic Chill
Corona Cero had just three weeks to craft a global Olympic campaign—and decided that traditional tear-jerkers about sacrifice and national pride weren’t going to cut it. As the first-ever worldwide beer sponsor of the Games, the nonalcoholic brand leaned into its laid-back DNA, using AI to uncover emotional insights that felt distinctly more beach than…
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Kind Is Letting AI Taste-Test Its Message Before You Do
Kind snack bars is going all-in on generative AI to cut costs and move faster—because apparently, granola bars aren’t the only thing they want to streamline. Facing pressure to break through with Gen Z and outmaneuver private label competitors, Kind’s marketing team has shortened its creative testing window from months to mere days, using tools…
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How Reckitt Harnesses AI for Brand Performance
Reckitt isn’t immune to the hype around generative AI—but unlike many marketers jumping on the bandwagon, they’re running a tight ship focused on practical wins. With 95% of AI pilots reportedly failing (per MIT), the consumer goods brand structured its approach around one question: which repetitive tasks can actually benefit from AI without diving headfirst…