Category: Highlights
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From AI Twins to AR Galaxies: Your Guide to June’s Top Marketing Innovations – WNIE HIGHLIGHTS: JUNE 2025
I hope those of you in the U.S. enjoyed a happy and safe Independence Day celebration. My wife and I spent the long weekend recovering from Covid, so it wasn’t our best July 4th – but the weather has been gorgeous here in the Seattle area. This month’s roundup features a mix of the weird,…
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AI CEOs, Resurrected Voices & Logo Police: This Month in Marketing Innovation – HIGHLIGHTS – MAY 2025
The AI marketing arms race continues, but beneath the hype lies a more nuanced—and often messier—reality. This month, we’re cutting through the noise to bring you the most intriguing examples, data, and early signals of where agentic AI, branded virtual commerce, and generative tooling are really taking us. From Coca-Cola’s logo-enforcing AI to Klarna’s uncanny…
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HIGHLIGHTS – Dec 2024
Happy New Year, and welcome to 2025. I hope you had a great holiday season and were able to take some time off to reconnect with family and friends. Next week I’m off to CES and am very much looking forward to exploring the show floor, uncovering exciting new technologies, and learning from fellow geeks…
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HIGHLIGHTS: November 2024
November was an interesting month, punctuated for me by a nasty wind storm that ripped through the Seattle area, knocking out power for roughly half a million people in the area. We were without power for 4 days. When reliable high-speed connectivity gets scarce, it becomes clear how reliant on it most of us have…
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HIGHLIGHTS: October 2024
Happy November! The rain has returned here in Seattle after a gorgeous summer. Every year feels dark and depressing for a few days until I’m reminded that ski season is just around the corner. October was another busy month in the world of emerging technology for marketing, packed with new use cases and examples of…
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HIGHLIGHTS: September 2024
Welcome to Q4. Can you believe it’s October already? I’m excited to be attending Advertising Week in NYC this week and hope to see many of you around the event. I’ll be moderating a really interesting panel called “Play it Forward: How Gaming Immersion Unlocks Player Attention“. People much smarter than me will be sharing…
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HIGHLIGHTS: July 2024
TOP EXAMPLES Motorola Unveils AI-Crafted Ad Campaign – Motorola has launched an entirely AI-generated advertising campaign, “Styled by Motorola,” featuring digital models and music inspired by its brand logo. This cutting-edge campaign was created over four months using multiple AI tools and highlights the new Razr 50 smartphone in various colors, aligning with a digital-first…
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4A’s Noteworthy News – 12th Edition
THE BIG STORY: Walking the GenAI Tightrope – Balancing Transparency and Trust in Advertising Recent articles reveal a critical balancing act underway in the advertising industry: transparency in AI usage is crucial to maintaining trust, but disclosing AI involvement risks alienating consumers. A study by Washington State University found that using the term “artificial intelligence”…
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HIGHLIGHTS: January 2024
January is always a busy month with all of the tech news coming out of CES, followed quickly by the NRF show in New York. I was excited to be back in Vegas for my 18th CES, and helped to pull together the 4A’s Wrap Up report highlighting key themes and implications for agencies. MOST…
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HIGHLIGHTS: December and Full Year 2023
This is a bit of a double post, featuring my usual monthly highlights from December and – BONUS! – a summary of last year’s most popular stories. Let’s dive in… DECEMBER 2023: MOST INTERESTING EXAMPLES: Lego and Epic unveil kid-friendly metaverse – Lego has long been on the cutting edge of using new technologies to…
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HIGHILGHTS: November 2023
MOST INTERESTING EXAMPLES: Dorito’s deploys AI-powered crunch canceller for gamers: Gamers using voice headsets during multi-player online gaming have long had to deal with potentially annoying and distracting crunching sounds as their opponent (or maybe ally) scarfs down crunchy snacks during gameplay. Doritos, seeking to cement its place as a preferred gamer snack, has launched…
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HIGHLIGHTS: October 2023
MOST INTERESTING EXAMPLES: McDonald’s CM/CX-O reviews app-focused loyalty reboot – At a recent DPAA event, Tariq Hassan spoke about how the QSR power house has transformed its marketing strategy across a number of dimensions – including rebooting the brand’s loyalty program and the role that mobile played in that reinvention. Great case study on the…
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HIGHLIGHTS: September 2023
MOST INTERESTING EXAMPLES: Dentsu Artificial Client – Fun AI experiment featuring three AI-powered client archetypes who will provide feedback on work you submit. As I mentioned when I initial shared on LI, I input the script to Apple’s iconic “1984” spot (which some would argue is among the best TV commercials ever made), and laughed…
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HIGHLIGHTS: August 2023
MOST INTERESTING EXAMPLES: Coca-Cola uses AI-generated QR codes in latest push – the beverage giant teamed up with creative technologist / artist Troy Ni to create a series of 5 QR codes that are both beautiful and functional. Ralph Lauren launches new virtual store that feels like a museum – Evidently built primarily to showcase…
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HIGHLIGHTS: July 2023
Most interesting examples – lots of great AR this past month: Nike AR activation – to send the US Women’s National Team off to the World Cup, Nike created a fun webAR experience tied to PayPal Park in San Jose. The experience used Niantic/8th Wall’s “Sky Effects” Feature. Max AR-enhanced murals – We still miss…
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HIGHLIGHTS: June 2023
Most interesting examples: Virgin Voyages JenAI – The cruise line has deployed a fun campaign that uses AI to allow users to personalize pitches for friends. The video promo oversells the depth of AI use a bit – the only obvious use of AI in the user flow is that JLO says the name of…
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HIGHLIGHTS: Week of May 1
ICYMI, check out Welcome to the Immersive Age: the Third Era of Marketing – a new original post that outlines the progression of marketing through three eras: analog, interactive and now immersive. Features implications for brands and examples of each era. Most Interesting Examples:Sky News Enables Users to Celebrate the Coronation with a Virtual Crown…
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HIGHLIGHTS: Week of April 24
Most interesting examples: Farfetch leans into virtual try-on– the global fashion marketplace continues to test augmented reality virtual try on for more than 1,000 products and is seeing some positive initial results. NHL partners with Roblox – to launch a metaverse experience called NHL Blast. I’m a huge hockey fan and will be following this…
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HIGHLIGHTS: week of April 17
Most interesting examples: Oreo Codes: custom designed bar codes on milk packaging that can be scanned via a brand web portal to unlock special offers. While many correctly point to the growth of QR code usage during the pandemic, it’s interesting to see a CPG brand go in a slightly different direction – one that…
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HIGHLIGHTS: Week of April 10
Most interesting examples: Coke’s generative AI and user-generated content mashup: this is a great example of a marketer leaning into new technology thoughtfully and aligning it with the brand’s overarching purpose. It does raise the question, though: in the old days, user generated content was often referred to as UGC. So what do we call…
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HIGHLIGHTS: Week of April 3 2023
While some marketers are pulling back on their metaverse efforts, and pundits spin those stories into prematurely declaring the death of the metaverse, other brands continue to invest in and experiment with metaverse building blocks – most especially AR and AI. Most interesting examples from this past week: Kansas City Royals in-stadium AR: Live sports…