“There's legitimacy to that traditional method of working, but if you want to be culturally relevant, you must move at the speed of culture.”

Welcome to Brand and Demand 3.0, a new Continuum series where we ask industry leaders to share their thoughts on cultural moments, events, trends, and ideas that matter for brands and marketers. As always, we aim to connect the dots between top-of-funnel brand awareness and day-to-day performance marketing.

We kick off this series (pun intended!) with the Super Bowl – undeniably advertising’s biggest night. With an average cost of 7 million dollars per spot and an audience of over 100 million, all eyes are on the ads, and both brands and agencies know what’s at stake.

“I think clients want integration. They don’t want to be dealing with multiple partners and have it be their responsibility to integrate all of the various parts. The more an agency can offer under one roof, the better.”

“We don’t need 100 AI tools. We need three tools with great interfaces on top of them. Otherwise, AI becomes a totally different programming language that I don’t want to learn.”

“We don’t need 100 AI tools. We need three tools with great interfaces on top of them. Otherwise, AI becomes a totally different programming language that I don’t want to learn.”

“AI has the potential to broaden the signals and analyze your behavior more completely to help understand where you are in that buyer journey.”

“There’s also an important perspective that comes from being on the ground and interacting with people on a daily basis. I realized that even when you have the data, anecdotal is not a bad word when the intuition driving it is based on experience.”

“Customers, too, are aware of brand values and ethical considerations. When messages are displayed in brand-safe environments, consumers are more likely to trust the brand, and such trust is essential for building long-term relationships with consumers.”

“I hope and believe that in the coming year, positive advertising that drives stories will emerge because there is a great hunger for something not divisive.”

“People invest in what they know. It’s not necessarily intentional, but people like investing in people who look like them and ideas that feel relevant to them.”

“As a brand manager, if you find a creator that aligns with who your brand is or who you want it to be, I think the next step is giving them your product and letting them use it for a few months instead of just handing them a check and jumping into a relationship. Let them become a fan.”

Compete against yourself rather than with others: The trick is not to try to better than everyone, which is neither possible nor attainable for long or with everybody who is doing the grading. Rather it is to be better every day than you were yesterday.

“At some point, I became obsessed with the idea that every new form of media that was coming out was about putting the end user in control of the information flow rather than the distributors and creators of information. It was quickly becoming clear that when people are empowered, they choose not to interact with advertising in its intrusive and interruptive forms.”

“Mental health issues, stress, and turnover are costing businesses trillions of dollars.”

“We still have this built-in fatphobia in our society and negative attitudes around bigger people that keep getting perpetuated. I want to help companies fight this not just in their marketing to customers but also internally by creating a company culture where employees of all sizes feel welcome.”

“One thing is crystal clear – it is time for Programmatic 3.0. The future of programmatic marketing is a system that reaches real humans at reasonable prices for better results. And how will brands know this? Because, above all, it will be completely transparent.”

“When we dug a little deeper, we learned that the majority of consumers had a universal hate affair with the current offerings, which meant that this category was ready to be disrupted.”

Being part of an organization that is disrupting and changing industries is very exciting. I know this may sound like an old cliché, but I feel like I’m doing something in my career with great purpose, and this is a real motivator for me.

Our brand is very much rooted in the idea of creating a North American version of the global game. It’s about celebrating the things that make MLS different than other sports in this country and also different than international soccer. We’re remixing it and making our own version, but it’s really a fan-led movement.

“It’s about balance and diversifying your audiences — so even within one company—get as many different types of funnel experiences as possible, then there is nothing you can’t tackle as long as you understand the customer.”