Cameron Clarke

1 month ago | thedrum.com | Cameron Clarke

HFSS. LHF. WTF? The UK government’s impending crackdown on advertising products high in fat, salt and sugar – or, as they’ve now been rechristened, ‘less healthy foods’ – has left many marketers with more questions than answers about what they’ll still be legally allowed to show when the ban comes into force. Now, we have some much-needed clarity.

2 months ago | thedrum.com | Cameron Clarke

There’s an alternate universe in which Ajaz Ahmed is still CEO of AKQA – and AKQA has broken away from WPP to reclaim its independence. But here, in the real world, Ahmed is launching a new independent agency this week, six months after quitting the holding company. Things might have turned out differently if WPP’s leadership had not rebuffed his proposal last summer for a management buyout, which would have returned AKQA to private ownership.

2 months ago | thedrum.com | Cameron Clarke

It’s from this same setting, at a similarly ungodly hour, that the defiant CEO tells The Drum his in-form advertising group will not be knocked off course by “the high level of uncertainty” wrought by a perfect storm of tariffs, inflation and febrile geopolitics. “It’s a tough time, but the paradox is that we have never been stronger,” Sadoun says. Want to go deeper?

2 months ago | thedrum.com | Cameron Clarke

AI may be the buzzword of the moment but, for many of the world’s major marketers, the path to adoption remains anything but straightforward. It’s not for a lack of eagerness. After all, what CMO wouldn’t be attracted to the many promised efficiencies of this unignorable technology? But as they rush to embrace the possibilities of generative AI and agentic workflows, they are frequently encountering a complex web of legal, ethical and practical concerns.

2 months ago | thedrum.com | Cameron Clarke

Even the most battle-hardened marketers pay attention to Seth Godin. That much is obvious at the WFA’s Global Marketer Week in Brussels, where Godin has just addressed an audience so vast that the WFA’s own president, David Wheldon, a former Coke marketer hardly prone to being starstruck, was willing to stand behind the AV desk up in the gods so as not to miss his keynote. Now, talk complete, we retreat deep into the labyrinth bowels of the ING Arena.