Sam Anderson

London

Editor at The Drum

Presenter at The Drum Network Podcast

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Articles

As inaugural SXSW London wraps, organizers look ahead to next 10 years

1 day ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

From humble beginnings as a regional music festival in 1987, South by Southwest (SXSW) has grown over four decades into perhaps the world’s most famous everything-festival. Now synonymous with its hometown of Austin, the city’s downtown is overrun for a week every March by gigs, events, talks and premieres across film, TV, music, comedy, technology and the wide world of marketing.
Loyalty’s next evolution: 5 things we learned at Incentivize 25

2 days ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

For the second year running, leading incentives software company Talon.One has hosted the world’s top loyalty and promotions thinkers for a summit in Berlin. On a sunny day at the Festsaal Kreuzberg (a concert venue for its day job), the conference hosted the likes of Joe & The Juice, Deloitte Digital and Beauty Pie to chart the cutting edge of loyalty, promotions and incentives.
‘I don’t feel like a legend,’ industry legend David Sable tells The Drum Podcast

3 days ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

The Ad Club of New York recently announced its People of the Year 2025. The honoree for Industry Legend? Veteran ad man David Sable. In over five decades’ service to the ad industry, Sable has served as chief operating officer at Wunderman and global chief executive of Young & Rubicam (both shops that have since been subsumed under the VML banner).
How AI is already innovating retail media’s next phase

4 days ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

If the ad industry has had two macro-obsessions in the last couple of years, they’re the seemingly inexorable rise of retail media and (inevitably) AI. In the retail media revolution, retailers across the physical and digital worlds are waking up to the incredible value of their own media channels, agencies are rethinking how those retail channels fit into the marketing funnel and tech vendors are innovating ways to connect up the pipes.
100 days in, Stein’s new CEO is betting big on B2B influencers

1 week ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

Since then, the agency’s gone through a rebrand and a rename (from ‘Stein IAS’ to simply ‘Stein’); it’s released major reports including a ‘brand to demand’ playbook and an index of the world’s most valuable B2B brands; and it’s teased the launch of a ‘bespoke-for-B2B’ influencer practice (more on that later).
‘No longer just for retail’: Experts on retail media’s new frontiers

1 week ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

The onset of retail media as marketing’s latest obsession has been as rapid, but understandably so, given stratospheric predictions about its growth as an advertising channel. At the end of last year, a GroupM report declared that retail media was the fastest-growing digital ad channel in the world, on track to account for 12.8% of total ad revenues by 2029.
Private equity investment in marketing businesses up 21%: here’s what agencies need to know

1 week ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

SI Global’s second annual Private Equity Insights Report has been published. It reveals a continuation of private equity firms’ investment in marketing businesses. The standout finding is a 21% year-on-year increase in investment activity by private equity (PE) firms into marketing, tech and consultancy businesses. That uptick follows a market downturn (of 55%) in 2023, but continues a broader pattern of PE interest in marketing companies since 2019.
As CMO belts tighten, agencies are turning again to outcome-based pricing

3 weeks ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

Just this week, two pieces of research have cast light on the pressures facing chief marketing officers (CMOs). First, out of Gartner’s Marketing Symposium in London came news that a hoped-for return to growth of marketing funds failed to materialize. Measured yearly for its CMO Spend Survey, marketing budgets had reached 11% of overall revenues before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
Does the future of advertising have to be dystopian?

3 weeks ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

It’s an idea that informed artist Shepard Fairey’s iconic Andre the Giant ‘Obey’ posters and a generation of science fiction artists as part of a rich lineage in dystopian science fiction, which locates advertising right at the center of the nightmarish futures it imagines – often presciently so.
Microsoft still world’s most valuable B2B brand, but Chinese firms gaining

3 weeks ago | thedrum.com | Sam Anderson

The third edition of the Most Valuable B2B Brands index from valuation consultancy Brand Finance, the International Advertising Association (IAA) and agency Stein has dropped, revealing the world’s top 250 B2B brands. There aren’t many surprises at the top: Microsoft remains the leader, having grown its brand value by a third this year, followed by Amazon.