Festival of Marketing 2025 took place on 2 October at The Brewery, London (ASV Photography)
Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing once again proved unmissable in 2025. The line-up was packed with industry powerhouses sharing bold ideas and real-world strategies. Here, we’ve curated some of the key insights from the Festival’s partners.
1. Brands face scrutiny in a new ‘purpose revolution’
Brands must realise that their identity is forged not by what they claim to be, but by their actions in the world – an idea captured succinctly by Javier Camino, global futures planning director at Diageo. Expanding on new consumer insights uncovered by Ipsos, Camino joined the research firm’s head of creative excellence Eleanor Thornton Firkin in arguing that a new ‘purpose revolution’ is about to begin, powered by technology and transparency, which will reshape how marketers craft brand experiences.
Despite recent trends towards brands abandoning or reducing purpose-led approaches, Ipsos’s new research reveals around 80% of people are highly committed to at least one cause. Meanwhile, nearly a third of consumers have boycotted brands they perceive to have behaved badly, demonstrating there’s tangible risk in acting irresponsibly, as well as opportunity in doing the opposite.
What sets this revolution apart is not just its scale, but the imperative for authenticity from businesses. “Connecting what people care about with what your brand stands for creates the opportunity for brand growth,” said Thornton Firkin. But Camino added a crucial caveat: “It cannot be something that is not connected to our brands or to what we do, because it will not be real. It has to be real.”
2. Make people smile to drive advertising impact
Triggering positive emotion doubles the commercial impact of out-of-home (OOH) advertising, according to insights shared by Rajvi Kantaria, director of marketing at JCDecaux, and Andrew Tindall, senior vice-president at System1. Their research, drawn from testing over 1,000 poster ads in collaboration with 80 brands, reveals ads that evoke surprise, happiness or nostalgia generate twice the commercial effect compared to neutral ads.
Doing so could be an antidote to some of the worrying trends in brand building Tindall highlighted. Despite a 30% real-terms increase in media spend over the past 15 years, the number of brand-building effects generated by ads has declined year on year, he noted, citing research conducted by System1 using Effies award case studies. He emphasised that emotional ads outperform less emotional ones in building brand, which drives business results like profit and market share.
JCDecaux’s Rajvi Kantaria explains the power of positive emotion in poster ads (ASV Photography)
Kantaria underlined that OOH, a channel known for broad reach and high attention, still holds strong brand-building power but requires creativity that triggers positive emotions to truly perform. Adding to the nine guidelines for creating an effective poster, unveiled by JCDecaux and System1 at last year’s Festival of Marketing, Kantaria presented a new 10th insight gleaned from further research: “make them smile”. In so doing, brands can take advantage of the link between positive emotional response and better commercial outcomes. The previous nine guidelines included advice such as limiting poster ad copy to 10 words, using prominent branding and showcasing faces to grab attention.
3. Brands must avoid converging on the same AI tactics
A convergence of AI tools is creating a “bottleneck” in marketing effectiveness, according to Anna Rashid, chief innovation officer at Tangerine Communications. She likened the situation to a “traffic jam”, where brands all use the same optimisation techniques to compete for consumers’ attention. This saturation of similar messaging challenges brands to break through the noise by moving beyond theory and focusing on people’s lived experience.
Rashid described a “compression culture”, where consumers expect instant, effortless engagement amidst overwhelming digital stimuli, which in turn encourages increased “defensiveness” against marketing, evidenced by their use of ad blockers and curated social content feeds. Marketers must recognise that attention is a scarce currency, making authenticity and relevance paramount; conversely, the success of creators and influencers illustrates the power of genuine connection.
Rashid urged brands to rethink their strategies by building exclusivity and aligning with where audiences actually spend their time. She gave the example of Primark, which is able to turn content round quickly in response to changing cultural contexts. The retailer uses data to adapt and embrace creativity that resonates with real human signals. Shared measurement frameworks also shift stakeholders’ mindsets away from just efficiency, so Primark’s marketing can move “at the speed of culture”.
4. Creators inject authenticity into brand building
Brand marketing is undergoing significant shifts driven by the creator economy. For example Hazan Aydın Yeşilova, head of Baileys at Diageo, described how the liqueur brand has repositioned from a seasonal to an all-year “adult treat” brand, engaging creators it calls the “treat squad” in long-term partnerships. Rather than developing campaign briefs and signing off concepts as before, Baileys has given the group brand immersion sessions and more creative freedom, fostering authentic, accessible content that aligns with social media consumption and ‘treats’ culture. Backed up by paid media, the activity has led to increased ad recall and brand awareness in its test-and-learn phase.
Meanwhile, Oatly’s global media and brand partnerships director Sarah Sutton highlighted the drink’s transformation from sustainability-centric messaging to a lifestyle brand focused on positive indulgence and beverage culture. Creators and influencers are a “huge part” of its marketing mix now, she said, although that required a cultural shift with the in-house creative team ceding some control.
Whalar’s Emma Harman, Diageo’s Hazan Aydın Yeşilova and Oatly’s Sarah Sutton discuss creators and influencers (ASV Photography)
The Festival panel session, hosted by Whalar, highlighted the importance of social listening and community insights from on-the-ground expert teams, to understand changing culture and consumer behaviour. As Aydın Yeşilova also noted, investment in creator content is starting to be clearly validated by ROI from improved brand metrics and its efficiency in driving short-term sales.
5. Good digital strategy underpins modern luxury branding
Harrods’ digital evolution offered an insight into blending heritage with innovation. Danielle Hall, Harrods’ product manager, revealed how the department store brand approaches digital experiences, balancing its 176-year legacy with modern technology. In adopting a new digital platform last year, Harrods sought to transform its website and app into a seamless luxury digital storefront that supports both online and in-store customer journeys.
A standout success was the 2025 advent calendar launch. Three versions were released exclusively on the app for the first 24 hours, with its fragrance calendar selling out in under five hours. It required reliable back-end systems to support the high-demand campaign, ensuring accurate stock availability and a smooth basket experience for those pre-ordering the calendars while shopping for other goods.
Harrods also works closely with Contentful to power its digital content strategy. Central to this is the use of data to personalise content and offers at the right time, so it doesn’t just feel like another ecommerce site. Customers’ browsing history helps determine the editorial styling content presented on the homepage and the products showcased to complement that.
Looking forward, Hall discussed the future role of AI assistants in the shopping experience across the retail sector. She told session moderator Laura Thornley, EMEA director of field marketing at Contentful, that AI’s influence on customer journeys is growing across the sector and retail brands will ultimately need to think about how to bring elements of their service into that – whether through personalised shopping advice or even tailoring.
6. Measurement is a game-changer for ‘ecosystem’ brands
Capturing the full impact of marketing across touchpoints is a major challenge for brands whose businesses reach across numerous layers – like physical products, licensing and media. For them, Lego’s marketing effectiveness journey offers valuable lessons. Inés Nadal, Lego’s senior director of global marketing performance, explained: “We have one of the most well-known brands in the world, but with a very unique ecosystem spanning traditional and virtual touchpoints, from Legoland to Fortnite collaborations.”
This complexity required Lego to build custom measurement models, working closely with Ekimetrics, for campaigns such as its recent partnership with Nike and its collaboration with the 2025 Miami Grand Prix, where the brand created life-size drivable Formula 1 cars made from nearly 400,000 bricks each.
Lego and Ekimetrics built a system that measured both short- and long-term brand effects across each channel and campaign, to work out their sales contributions. As a result the brand can optimise media budgets by reallocating spend away from underperforming channels, and determine what proportions of its marketing should be paid or earned. This has already led to double-digit media efficiency improvements, Nadal said.
7. Affiliates are innovating to grow brand engagement
As creators and influencers are demonstrating, authenticity is a growing force driving brands’ ability to earn consumer attention – and that also extends into specialist media, marketplaces and affiliate partners. Nike’s partnership with the Sole Supplier, facilitated by Awin, is a case in point. The footwear-focused media brand has deep community roots and expert ‘sneakerhead’ staff, providing news and release information about trainers in the UK and European markets.
As Festival attendees heard, one campaign repositioned Nike’s running category amid rising competition from niche brands such as Hoka. By trusting Sole Supplier’s expertise, Nike enabled a content creator and avid runner within the Sole Supplier team to craft content centred on running shoes that featured the Nike product range. This approach emphasised brand authenticity over scripted marketing, reaffirming Nike’s relevance to targeted running communities.
Another innovative campaign capitalised on emerging trends with Nike’s P6000 trainer. Here, trend spotting by Soul Supplier’s team and sales data informed agile, full-funnel marketing across social and app platforms, blending organic excitement with shoppable moments.
A final example showcased a live shopping stream embedded on Nike’s site for Black Friday, co-hosted by Sole Supplier, allowing real-time interactive shopping experiences. The partnership exemplifies the innovative approaches available to brands through affiliate channels.