Nat Wilkes

What makes a brand experience feel truly authentic and personal? In this episode of Industry Lens, Sadie Miller, Senior EVP of Social Media Partnerships + Strategy at KINESSO, shares how Snapchat helps brands connect with consumers in meaningful, creative ways. From community-driven storytelling to immersive digital experiences, Sadie reveals how brands can meet audiences where they play, communicate, and connect. 🎥 Watch the full conversation to see how Kinesso approaches the future of brand engagement: https://lnkd.in/eXCT2uiN

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What's Tim Nudd's favorite ad of 2025 so far?!?!?!?!!? 🤔 In a special preview episode of the upcoming Ad Age Insider podcast, Creativity Editor Tim Nudd joins host Parker Herren on Marketer's Brief to break down the year’s best ads and the trends shaping them. From AI’s influence on creativity to the surge of experiential activations—and even Walton Goggins’ unexpected rise as 2025’s breakout brand partner—Tim also explains how he evaluates standout work and what helps brands cut through Super Bowl clutter. He also shared his favorite ad of the year so far…👀 🎧 Listen here: Apple: https://lnkd.in/gfsuQcBt Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gVkiKJfX Amazon Music/Audible: https://lnkd.in/gy-Qi_QZ

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We're beating some of our clients' best video ads with static images. And it's not a fluke. In our latest episode of The Hypothesis, our Director of Creative Services, Tyler Power, explains why your audience's needs (not just industry "best practices") should dictate your creative format. Want to watch the full episode? Check out the link in the comments. #CreativeAds #DigitalAds #Design #VideoAds #DigitalMarketing #SocialMediaMarketing

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Calling all designers. As an American and a creative, I am pretty stoked to see great design coming from our government. https://ndstudio.gov/ https://realfood.gov/ https://trumprx.gov/ But Politics aside, let's look at the historical context of great design. Nazi Germany Arguably the most comprehensive and chilling example of design as state power. The Nazis understood branding at a level that wouldn't be matched in corporate America for decades: • Visual totality: Unified design language across everything—uniforms, architecture, rallies, propaganda posters, even typefaces. They banned certain fonts and promoted Fraktur (ironically later abandoning it). Every visual element reinforced the brand. • Albert Speer's architecture: Monumental neoclassical designs meant to communicate permanence and power for a "thousand-year Reich." The Nuremberg rally grounds were essentially branded experiences at massive scale. • Leni Riefenstahl's films: Triumph of the Will wasn't just propaganda—it was cinematically innovative branded content that influenced filmmaking for generations. • Symbolism: The swastika became one of history's most recognizable symbols through relentless, coordinated deployment. The system worked because every touchpoint—from Hitler Youth uniforms to postage stamps—told the same story. It's a horrifying case study in how design creates emotional belonging and normalizes ideology. Soviet Union Constructivism and Socialist Realism created one of the most distinctive government design languages: • Early Soviet constructivism: Revolutionary graphic design (El Lissitzky, Rodchenko) that was genuinely innovative—bold typography, photomontage, diagonal compositions suggesting dynamism and progress. • Socialist Realism: Later shift to heroic, idealized imagery of workers, soldiers, and leaders. Consistent across posters, murals, sculpture, and architecture. • Monumental architecture: Stalin's "Seven Sisters" skyscrapers in Moscow, metro stations as "palaces for the people" with chandeliers and mosaics. • Consistent iconography: Hammer and sickle, red star, wheat sheaves—symbols deployed with absolute consistency. Maoist China China under Mao created perhaps the most saturated propaganda environment in history: • Little Red Book: Product design meets ideology—portable, ubiquitous, visually distinctive. • Propaganda posters: Heroic workers and peasants in bold colors, consistent style that created a visual monoculture. • Cultural Revolution aesthetics: Red Guards, revolutionary opera, model communes—every aspect of culture became branded content. • Personality cult: Mao's image reproduced billions of times, creating omnipresent "brand ambassador." It's probably just a coincidence, right?

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At BBDO Chicago, we are breaking down the silos that have traditionally separated roles and departments. It’s not about switching hats from one meeting to the next. Instead, it’s about bringing a multi-dimensional perspective to every conversation. Whether it’s a strategic brief or a creative review, the goal remains the same: to find the idea that moves the work forward. This kind of thinking requires more than collaboration; it requires true integration. It asks our teams to work with flexibility, to be fluent in different ways of working, and to see the whole picture without losing sight of the details. This approach helps us build ideas that are not only creatively strong but also strategically sharp and culturally relevant. It allows us to move with greater clarity, creativity, and, most importantly, momentum. In a rapidly shifting landscape, momentum and energy go hand and hand with insight. #BBDOChicago #BrandBuilding #DoBIGThings #CreativeExcellence

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Most agencies say yes. We say why. Our Chief Client Officer, Samantha Kress, shares why brands shouldn’t tolerate order-takers, and why true growth comes from agency partners who challenge assumptions, bring a POV, and back it with data.

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My first year at Movement, I helped establish a design department. Absorbed a department outside of traditional creative. Had an article written in AdAge about a campaign I led. Then went on mat leave. The next year I built digital production. Advocated for then transitioned the agency to Figma with our Design Director. Scaled an account from $4 million to $12 million. None of that was in my job description. That's the thing about agencies. Especially rapidly growing ones. Your job is whatever needs to happen. One day you're a creative director. The next you're building operational workflows. Then you're training people on new software. I used to think this was chaos. Now I think it's the point. Agencies that can adapt quickly are the ones that survive. But to do that, they also need people who can say "we'll figure it out" and actually mean it. People who don't just react to growth. But plan for it. When that big account comes in, you need systems ready. Not scrambling to build them while you're delivering. The difference between scaling successfully and burning out completely is having the infrastructure, foresight, and agility to handle what's coming next. Even if you don't know exactly what that is yet.

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I was talking with another creative leader recently about how to help creatives get out of a rut. When you’re working against tight timelines and living inside the same brand every day, it’s easy to default to the “tried and true” instead of pushing for real creative solutions. Brainstorming is one of my favorite parts of the job, but too often we end up playing it safe. Teams self-filter, overthink, or edit themselves before the idea even hits the table. But a true brainstorm should be a no-judgment zone. A place where rank, titles, and seniority don’t matter. There are a ton of ways to get people into that mindset, but one of my favorites is simple: “What’s the worst idea we can think of?” Here’s why it works: • It loosens people up. Once the pressure is gone, ideas start flowing. • It builds camaraderie. People laugh, riff off each other, and drop the ego. • Sometimes the “terrible” idea has a spark that leads you somewhere great. Curious, what other strategies have you seen work to get teams out of a creative rut? I’d love to hear how others approach it.

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Social media has shifted to video-first and the pressure to show up daily is real. So NEXA AI Lab built Talent AI, a new way for brands to create consistent on-brand video content without burning out their teams. Hyper-real AI avatars. Always on-brand. Always ready to create. From product explainers to campaign announcements, Talent AI helps brands publish more often and stay present where it matters. It’s a tool that gives marketers time back while multiplying output. NEXA built Talent AI to help brands scale content without scaling pressure. NEXA AI LAB builds scalable AI across sectors, with Talent AI giving hospitality teams the boost they need for nonstop social content. Find out more: https://www.nexalab.ai/

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Your brand’s marketing team isn’t struggling with ideas. They’re struggling with everything else. Tools that are too fragmented to talk. Handovers that slow everything down. Tangled launch processes that dilute even the best creative. This is operational drag. And we’ve spent 20+ years helping brands like eBay, Uber, and Google address the content bottleneck it creates. Today, we’re sharing the next evolution of that work: DEPT® Studios. Designed to facilitate growth invention, it’s an always-on operating system built in partnership with Adobe that uses AI to (finally) bridge the gap between strategy, creative, production, and media. Turning content into a growth machine, not a constraint, and letting people focus on what actually matters. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/dbPMyNaf #growthinvention #madebydept

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It’s wild to look back at where this all started. In 2019, the first real AI-generated video appeared online - a short, blurry clip created with NVIDIA’s early GauGAN model. It looked more like a moving painting than a movie. Shapes warped, motion stuttered, and every frame felt like a guess. But it was the first glimpse of what was coming. Fast forward to today, and Sora 2 is producing videos that look like they were shot by professional filmmakers. It understands lighting, perspective, and physics. Characters stay consistent. Movements flow naturally. The biggest shift isn’t just the realism, though, it’s the accessibility. You don’t need cameras, editing software, or a film crew. You just need an idea... and a prompt. In only a few years, we’ve gone from a fuzzy, chaotic experiment to near-cinematic results. So it’s worth asking… what’s coming next?

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Marketing isn’t about control—it’s about curation. When you gatekeep every message, you don’t protect the brand. You slow it down. In this quick clip, Katie challenges the brand guardian mindset and offers a practical way to scale authentic content: 🔓 Create a shared studio group 🎙️ Ask teams for 1–2 unscripted clips/month 📦 Curate the best of what’s real More content. Less bottleneck. Way more connection. Let your community help carry the brand. #MarketingLeadership #UGC #BrandStrategy #ContentCuration #MarketScale

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