Opening the Festival of Marketing, Hegarty set out a simple triangle for judging creative work, blamed KPIs for a sea of sameness, and admitted he once had no idea if a famous Audi ad would work.
The IPA Bellwether Report finds a net 14.3 per cent of marketers raised budgets in Q3 2026, with main media at a nine-year high, though the 2027 adspend forecast was cut.
Publicis Groupe posted 5 per cent organic growth in the third quarter, credited Sapient with no-pitch wins including PepsiCo, and said consumer AI is outrunning enterprise AI.
Accenture Song is acquiring Sagacity, the London data consultancy that works for utilities, telecoms and banks, to strengthen its data and AI offer in the UK and Ireland.
WARC forecasts 11.9 per cent global adspend growth this year, with social, search and retail media taking 66.4 per cent of the total and 70 per cent by 2028.
The UK's 75 most valuable brands grew faster than global rivals for the first time in nearly a decade. Revolut rose most, banks dominate and HSBC stays top.
Les Binet and Dom Boyd's research for the IPA Effectiveness Conference finds promotions are the biggest marketing cost, and three quarters of marketers cannot say which make money.
Royal Mail has scaled back its disputed rises: Business Mail now goes up 19.4 per cent rather than 30.7 per cent, and Advertising Mail 12 per cent, from 7 December.
Jon Cook is leaving as global CEO of VML and WPP Creative after three decades, staying until March 2027 to hand over to North America chief Eric Campbell.
The UK advertisers' trade body sets out three ways to run creator marketing, bolt-on, channel and core, as research finds half of brands still manage it ad hoc.
IAB UK and Mediasense put first-half digital adspend at £21.2bn, up 13 per cent, with retail media up 32 per cent and streaming taking a third of video spend.
Boots, McVitie's, Three, M&S, KFC and Beats: every song in this autumn's most searched UK adverts, who sings them, and why brands keep re-recording old hits.