Most of what happens in this industry is more complicated than it needs to be, and explained worse than it deserves.
I have always enjoyed the other direction: taking something complicated, working out how it actually functions, and putting it into words a busy person can use. It is the part of every job I have had that I would have done for nothing. Brandflow is where I get to do it twice a week.
So each edition takes something happening in advertising, media or marketing, such as an acquisition, a results call, a pitch or a piece of AI news that landed on my desk and tries to work out what it means.
Not the press release. Not the hot take. The mechanism underneath, in plain language, with the numbers and the names attached. Then I tell you what I think, and you tell me where I am wrong.
Whether any of that is useful is for you to decide; the archive is here so you can check.
I should declare a bias. I am an optimist.
About this industry, which has reinvented itself more times than its obituary writers can count.
About the future, which I would rather build than fear.
And about the unreasonable power of creativity: the one asset that compounds, that gets scarcer as competence gets cheaper, and that no amount of plumbing has ever replaced.
Brandflow is sceptical about a great deal, as any useful analysis has to be. But it is a celebration, not a lament.
Two editions a week, Monday and Thursday. Candid analysis and incisive demystification where others offer platitudes. Every piece since December 2024 is in the archive, dated and searchable, filed under the six problems readers bring: agencies, AI, platforms, brands, leadership and predictions. The predictions are scored in public once a year, half-marks and all. It is free, with no tiers and no plan to add one. Comments are open, and I answer them.
I have sat on every side of the industry’s table. Nearly twenty years client-side, at Unilever, Coca-Cola, Nokia, Orange and Nomad. Thirteen years at Publicis Groupe, seven of them on the Management Committee, latterly as Chief Marketing Officer. And co-founder of Simbioniq, an AI company building simulated audiences. Australian, based in the UK. I read every reply at [email protected], and the longer story is on my LinkedIn profile.