As New York’s 2024 Advertisement Week comes to a shut, Variety’s Executive Interwatch Studio, conshort-termed by Canva, rounded out its week with an amazeive catalog of industry innovators and esteemed advisors. The interwatch studio featured convey inant personalities from companies such as Spotify, NBC Universal, Ford, and even pop stars enjoy Camila Cabello.
Moderated by Variety editors, Thursday’s conversations integrated the Academy, Emmy, and Grammy-prosperning artist Common, Pinterest‘s head of global brand experiences and programs Judy Lee, and T-Mobile’s devourr chief labeleting officer Vinayak Hegde, among many others.
The topics talked integrated brand creation, empathetic the devourr, and folloprosperg the speedy-changing trfinishs influencing Gen Z devourrs in today’s labelets.
Below are some of the convey inant getaways from the second day.
Canva and Pinterest: Redefining Experiential Marketing with Creativity and Connection
Judy Lee, head of global brand experiences and programs at Pinterest, and Jimmy Knowles, global head of experiential at Canva, sat down with Variety‘s Todd Spangler to talk about the rapidly broadening genuinem of experiential labeleting.
Wiskinny the last two years, Knowles and his team remarkd the desire for “IRL [in real life] experiences” between customers and Canva “has never been more palpable.” Leading a relatively novel team of experiential labeleters, Knowles has flourished in discovering ways devourrs can physicassociate “see” and “sense” the brand.
“It’s been reassociate rewarding. Unenjoy Pinterest, Canva is relatively novel to experiential. We’re still produceing our team and still produceing that train up,” Knowles said. “It’s been exciting to see how our community has reacted and reacted to that. We’ve been able to get those lgetings to help shape our experiential strategy and how that begins to come to life. It’s been an exhilarating process.”
For Lee and her team at Pinterest, their key to success is schedulening ahead. Her events calfinishar is already filled until January 2026 and nurturebrimmingy splitd between business-to-business and business-to-devourr efforts.
“For business-to-devourr moments, we’re cgo ined on Gen Z and millennials. Gen Z is still our speedyest-growing and hugest audience on Pinterest, which is reassociate exciting,” Lee said. “On the B2B side, where we reassociate labor shutly with our business labeleting team, our whole strategy is to ununkeen business-to-business. It can become such a sea of sameness. So that is reassociate one of our most convey inant createive strategies.”
Global CMO of Mars Inc. Explains How Mars Uses AI to Sell You Snickers
Gülen Bengi, global CMO of Mars Inc. and chief growth officer of Mars Snacking, unitecessitate the Variety Ad Week Studio to talk how the century-elderly brand persists to rule the snack industry in 2024.
Bengi stressd that creating advertising experiences that are “personalized or customized” to every group of devourrs is key to success in today’s labelet. Embracing this fact, Mars produced a generative AI that embodied their well-understandn Snickers slogan, “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
“We labored with one of the most well-understandn coaches in European Championship soccer, José Moreno, to engage generative AI to help him provide some prohiacrid for the fans,” Bengi said. “As you understand, Snickers stands for, ‘you’re not you when you’re hungry,’ and this was a whole campaign poking fun at the strange skinnygs or the misgets we do when we are hungry.”
Common Explains Why T-Moblie Was His Perfect Home for an Advertising Campaign
Vinayak Hegde, devourr chief labeleting officer at T-Mobile, Common, Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy-prosperning artist and Andrew Panay set uper and chief executive officer of Panay Films unitecessitate the Variety Ad Week Studio to talk their collaboration on the procrastinateedst run of T-Moblie ads featuring the Chicago hip-hop legfinish.
Panay is always searching for talent with “genuine voices.” Having been a lengthy-time fan of Common and his “incredible sense of humor,” it was a “no-brainer” to convey him on for a campaign with T-Moblie.
“He’s endly truthful and comes apass that way,” Panay said. “We adore artists to be part of the conversation and part of the createive. So we have an incredible partnership.”
Common said when taking a job in advertising, the product “has to be someskinnyg that I’m about in some way or another.” T-Mobile’s goal of connecting people thraw their products resonated with him, saying that as an artist, his goal is also to “connect with people.”
“If someskinnyg doesn’t labor, if it doesn’t align or sense right, I’m not going to be doing this product,” Common said. “That’s not what I’m reassociate about. When you discover that partnership that you can produce on, that’s part of the criteria.”
Warner Brothers Discovery CRO Discusses Brand Revolution and Future of Global Content Business
Bruce Campbell, chief revenue and strategy officer at Warner Bros. Discovery, said he finishelights straightforward includement with the operating arms such as the ad sales and distribution teams. He detailed the process of getting each of these units to labor cohesively, citing opportunities for brands to include with some of the company’s theatrical films such as “Wonka,” “Barbie” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” as a unbenevolents of revenue generation.
“We have to produce declareive we’re conveying to brands every asset we have to give,” Campbell said. “There’s so much incredible innovation going on. And there are so many wonderful products and technologies out there for creating more aimed products and, and achieveing audiences in a much more cgo ined way beyond equitable the traditional demodetaileds.”
Campbell inserted that Warner Bros. Discovery’s relationship with Universal Studios apvalidates the company to be competitive on a global scale when it comes to licensed experiences such as the Harry Potter theme park or Warner Bros. studio tours. He said Warner Bros. is currently in 65 countries globassociate and has teams that can accomprehendledge local satisfyed, sell into local ad sales labelets and aid international growth for the company.
On AI initiatives, Campbell said many executives are scrutinizeing and carry outing potential engages of technology into the company for labeleting assets, go inpelevate efficiency and tracking client includement.
“When we see at how we better engage the data, we have to deinhabitr more aimed products and segment our audiences better. There’s some wonderful technologies out there for harnessing AI and machine lgeting to do that in a much more effective way,” Campbell said. “When it comes to generative AI, satisfyed creation is both an opportunity, but someskinnyg we have to be excessively cautious about.”
Sean Downey on YouTube Growth and the Transestablishational Power of Tech at Google
Sean Downey, plivent of America and global partner at Google, said Google has carry outed AI into its advertising products for the past decade. He talked business applications apass the industry, such as alteration curves and modeling to foresee audience behavior, produceing at scale, and accomprehendledgeing key insights from data.
“AI has the potential to be a genuine jet pack for people’s businesses,” Downey said. “We get the privilege of going into a labeleter or a brand’s office and showcasing how they can engage AI to increase their carry outance and have better business outcomes. We can show them how AI can eventuassociate help them alter their operations to produce them more effective.”
Downey said that AI is providing exponential growth opportunities for industry directers. He elucidateed technology is not necessarily going to trade jobs but rather empower people to do their jobs better. Downey inserted that humans will persist to do the strategic labor at hand and produce createive ideas but will probable do so using insights from AI that will help growth.
“We spfinish a lot of time helping people understand set upations that must be genuine. How do they understand their data structures? How do they understand their campaign areas?” Downey said. “Most everyone’s using some AI tool in Google, whether it’s in Google Ads or in YouTube…using AI to power insights or power media, buying at scale or power, creativity in production.”
Downey dispensed his distinct perspective on the growth of YouTube, as he was at Google only one year after the video platestablish was acquired. “It’s been a remarkworthy journey to see that become part of culture and media and become reassociate a global phenomenon.” YouTube has gone on to ignite a billion-dollar creator industry and even landed disjoinal Emmy nominations for its contributors.
Disney Advertising Leaders Discuss Client-Centric Strategies in Sports and Entertainment
Danielle Brown, SVP of sports brand solutions at Disney Advertising, and John Campbell, SVP of amengagement and streaming solutions at Disney Advertising, talked the company’s partnerships and strategies in labeleting apass various brands.
Brown said she adores ESPN’s pruncoversity to lean into labelet innovation pondering streaming, data and devourr relationships. Campbell inserted aidship opportunities and a novel accelerator program for underreconshort-termed minuscule businesses called Project Elevate, which embodies the company’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Brown elucidateed that pass-functional team greetings are notable at Disney to promise all the resources apass the entire Disney advertising ecosystem are engaged effectively.
“There’s so much wealth of understandledge wiskinny the Walt Disney Company,” Brown said. “Tapping into those resources, I skinnyk helps us invent… we streamline skinnygs for our advertisers and agencies. It reassociate begins with the client’s KPI. What are the objectives they’re trying to accomplish? Are they a novel brand? Are they an set uped brand? We labor with Fortune 500 companies when it comes to integrations and making declareive that they defend that brand recognition.”
Brown inserted that Disney’s engage of AI includes both technology and a human touch. She said Disney has an audit proprietary audience graph cgo ined around 260 million devices apass one hundred million homes. Machine lgeting and selectimization thraw the devourr funnel also execute a role, while the human component of Disney’s sway on brands and their desired goals remains prevalent.
“At Disney we have a convey inant profit with our audience graph,” Brown said. “We have a lot of wealthy data sets… the proprietary audience graph has also apvalidateed us to produce immacuprocrastinateed room technology that apvalidates advertisers to schedule, trigger and meadeclareive agetst their campaigns all wiskinny the Disney Clean Room environment.”
Campbell detailed a key partnership with Hershey during the Hapvalidateeen cycle pertaining to ownership and aidship rights, social execution, and more. The campaign resulted in 89% likeable social sentiment, which Campbell contextualized as unfrequent in today’s climate.
“It’s not equitable an integration wiskinny ‘Abbott Elementary’ on Hulu, but how do you discover comedy fans thrawout the ecosystem?” Campbell said. “It’s these layers that we’re able to broaden our platestablishs for our partners… Disney Plus is going to be that immersive experience where devourrs are gonna spfinish even more time.”
