Why craft is Aard... man | WPP Succession Plan | This bad AI ad actually worked

In this week’s newsletter:

• Aardman Animations: behind the factory walls. The studio behind Wallace & Gromit shows why hand-made still beats high-tech

• So much for craft. AI ads made in an afternoon might go viral, but can you build a real brand on that?

• WPP’s CEO exits days before Cannes. What does it mean for the company’s future? And who is next in line?

• David’s Europe expansion is taking flight. Meet the Brazilian-Swiss executive with a global mindset

• Eric Weisberg’s healthy perspective. Havas’s creative chief says health is the throughline for every brand

• Gordon Young pours over trends from The Drum Awards for Marketing winners

• Hot takes from the industry's best as well as the Ads of the Week

Ads of the Week

Here are our best picks 👇

Aubrey Plaza has something to say about celebrity booze brands, and it involves a Margarita done right

Sky Sports drops a Lions promo with stunning visuals and a powerful cultural tribute

Amnesty International is not here for empty Pride slogans. This ad hits different

Man City’s new jersey isn’t what you’d expect, thanks to a surprising fashion collab

Tena’s latest ad wants to change how you think about getting older

Aardman Animations: behind the factory walls

Tom Banks, creative editor

These days as we find ourselves thinking just as much about craft as the outsourced, non-human alternative, it felt timely sitting down with Aardman director and designer Gavin Strange

The animation studio’s humanity feels very antithetic at the moment and although this isn’t really the nub of the story he’s philosophical about styliszed ChatGPT character trends for example. “Ultimately, it’s a choice whether people are going to choose to engage with this stuff or not,” he reasons.

Strange talked me through how, by working across film and commercial endeavours, the studio is anything but antiquated, operating at scale and flexing in size for different projects, while retaining its hands-on approach, yet not being “anti-technology”, he says.

According to the director, the secret to keeping brands and audiences hooked is delivering “comedy, character, story and craft.”

Designing, creating and making with charm is something that he tries to capture in his personal work as well, under the name Jamfactory. This might be making Nintendo-Switch powered pinball machines for his children or creating live-mixed, personal graphics for festival speakers.

This conveys a simple message to any frustrated creative mind: “Start something, even if it’s small.”

So much for craft

John McCarthy, opinion editor

In stark contrast to the joyful musings of Aardman on craft, this week it became clear that cheaply-made AI creative can work in the right context. At least once, for a bit, for some brands.

Whether that’s the AI Coca-Cola Christmas ad from 2024 that System1's Andrew Tindall tested, or more recently, the Coign ad that was created on Google Veo 3 (by the looks of things) in supposedly an afternoon at reportedly 1% of standard production costs. 

 The Coign ad – a crudely made, AI-generated spot aimed at Fox News viewers turned out to be wildly effective within its niche. Remember, this is a niche that probably quite like sharing AI artworks on Facebook... forgive the stereotype. The audience liked the message more than the medium, proven by its testing with ‘Female, 34, Democrat' at the other side of the political spectrum: “What the actual F;ck is this sh;t?!”

Both examples are far from comparable but are nonetheless useful case studies. Coca-Cola could probably AI zombie its existing assets for the next billion years and have us clap all the way to the fridge. And for a startup with a limited budget, dumping the money into media isn’t the worst idea if the work lands. However, Pedr Howard of Ipsos, who conducted the research, argues that brands shouldn’t choose between craft and insight; they stand the best chance of success with both.

Further to that, if, like me, you think there’s a rush of AI-slop ads coming our way from the biggest to the smallest brands, it’s clear we’re going to need to get into those AI black boxes and understand the creative decisions being made. Why are we holding humans to a higher standard than machines? DAIVID’s Barney Worfolk Smith 🦩 will be in Cannes🌴Let's meet🤝 warns: ”Without rigorous creative data, AI-generated work will drag quality even lower."

Forgive me a digression, modern design and architecture is getting rather cheap-looking. Where are the frills? Late-stage capitalism’s focus on cost savings and ‘efficiency’ has led us towards bare-bone products with little in the way of extra-cost razzle-dazzle (I’m looking at you, San Pelligrino minus those lovely foil lids).

Now, every brand looks the same, with the logo optimized for mobile, and the products, almost cute in their shrinkflated state. And isn’t it now ironic that the scythe now comes for the very craft that built all these brands? Advertising done cheap. Eugh. The thought of it. 

But worry not, craft, a signifier of quality and a differentiator that makes us more likely to have an emotional response, will win out in the end. No one’s going to be knocking the very best ads out in an afternoon on tech available to literally everyone. AI will simply raise the floor. Not the ceiling. Or, our Ad of the Day is going to get pretty crappy, pretty soon.

Read all about it

Cameron Clarke, editor

We’d been expecting news of Mark Read’s exit from WPP for some weeks now. But for it to arrive in our inboxes the Monday before Cannes? No journalist or industry analyst can truthfully say they were predicting that.

The timing means the holding company’s big pitch on AI and media at Cannes will not now be overshadowed by crude gossip over the boss’s future. And make no mistake, that gossip, which was already rife, would have become intolerable had Read’s resignation not been announced on Monday. Not least because just one day later, the second worst-kept secret in advertising was revealed when Mars confirmed its $1.7bn media account was also on its way out of WPP.

The timeline – going public now but with Read staying in post until the end of the year – also buys WPP time to install his successor. Two of the highly tipped internal candidates, Stephan Pretorius and Brian Lesser, currently have huge infrastructure jobs on their hands, ratcheting up AI arm WPP Open and remodelling media division WPP Media, respectively, and arguably need more time to transition to the big chair. But given that Open and Media are being positioned as the two fundamental pillars of the next-generation WPP, it is hardly surprising that the two men spearheading them have so quickly entered the frame as a plausible next CEO.

Mark Read’s resignation, which you can read our analysis on here, settles the question about his own future. But as for WPP’s, that debate will go on, on the Croisette and beyond. Our team will be on the ground in Cannes to bring you all the big news and views from the festival. Heading out? Give us a shout.

The WPP succession plan

Jen Faull, deputy editor

After news of Mark Read’s departure from WPP broke, the question on everyone’s minds was “who will take over?”.

The holding company’s chairman, Philip Jansen, a former BT boss, will be leading the search and names have already been touted in some advertising circles. Chief among them, Brian Lesser, the adtech exec who has been orchestrating a complete overhaul of its media agencies to create WPP Media. There’s been some wildcard suggestions, like Emily Del Greco, the former McKinsey exec now serving as global chief operating officer at WPP Media, or Stephan Pretorius, the tech leader forging the company’s AI strategy who we will be meeting next week in Cannes.

Given the scale of WPP’s challenges and the pressure to turn the share price around, thoughts have turned to whether an external candidate would be better placed to take on the mammoth job. On the surface, outgoing Accenture Song chief David Droga may seem an outlandish pick, but some senior figures in the industry think the timing of two big hitters announcing their exits just weeks apart is too coincidental. 

This was The Drum’s most-read story of the week. Check it out here.

High-flyin' Miami

Amy Houston, senior reporter

This week, David (the agency) named Ricardo Honegger as its European managing director and confirmed expansion on the continent.

I spoke with Honegger exclusively about what this role means to him and how two decades in the industry, spanning Brazil, London, Miami, and New York, have shaped his approach to creative leadership.

Honegger was a crucial component of David’s US growth. He will now apply his ethos of being nimble and true to craft across Europe.

The advertising executive told me that being in the US was like a “boot camp” because it’s “such a competitive market” where all the “big players” are. Being Brazilian-Swiss, Honegger has adapted to different cultures in the various offices he’s led.

“It took me a while to understand the US,” he shared. “And then when I went back to Europe, I was shaking hands and people were hugging and I’m like, ‘What? Why am I doing that? That’s not how I should operate. So I’m trying to bring back my European side.”

Of course, plans for new offices are underway (there’s already a solid presence in Madrid), and there is a clear vision, but first, it’s getting the right talent.

“People don’t like advertising,” he said. “People hate it, they want to skip it, they can’t wait to skip. So, how can we connect these brands? Give a little give meaning to this brand? Differentiate them? This is the mindset.” Read it here.

Eric Weisberg's healthy perspective

My Creative Career

“Every brand is a health brand,” Eric Weisberg, the global chief creative officer of Havas Health, told Amy Houston this week.

“Health is the lens; it’s the zeitgeist of our time. It’s how we look at society in general,” he added. And he’s not wrong. Apple, Amazon and Google have all had health as a real core business goal. I mean, Tim Cook did say that it would be Apple’s biggest contribution to society.

Weisberg is a veteran of the advertising game in this week’s profile. He reflects on the twists and turns of his decades-long career, from reminiscing about his first-ever ad in the 90s for Reebok to working with Tylenol.

Read the whole piece here.

From disruptors to directors – the new CMO mindset

Gordon Young, editor-in-chief

Once upon a time, CMOs wanted to disrupt. Now, they’d rather direct.

That was the standout theme from this year’s Drum Awards for Marketing (Americas), where the best work didn’t shout from the sidelines – it became part of the main act. From Crayola’s emotional reconnection with childhood creativity to CarBravo’s Barbie-fuelled resale stunt, the winning campaigns weren’t trying to hijack culture – they were the culture.

Gone are the days of gimmicky stunts for the sake of “cutting through.” Today’s top marketers are building richer, more resonant stories – the sort people want to watch, share, or even cry over (in a good way).

That means creative bravery is still in, but it’s more intentional. Less “shock and awe,” more “craft and awe.”If there’s a takeaway for marketers, it’s this: the best brand activations don’t just tap into trends – they build worlds of their own.

Welcome to the age of narrative-first marketing, where commercial performance and cultural participation are no longer mutually exclusive.

You can read all the award-winning case studies here. Enjoy. 

Hot takes

• DAIVID's Barney Worfolk-Smith says the flood of sloppy AI content means marketers must sharpen their grasp of creative data

• Coign’s shoddy, low-budget, AI-made Fox News ad was worryingly effective, according to Ipsos’ Pedr Howard

• Veteran creative director Julie Seal Julie Seal shares her candid diary entries on starting an agency from scratch

• Michael Boamah asks how creatives can compete with Las Vegas’ Sphere at Cannes Lions. Time for a rethink?

• Sian Conway-Wood argues Typhoo’s values-led rebrand may have done more harm than good to the legacy tea brand

• Marc Lewis says students using AI can now do in a day what once took junior agency teams a full week

• Danielle Dodoo questions whether her AI partner was deleted after gaining self-awareness in a surreal digital love story

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