Marketing is changing faster than ever, and AI is only speeding it up. In the rush to master every new tool, it is easy to lose sight of the job that never changes, and of the need to make the case for marketing itself. David talks with Taide Guajardo, former Chief Brand Officer, Europe at Procter & Gamble, about what 36 years and four countries taught her.

Taide moved into media in Italy just as digital arrived, when nobody was quite sure what a banner was and plenty of early investment didn’t deliver. She explains why test and learn only works as a discipline: a hypothesis, maths that shows a payout is even possible, and measurement that tells you what to codify and what to drop. Do that, and failing is not failing. It’s learning.

Her warning on AI is blunt: if everyone uses the same tools in the same way, it will be the death of distinctiveness. The practical answer is P&G’s gut test. Before any checklist, ask what your gut tells you about the work, because turning an insight into a big idea is still human. And she is clear that marketers often undermine themselves, chasing awards over results and reducing brand building to communications, when it is the marketer’s job to market marketing. You’ll also hear how she rewrote P&G’s marketing talent strategy from scratch.

If you lead brands, teams or transformation, this is a candid guide to what lasts when everything else changes.

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One brand, dozens of markets, and a category being reshaped faster than most brand strategies can keep up with. Plenty of global companies say they have a single brand; in practice they have as many versions of it as they have regions, each a reasonable local reading of something that was meant to be singular. David Wheldon talks with Mikimasa "Miki" Hamamatsu, Division General Manager, Global Brand & Marketing Communication at Nissan, about pulling that back together without stripping markets of the authority they need to sell cars.

Miki explains Nissan's shift to a lighthouse brand: one definition, one interpretation, clear guardrails to steer by. He is also candid about where that work had to start. Internal research found that only 30% of Nissan employees understood the company's brand equity and just 14% believed in it, and he makes the case that internal brand engagement is the most underrated lever a marketer has, precisely because it never arrives as a campaign anyone can put their name to.

You will also hear a discipline you could copy this week. Miki sends his weekly marketing performance assessment straight through to his agencies, market problems included, then watches the questions that come back. We cover why brand is not always a democracy, what more than 15 years with the same agency group actually buys you, how Chinese EV competition is compressing launch timelines, and where AI is doing real work in localisation and analytics rather than sitting in pilots.

If you are working on global brand consistency, agency partnership or the case for long-term brand building, listen in and share this with a colleague.

Subscribe to the WFA #BetterMarketing podcast on your preferred platform: https://bit.ly/41ZwqkF.

Advertising is getting pricier, yet the results many marketers care about most are shrinking. Brand effects like awareness, trust and differentiation are dropping across award-winning case studies, even as budgets climb, and that should worry anyone responsible for growth. David talks with Andrew Tindall from System1 about what sits underneath that decline and how to fix it without hiding behind vanity metrics.

Andrew unpacks why emotional response is not a “nice to have”, but one of the most dependable predictors of effectiveness we have, especially when paired with clear brand recognition. From there we dig into the Creative Dividend, a model that blends global Effie Awards effectiveness data with System1’s large-scale creative testing to show something many teams miss: creativity and media only make sense together. A strong ad with no reach is wasted. Heavy reach behind a weak ad is inefficient.

You will also hear a practical planning idea you can take back to your next budget meeting: Excess Share of Creativity (ESOC). Alongside Excess Share of Voice, it reframes the job as building genuine creative advantage and then backing it with the right weight of quality reach. We cover the four outputs that make creativity accessible in plain language, the real cost of dull campaigns, and why chasing lower CPM can push teams into low-attention media that drags ROI down.

If you want clearer creative reviews, smarter media planning and stronger marketing effectiveness, subscribe, listen and share this with a colleague.

Subscribe to the WFA #BetterMarketing podcast on your preferred platform: https://bit.ly/41ZwqkF.