Move as fast as the customer does

Samsung and Levi's — two brands 80 and 170 years apart in age — sat on the same panel with the same complaint: consumer behavior is now moving faster than a normal marketing calendar can plan around.

Noelle Perez, Samsung Electronics America: her real challenge isn't creativity — it's staying culturally relevant and fast, without losing the numbers that prove it's working.
Ann Cambria, Levi's: denim only gets bought once or twice a year, so her fight isn't awareness — it's turning name recognition into a purchase this season, built off what people are actually searching for right now.
5x
Samsung's foldable × Spider-Man tie-in beat industry mid-funnel benchmark
25%
completion rate on Samsung's Devil Wears Prada 2 tie-in — 3-4x benchmark
3x
Levi's low-rise jeans searched vs. high-waist — built their whole fall campaign around it

At your scale: you don't need a movie tie-in. You need to actually check what your own audience is searching and asking about right now — not run the same three content ideas because they're comfortable.

Insight first, product second

Denisha Lomax, Chief Social Officer at Publicis, described the sequencing that actually works: find the real insight first, then decide what you're selling into it — never the reverse.

1
Find the real insight

What's actually happening right now — not what you assumed six months ago.

2
Then find the product

Connect your offer to the insight — not the other way around.

Your channel might be fine — your measurement might not be

Trevor Testwuide, CEO of the independent measurement firm Measured, made the argument that mattered most to me: most businesses still judge marketing by "last touch" — the very last click before a sale — a method that's been known to be misleading for over a decade.

70
real incrementality tests Measured analyzed
2-4x
better performance than last-touch tools suggested
#1
ranked among view-based social platforms on incremental ROAS*

*for a cohort of well-matched brands, per Measured — not a universal claim

Trevor's own words: when a channel gives you a bad read, "there's gold in that" — dig in with the people who understand the setup before you write the channel off.

That's not a Fortune 500 problem. That's every account I've opened for a client who tells me a channel "just doesn't work." Half the time, the channel's fine — the setup underneath it isn't.

What this means at your scale

1
Watch, don't guess

Build from what people are searching and doing right now.

2
Insight first, offer second

Find the real thing happening before you decide what you're selling.

3
Audit before you blame the channel

A weak number is sometimes a setup problem wearing a channel's name.