News and insights
Rising digital advertising costs, stronger first-party data and better attribution are giving direct mail a new role in the marketing mix. We look at the latest UK direct mail statistics, ROI and performance […]
Somewhere in your organisation, probably in a shared drive nobody has opened since it was approved, sits a crisis communications plan. It likely describes a single, well-behaved crisis that follows […]
Social media might not be on holiday like the rest of us (apart from the social media managers posting poolside - we see you), but it certainly seems to be having an identity crisis. AI is improving […]
Most brands still report on social performance as if follower count were the scoreboard. It isn't. The audience that drives brand growth is an audience that has never followed the account at all. That's […]
Sphere™ is Brandnation's global influencer marketing studio, building spheres of influence for brands. By combining AI with human expertise, we create culturally relevant influencer programmes that […]
The August edit Upcycled kimonos on Centre Court. A tote bag that's gone from grocery run to global obsession. A spaceship where a home cinema used to be. Welcome to our favourite corner […]
Key takeaways Guaranteed AI citations are not possible. Large language models are probabilistic, so identical prompts can return different cited brands from one run to the next. The […]
The two most online generations in history are also the most nostalgic. According to GWI, 15% of Gen Z say they would rather think about the past than the future, with millennials close behind at 14%. […]
Key takeaways Taste is built through accumulation. It develops through sustained exposure to great work, and to work that fails, plus an understanding of why. Input […]
The same slide appears at the end of many PR reports, and most of us have made one. It lists everything that increased: coverage, total reach, a big audience number, and maybe an advertising value equivalent […]
There is a shift happening in how the most successful consumer brands think about social media, and it is more fundamental than a content calendar refresh or a new platform strategy. The brands pulling […]
Public social media is getting harder to navigate. Organic reach continues to fall, algorithms dictate what gets seen, and consumers are spending more of their digital lives in private messaging apps […]
Twenty years ago, Jeremy Clarkson topped a Channel 4 poll of Britain's most hated public figures. Today, he's the face of British farming's fight against Westminster, the presenter of one of Prime Video's […]
Brandnation has has been shortlisted at the Creative Moment Awards in the Best Creative Experiential of the Year category. Rave in a Cave, for Columbia Sportswear, was built around a simple but […]
For decades, the question, “Is this culturally relevant?” was left to the creative team. It sat alongside discussions of tone, visuals, and music: essentially, it was about whether the work felt […]
Brand audiences need two audiences: the room and everyone else There is a moment at every great brand event when the room feels electric. The crowd is in it. The experience is landing. […]
People are still scrolling. Still watching. Still discovering brands, products and ideas through their feeds every day. But they are not always liking, commenting, sharing or posting in the way they […]
A decade ago, the chief executive of a mid-sized company spoke in public maybe four times a year: a vetted line in the results statement, a keynote, the odd trade interview the press office had spent […]
The July edit Wearable soy sauce rings and air conditioning. Alternative guides to surviving the heatwave. Sunday roast beauty hacks. Welcome to our favourite corner of the internet, […]
Social media platforms have wasted no time rolling out new features this summer, with July bringing a wide range of updates focused on content discovery, creator tools, AI-powered functionality and […]
Somewhere in the world, as you read this, a press release is being written, approved and sent without a single human sentence in it. Someone fed a brief to a model, the model handed back a headline, […]
For a long time, the metric that mattered most in social media was reach. How many people saw the post, how many feeds it appeared in, how far the content travelled. It was a logical place to start, […]
Sport has always been shaped by the environment. Seasons determine when competitions begin. Weather conditions decide how games are played. But something has shifted. The conditions that sport has long […]
There's a corner of the internet that doesn't look like marketing, doesn't feel like advertising, and consistently outperforms both. It lives in the comments section of a morning commute video, gets […]