In today’s fast-paced world, brands are moving—quite literally—toward a new era of collaboration, innovation, and self-expression. As someone deeply embedded in this industry, I've witnessed firsthand how these shifts are not just trends but transformative forces reshaping the landscape of creativity and branding.

As someone who has navigated the complexities of international marketing, I have found that the key to success when it comes to approaching a new market lies in understanding and respecting its unique cultural contexts. My concept of "Loveting," which I also presented at The Ad Store Festival of Creativity, is a blend between love and marketing, to create emotionally resonant brand experiences, especially in culturally rich markets like Japan.

The roots of AI in our field trace back to early developments like ELIZA, a natural language processing program from the 1960s. Fast forward to today, we have powerful tools like Chat GPT, which has evolved from 117 million parameters in its first version to a staggering 170 trillion in its latest iteration. This exponential growth mirrors the complexity and capacity of the human brain, which is estimated at around 700 trillion parameters.

Effective time management is the strategic usage of your time to achieve your goals and objectives. It involves several key components: defining and clarifying goals, setting priorities, planning schedules, and managing distractions. By mastering these elements, you can make the most of your time and accomplish more with less stress.

Since the early 2000s the growth rate of creative services has increased by 17% year on year. Today, the volume of the global creative industries market amounts to around $104.2 billion and it may exceed $1T by 2024.(1) Pretty impressive, right?

It’s been said before: creativity is a way of living and working in communication inherently implies a significant aptitude towards creativity. But did you know that our brains are not meant to be creative?

Insights are something that we, as advertisers, never stop chasing and searching for. While representing a pivotal element in building a campaign, insights are really hard to find. In our industry, looking for insights is a bit like throwing yourself into a Pokemon chase - you never know where it might lead you. But what is the real nature of an insight? What are they? What are they not? And how can you set yourself to find them?

If you’re overwhelmed by the world of NFT you shouldn’t be, because it honestly takes a good 10 hours of solid YouTube research to understand what they are all about, plenty of YouTube channels out there to get your knowledge up to par on what they are, and especially for us, how to think from a brand perspective on that NFT collection for your client and how to properly launch it.

An efficient management of Digital PR projects is a key aspect in the life of any full-service agency such as The Ad Store. In this article, Digital PR & Influencer Specialist Margherita Cavallotti will guide us through the dos and don’ts of this fascinating branch of marketing.

What is a project and which are the different approaches to manage a project effectively? And what are the main pillars of the Agile Project Management approach? Managing a project using an agile approach requires the adoption of an agile mindset by the whole team. One of the key aspects of the Agile approach is that of servant leadership as a key resource to empower teams.

Creative pitches are the craziest and most surrealistic moment of a creative agency’s life. Iconically associated with the advertising industry, they define and sum up how crazy and unpredictable our job can be. But how can you prepare for a creative pitch effectively and bring the pitch experience to the next level? After years and years of successful and less successful pitches, I identified 9 key aspects that can help you plan and manage your creative pitch preparation effectively:

Subcultures are increasingly influencing Brands. Brands are drawing new inspiration from subcultures and learning from them how to start new dialogs about particularly important topics, such as social activism. Why is this change so important and where does it stem from?

Year 1880. Music and advertising meet for the first time. The product? The first funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius, in Naples, Italy. The song? “Funiculì Funiculà”, a musical invitation to step aboard and try such an innovative means of transportation. The lyrics “Jamme, jamme 'ncoppa, jamme jà Funiculì, funiculà!” convey what could be considered as a primal form of call to action. The budding copywriter was a journalist, Giuseppe Turco, while the music was composed by Luigi Denza (1).

Stores closed with stocks hanging on the racks, operations and deliveries hindered, new launches and new shootings canceled or frozen due to travelling bans. There’s no doubt that fashion is one of the industries that has been most heavily impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak.

With the aim of supporting our clients navigate the Covid-19 crisis and steer their communication efforts in the right direction, we analyzed how brands dealt with the Coronavirus emergency and lockdowns.

In times like these, the temptation is to try to provide inspiration. I believe nobody can claim to have any or all of the answers for anything right now. That’s quite a mouthful for someone that does not believe in absolutes.

If 2020 marks the beginning of a new decade, the year 2019 already showed some signs of innovation that will get momentum in the year to come. So, what comes next? In my job I constantly monitor and visit blogs, magazines and websites from different domains and can’t help noticing and spotting current and new styles and trends.

In an industry made of countless brands of all ages and positionings, the ones that are to survive and thrive will have to be able to correctly interpret and act upon the changes that are revolutionizing not only the fashion industry, but society and business at large. In this article I will try and outline the most relevant changes and trends that fashion brands are experiencing at the moment.

Becoming a million-dollar-revenue agency is a dream that many of us want to achieve. It would mean that all your efforts put you on the right track for success and that more doors can soon open to your business.

Ever wonder what the most desirable quality is in future leaders? According to a survey conducted by the World Economic Forum, the answer is creativity, described as "The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.

When you need to manage international marketing and communication projects to export your brand or product to new countries, it’s useful to take a thorough, humble and well-structured approach to the task, keeping some relevant key aspects in mind and following two golden rules: don’t take anything for granted and rely on the know-how of experienced professionals. Because – it should go without saying – addressing users from different markets is far more complex and riskier than trying to engage an audience you know like the back of your hand.

In our profession, presentations are the core of our work and the way we present, visually, verbally and physically, is key to our job. A presentation is our face, the frontline of what we’re selling, no matter if it’s a budget, a brand strategy, creative stuff or a social media editorial plan. Even the tiniest and least important project deserves to be presented properly.

Marketing is changing. And the approach that we’ve commonly used no longer keeps up with this shift. In the old days, our marketing mix was ruled by Jerome McCarthy’s 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Now we need to focus on the human side and rather follow another model that we believe to be more consumer-centric - the 4Cs developed by Robert Lauterborn: Consumer, Cost, Convenience and Communication. These should be the bases of every marketing strategy. But what differs between the two?

In my over 15 years of experience as an award winning painter and Creative Director, during which I’ve had the chance to cooperate and come in contact with outstanding creatives and artists – The Ad Store’s founder Paul Cappelli, creative founding partner of TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris John Hunt, Kenian artist Cyrus Kabiru and Moyo Okedigi, Professor at the University of Texas, USA – I have juggled between galleries and ad agencies, and I see a very strong correlation between art and creativity.

A new playbook for the retail & fashion industry to deal with undisciplined consumers. Business leaders are frequently quoting that “the only certainty is change”. They couldn’t be righter but yet so many companies lack the necessary set of attitudinal and behavioral competences that can truly drive change.

We live in a crazy busy world, overwhelmed every day with pieces of information coming from many sources. We are all online almost 24/7, checking our social media profiles or posting selfies. Computers, mobile phones, tablets -- it doesn't matter the device, we want to be able to have access to whatever we want anywhere, at any time.

How important is it to listen to your target in developing a communication project? We believe that listening is of the utmost importance - the foundation of any creative strategy and project. Read this article and discover a list of the main Social Media Listening tools, why you should use them and to what advantage.

The right mix of planning, monitoring, and controlling can make the difference in completing a project on time, on budget, and with high quality results.

Art is all around us but that’s not to say it’s not difficult. Creativity is volatile and unpredictable at times. Often, right at the peak of inspiration, the mind wanders and is bogged down by distractions.

What is SEO copywriting? How much can it impact on generating traffic to a website, blog, landing page? How can you reach the highest rank in search engines?

Today, the relations between a brand operating in the pharmaceutical industry and its users are no longer as smooth and streamlined as in the past. It has become multi-faceted. Both doctors and patients have many communication channels to do exhaustive research and get tons of complex information.

The restaurant sector is at a turning point. The impact of digital and other changes in consumer needs have led the industry players to change their business model in order to generate higher profits. In order to fully understand this evolution, we have identified some keywords that businesses who are committed to facing and winning the current challenges might find useful, especially in a market that we at The Ad Store know pretty well.

First thing first: branding is complex. To cover all its aspects, we would need to publish a Tolkien-style trilogy! Nevertheless, we’ll try and summarise in this article some essential principles every successful brand should live by. Let’s start from a fundamental distinction.

We explained our process in an interview for Ninja Marketing. The first thing to mention is that, like any planning activity, a digital restyling project is a complex activity in its own nature.

Knowing your customer is an absolute priority within Customer Experience, Customer Journey, Customer Engagement, Onboarding or Customer Centricity strategies. It’s a critical success factor for brands in order to build a relevant and significant relationship with their consumer base.

According to an international survey conducted by Destination Analysts, people find inspiration for choosing a destination from the opinions of their friends and relatives first, followed closely by travel content found online.

Increasingly connected but also increasingly cautious: this is what consumers look like according to Connected Life, a Kantar TNS research study that examined trust among consumers in late 2017.

Imagine you're in a shop and need some advice for your next purchase. You look around but can't find anyone to help. What would you do?

Nowadays, Design Thinking is an incredibly popular buzzword. Brands such as Google, Apple, Samsung, Ebay, IKEA, have adopted this methodology and integrated it in their product development cycles.