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Trust is one of those words brands love to use. 

“Trusted since 1987.” 

“The trusted choice.” 

“A name you can trust.” 

The problem is, saying it does not make it true. 

Trust is not something a business can simply claim – it’s something people build up over time, based on what they have seen, heard and experienced. 

And it has never been easier for brands to lose people. There are more channels, more content, more messages and more information fighting for attention, but less patience and less time to care. Confusion is costly. 

If your brand is unclear, inconsistent or unfocused, people will not spend long trying to work you out. They will move on to something easier to understand – and easier to trust. 

Why trust matters 

Trust makes choosing easier for consumers. That, in turn, makes it commercially valuable for businesses. 

People do not have the time or inclination to evaluate every available option in forensic detail, so they rely on trust-based shortcuts. They choose brands they recognise, understand, have heard good things about or have already had a positive experience with. 

A trusted brand is easier to choose, easier to recommend and easier to return to. People are also more likely to stick with it and forgive it when something goes wrong.  

Where trust starts to break 

Many brands are harder to trust than they realise. They are too vague about what they do, too internally focused in how they talk about it, too inconsistent from one channel to another or too similar to everyone else in the category. Some keep changing direction before people have had a chance to understand them in the first place. 

And trust does not usually disappear in one dramatic moment. It is built or eroded in the small stuff. Through the clear, consistent experiences people have across every touchpoint, from the website and sales call to the invoice, delivery and response when something goes wrong. 

A brand can say it is helpful while its website makes life harder. It can call itself human while its service feels robotic. It can talk endlessly about innovation while the experience feels ten years out of date. 

When the gap between what a brand says and what people experience becomes too wide, trust starts to break. 

Put your brand to the test 

So, how do you know whether your brand is genuinely easy to trust? 

At BIG, we use a simple trust test when we start working with a brand. It looks beyond what an organisation claims and asks whether the business is making its promise clear, believable and consistent across the whole experience. 

It comes down to five questions: 

1. Clarity: Do people know what you stand for? 

Ask three people in your business what the organisation stands for and you will often get three different answers. That is a problem, because people cannot trust something they do not properly understand. 

Your audience should be able to grasp what you do, why you matter and what makes you worth choosing without decoding a wall of corporate language.  

Clarity is not about dumbing things down, it’s about making the important parts easy to understand. If a potential customer could not explain your business after visiting your website once, the brand is making them work too hard. 

2. Alignment: Would your people say the same thing? 

Trust slips when the leadership team tells one story, the sales team tells another and the customer experience delivers something else entirely. Alignment starts inside the organisation. 

Your people need a shared understanding of what the business stands for, how it creates value and what kind of experience it wants to provide.  

That does not mean giving everyone a script, but having a clear North Star gives the business one organising idea, so different teams can express the same brand naturally through what they say, do and prioritise. 

3. Consistency: Are you recognisable across every touchpoint? 

Great brands are surprisingly repetitive. It might not sound glamorous, but repetition is how they become familiar, understood and trusted. 

Consistency does not mean repeating the same thing everywhere or making everything look identical. It means every interaction feels as though it came from the same place.  

Your website, advertising, emails, sales materials and customer service can all do different jobs, but they should still feel connected. When every channel behaves like a different business, people must keep reassessing who you are. 

4. Proof: Are you demonstrating it through experience? 

Brands spend a lot of time deciding which words they want to use about themselves. Helpful. Expert. Friendly. Innovative. Reliable. But people are far more interested in whether the experience proves them true. 

If you say you are easy to deal with, how simple is it to contact you? If you say you care about customers, what happens when one has a problem? If you say quality matters, where can people see and feel it? Trust grows when the promise and the experience reinforce one another.  

Brand can make the truth easier to see. It cannot manufacture it. 

5. Recognition: Are you distinctive enough to be remembered? 

Being clear and consistent is important, but it will only get you so far if the brand is impossible to pick out from the category. 

If you look, sound and behave like every competitor, people will struggle to remember who said what. Distinctiveness gives them something to hold on to, whether that comes from your visual identity, tone of voice, attitude, point of view or customer experience.  

The aim is not to be different for the sake of it. It is to be easier to recognise, easier to recall and easier to choose. 

Trust is a pattern, not a message 

That is what the trust test is really measuring. Not what you claim in one campaign, but the pattern created by every interaction. 

Clear. Aligned. Consistent. Proven. Recognisable. 

So, the question is not whether you tell people your brand can be trusted. It’s whether you are making it easy for them to believe you. 

To put your brand to the test, get in touch: [email protected] 

In modern digital marketing, measuring performance accurately is fundamental to driving sustainable, profitable growth. While platforms such as Google Ads provide sophisticated attribution and reporting tools, these systems primarily measure correlation – the attribution and touch points between ads in the platform – not causation – which is whether the ad actually drove conversion. Incrementality testing addresses this gap by identifying the true business impact of advertising investment. 

What is incrementality testing? 

Incrementality testing evaluates whether marketing activity generates additional outcomes that would not have occurred without advertising exposure. As marketers, what we really want to know is whether these conversions would have happened anyway, without seeing the ad in the first place. For example, it’s a hot sunny day and a customer has bought an ice cream. Have they bought that ice cream because it’s a hot sunny day, or because they’ve seen an ad for it? 

It is a critical distinction as platform-reported conversions often include users who were already likely to purchase, inflating perceived performance and leading to inefficient budget allocation.  

Incrementality testing isolates advertising’s causal impact through controlled experimentation, typically through techniques such as geo holdouts, audience splits, conversion lift studies or budget pause tests. 

Why traditional attribution falls short 

Digital platforms optimise toward the signals available within their ecosystems. Both Google and Meta rely heavily on modelled attribution due to privacy restrictions, signal loss, and cross-device behaviour.  

This has consequences and could mean that: 

Retargeting campaigns often appear highly efficient but may capture existing demand rather than create new demand; 

Branded search frequently receives disproportionate credit for conversions that are already driven by upper-funnel channels;  

Automated bidding algorithms optimise driving conversions, not profit.  attributed conversions, not incremental profit.  

Without incrementality testing, marketers risk scaling spend that redistributes demand instead of generating growth. 

Incrementality in Google Ads 

Within Google Ads, incrementality testing is particularly important because search advertising sits close to purchase intent. 

Key challenges include: 

Brand search cannibalisation — users already intending to convert may click paid ads instead of organic listings; 

Performance max and automation opacity — machine learning blends channels and audiences, making causal impact harder to evaluate; 

Demand capture vs. demand creation — search excels at capturing intent but does not always generate new demand.  

Incrementality testing helps to determine: 

Whether branded search spend is truly additive;  

The marginal return of increased budget levels  

The real contribution of upper-funnel YouTube or Display investment to search demand.  

This enables advertisers to optimise for profitability, not just reported ROAS (return on ad spend). 

Incrementality across Meta 

On Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, incrementality testing is arguably even more critical. 

Meta’s strength lies in demand generation, but its attribution models can often reward campaigns that efficiently reach existing customers or high-intent users. 

Common risks include: 

Over-investment in retargeting audiences;  

Algorithmic bias toward users already likely to convert;  

Inflated attribution windows exaggerating performance.  

However, incrementality testing — through conversion lift experiments, audience holdouts, or geo testing — reveals: 

The true value of prospecting campaigns;  

The incremental contribution of creative and messaging;  

Optimal frequency and budget thresholds. 

All of this allows marketers to shift investment toward campaigns that grow the market, not simply harvest existing demand. 

The strategic value: From efficiency to growth 

Incrementality testing transforms marketing decision-making in three fundamental ways. First, it drives smarter budget allocation away from low-incremental channels towards high-impact demand creators that generate genuine growth.  

Second, it enables more accurate ROI measurement, allowing businesses to optimise toward incremental revenue and profit rather than the flattering but often misleading metrics reported by platforms themselves.  

And third, it fosters better collaboration between finance and marketing by anchoring performance to causal business outcomes. 

Beyond operational improvements, incrementality testing has become a source of durable competitive advantage. As privacy regulations erode tracking precision and platforms lean more heavily on modelling, it stands out as the most reliable measurement framework available.  

Organisations that embed experimentation into their operating model reap compounding benefits: faster learning cycles, less wasted spend, more confident scaling decisions, and stronger long-term profitability. To unlock profitable digital growth across Google Ads, Meta, and the broader marketing ecosystem, incrementality testing is now essential. 

Over the last decade, I’ve built websites in Dreamweaver, created GIFs that generated billions of views, learned Meta’s AR software and now use AI tools to help shape wireframes and content structures. 

Some of those skills are still useful, while others have all but disappeared. 

It’s taught me an important lesson: the most valuable skill in design isn’t mastering a particular tool, it’s being willing to adapt when the industry inevitably changes around you.

The tools never stop changing 

When I started my career, Dreamweaver was still a legitimate part of many designers’ workflows – it was considered cutting edge. 

Back then, building a website often meant designing and developing it yourself. Responsive design was still finding its feet; social media looked very different and nobody was talking about AI as a creative tool. 

Fast forward a decade and my workflow has changed completely. Most projects now start in Figma, collaboration happens in real time and tools like Claude and Relume are helping speed up everything from content structures to early-stage wireframing. 

The fundamentals of design haven’t changed much but the tools we use to get there certainly have. 

One of the biggest challenges for any designer is deciding what deserves your time. 

Throughout my working life, I’ve invested hours learning platforms and technologies that felt like the future. 

At one point, GIF creation became a major part of my work. Brands were embracing the format, audiences were sharing them everywhere and the opportunities felt endless. It was an exciting time, creating content that generated billions of views across social platforms. 

Fast forward a few years and GIFs feel increasingly tied to a specific era of internet culture. 

The same thing happened with Meta Spark Studio. I spent time learning how to create augmented reality experiences because it genuinely looked like a pivotal direction for social media. Then the platform was retired and much of that ecosystem disappeared. 

Looking purely at the software, that time might seem wasted but I don’t see it that way. 

The value wasn’t really in the tools themselves. Every new platform forced me to learn new ways of thinking, solve unfamiliar problems and become comfortable operating outside my comfort zone. Those skills transfer. 

The software may disappear, but the ability to pick up something new, understand it quickly and find creative ways to use it remains incredibly valuable. 

In many ways, learning how to learn has become one of the most important skills in modern design. 

AI is just the latest chapter 

Right now, AI dominates almost every conversation in the creative industry. Some people see it as a threat while others see it as the solution to everything. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. 

I use AI tools regularly, not because they replace design thinking, but because they help remove friction, speed up certain tasks and make it easier to move ideas forward. 

Five years from now, the tools we’re all talking about today might be gone. That’s not a criticism, it’s just the nature of technology. 

The challenge isn’t trying to learn everything, it’s figuring out what’s worth exploring, what’s worth ignoring and what genuinely makes you better at your job. 

Why this matters for brands 

The same principle applies beyond design. Businesses are navigating many of the same challenges. New platforms emerge, customer behaviours shift and technologies evolve at an increasingly rapid pace. Knowing which opportunities are worth pursuing and which are simply distractions has become more important than ever. 

That’s where experience matters. At BIG, we’re constantly exploring new tools, technologies and ways of working. Not because every trend deserves attention, but because understanding what’s changing helps us identify what will genuinely create value for our clients. 

The goal isn’t to chase every new platform or shiny new technology. It’s to combine proven creative thinking with an understanding of what’s next, helping brands adapt confidently without losing sight of what makes them effective in the first place. 

The tools will continue to change, they always do. For designers and brands alike, the challenge is knowing how to evolve with them. 

The Scotland men’s national football team are at their first World Cup in 28 years. To cheer the team on and celebrate their qualification, more than 30,000 party ready Scots have descended on Boston, watching John McGinn help secure a 1-0 win over Haiti with his goal in the country’s opening match of the tournament.  

While that victory may have been Scotland’s first in the tournament since 1990, another resounding success has unfolded elsewhere in the city. Ahead of the tournament, Travis Pollio, the Red Sox director of ticket strategy and promotions, noticed that Scotland’s opening match fell the day before a home game at Fenway Park, the baseball side’s historic stadium. He could have ignored it; instead, ‘Scotland Day’ was born.

Following Scotland’s win – with spirits still high – the Tartan Army marched from the city’s Evans Way Park to Fenway, led by a band of pipers. Fans were gifted special edition blue tartan Red Sox jerseys, and the mascots ‘Tessie and Wally’ appeared in traditional Scottish dress. During the match itself, a crowd that had, mostly, never watched a baseball game in their lives, created a huge atmosphere by belting their way through the classic tunes with ‘Flower of Scotland’, ‘I’m Gonna Be’ and ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’ echoing through the stands.

Of the 32,000 people inside Fenway that night, BBC Sport’s reporter on the ground, Scott Mullen, estimated you could treble Pollio’s initial forecast of 4,000 Scottish fans and not be overstating it. The Red Sox lost 6-4 to the Texas Rangers, although almost nobody seemed to mind.

What made this work wasn’t a slick campaign concept with all the bells and whistles. Pollio spotted a simple opportunity: thousands of Scotland supporters were already in his city and looking for something to do between football matches, with Scotland set to play Morocco this coming Friday. Before the gates even opened, pipe bands were playing outside on Jersey Street, fans in kilts were spilling across the concourses and the kind of atmosphere that you can’t artificially manufacture was already building in the stands.

Scots who had never watched a baseball game in their lives were singing their hearts out by the end of the first inning. The audience overlap was almost perfect – Bostonians are renowned for their sporting spirit – and, because the activation was built around people who were already there, the cost relative to what it returned was negligible.

The magic of this activation lies in its raw, unfiltered delivery. The Red Sox created the occasion and then allowed the fans to create the atmosphere. Every one of those supporters likely had a phone in their pocket. Every photo posted, every story shared, every TikTok uploaded put the Red Sox brand in front of audiences the club would never have reached through paid media. The best user generated content usually isn’t manufactured through hashtag competitions or giveaways – it happens organically when you give people something genuinely worth sharing.

In another world, this is an activation where someone has added three approval layers, a brand safety review and a six-week lead time that would cause it to become a sanitised co-branding exercise that ultimately generates nothing. The version that happened was confident and trusting enough to let the crowd take it somewhere.

A lesson that every comms and marketing team should take from this event is, instead of asking ‘how can we attach ourselves to this event?’, rather, ‘how do we create a moment and a memory for fans?’

According to CreativeX, an analytics platform for marketers, the ultimate driver of buying decision is memory. Now, whenever one of those Scotland fans think of baseball, they will instantly think of the Red Sox and that incredible night they experienced at Fenway, ultimately making them more likely to visit again or purchase merchandise. You must also consider the millions of views that the atmosphere has generated on social media by people stunned that a regular season Major League Baseball match has been commandeered by rowdy Scots.

During a World Cup, every host city has a full schedule. Every match creates a temporary captive audience of supporters, journalists and curious locals who don’t vanish at the final whistle. The teams and brands earning attention right now aren’t always the official partners, it is the brands sensing an opportunity, spotted something the others missed and moved before the window closed.

When a new brief lands, it can fill you with a mix of excitement and anticipation on how to logically kick it off. ‘Can I actually come up with my best ideas here’?

You scribble the first thing that comes into your head and start pondering, overthinking, and somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder whether you’re going to get to the creative sweet spot.

I’d been there more times than I’d like to admit. So, I built myself a way out of it. Ten thinking lenses, which I call ‘Creative Catalysts’. The rule is dead simple: apply each one to the brief, generate a concept per catalyst, and don’t stop to judge anything until all ten are on the table. No editing, no second-guessing, no going back.

Thirty minutes, ten genuinely different approaches, not one of them arrived at in the same way.

Here’s how each catalyst works. I’ve used BIG Partnership’s ethos ‘making brands unmissable’ as the brief here, to show the catalysts in action.

1. Keep it simple

What’s the simplest way to convey the idea? Not the cleverest. Not the most interesting. The most obvious one, executed with total conviction. Simplicity isn’t laziness; it’s discipline. If someone can’t get it before they’ve finished reading it, it’s not simple enough.

The brief here is to make brands unmissable. Three words. No asterisk, no small print. ‘We need to deliver something bold, simple, and unmissable.’ Done.

2. Unique selling point

What’s the one thing about this client that no competitor can honestly claim? Find it, front it, and let the work do nothing else. Stop talking about the category. Talk about the client.

BIG has been in business for over 25 years, with PR at its core from day one. Not a digital agency that bolted on comms. Not a creative shop that discovered earned media. A communications agency built on PR heritage, with everything else grown around it. The concept: ‘Over 25 years of making noise for brands that matter’.

3. Be dramatic

Take the most interesting element of the brief and turn it all the way up. Shout it. Exaggerate it. Make the scale of it felt rather than just understood. Drama isn’t about being loud for its own sake; it’s about making something impossible to ignore.

Unmissable is already a bold word. So go further. Blow the doors off it. The concept: ‘SEEN. HEARD. REMEMBERED’. We don’t make campaigns. We make moments brands will be remembered for. All caps. No apology. The kind of line you either love immediately or will grow into – which means it’s doing its job.

4. Flip it on its head

Do the opposite of what the brief seems to ask for. If every agency talks about what they create, talk about what happens when they don’t. The unexpected angle is usually the one that actually gets noticed.

Every agency will pitch what they can do for you. So, flip it: what does it cost when your brand goes unnoticed? ‘The most expensive thing in marketing is being ignored.’ Suddenly the conversation isn’t about us, it’s about the risk of not choosing us.

5. Trending

What’s the conversation your audience is already having? What are they reading, watching, talking about? Use this as intel. A cultural moment that’s already top of mind means your idea arrives somewhere people actually care about. The trick is making the connection feel earned, not forced.

The World Cup splits a nation. Right now, a pub in Glasgow and a pub in Salford are watching the same tournament and having completely different conversations. The brands that win aren’t the ones who picked a side, they’re the ones who understood both audiences. BIG operates in Scotland and England. We know what lands north of the border and what lands in the North West. ‘Same tournament. Different conversations. We know both.’ That’s not just a trending moment, it’s a demonstration of exactly what makes brands unmissable to every audience, not just the obvious one.

6. Similes and metaphors

Find an image or comparison that makes something abstract feel tangible. A good metaphor doesn’t just illustrate an idea; it transfers the emotional weight of one thing onto another. It’s the difference between a claim being understood and a claim being felt.

Some brands are wallpaper – they appear everywhere but feel invisible. BIG makes sure brands are noticed. The concept: ‘We’re the reason people stop scrolling.’ One image, one truth, and emotional connection.

7. Human truth

Find the real, honest thing people think or feel but don’t often say out loud. Not a consumer insight. A human one. The kind of line that makes someone stop and think, “yeah, that’s exactly it.” Forget the product for a minute and think about the client.

Nobody wants to manage four agencies, three briefing documents, and two sets of conflicting recommendations. Everyone wants one team that gets it, joins it up, and gets on with it. ‘Strategy. Creative. PR. Social. All in one place. All pointed in the same direction.’ That’s not a capability statement, it’s a relief. And relief is a human truth worth owning.

8. Research and insight

Go looking. Find the fact, the stat, or the behavioural pattern that reframes how you see the brief. Good research doesn’t just support an idea; it generates one. The concept is already in the data if you bother to look for it.

The average person sees thousands of brand messages a day and remembers a handful. That’s not a creativity problem; it’s a strategic one. ‘Most brands are seen. Few are remembered. We work out the difference.’ The insight reframes what we sell: not through creativity, but memorability.

9. Evolution or revolution

Look at what the client already does and ask one question: do we build on it, or do we break with it? Evolution takes what works and stretches it further. Revolution starts again with purpose. Neither is better by default. The brief tells you which one it needs.

BIG has always been known for bold, integrated work. Evolution says: take that reputation and stretch it into new channels, new sectors, new conversations. Revolution says: strip everything back and show up completely differently, letting the work speak without the agency voice in front of it. Both are valid. This lens just forces you to choose on purpose.

10. Layered messaging

Two things, merged into one. A visual and a line that work independently but mean more together. A product truth and a human truth carrying equal weight in the same idea. This is the hardest catalyst to use well, and it often produces the sharpest work.

A red-carpet moment. Everyone watching, cameras everywhere, impossible to ignore – that’s what a great campaign feels like for a brand. And BIG is the agency that puts you there. The concept: a brand stepping onto the red carpet under a BIG spotlight. The line: ‘Your moment. Our stage.’ Two unmissable things – the brand’s opportunity and BIG’s ability to deliver it – collapsed into one image. The client sees themselves in it immediately.

Ten catalysts. Ten concepts. That brief took 30 minutes.

The outcome isn’t that every idea is a banger. It’s that you’ve genuinely explored ten different creative territories before you’ve committed to any of them. You stop settling for the first thought that felt vaguely right. You stop overthinking in circles.

The best idea is still a judgement call, considering the mix of all ten outcomes. But it’s much more chance of being a winning one when you’ve given yourself multiple approaches to explore.

Mounjaro. Wegovy. Ozempic. A year ago, these were whispered about in celebrity gossip columns. Now they are prescribed by GPs, discussed openly at dinner parties and advertised by private clinics on public transport. GLP-1 medications have entered the mainstream and with them has come a quiet but significant rewiring of how people think about food, bodies, and the marketing messages promoted by lifestyle, food and drink brands.

The opportunity for food brands

GLP-1 users are not disengaging from food, they are re-engaging with it differently.

Reduced appetite tends to sharpen preferences. Smaller portions mean people are less willing to waste their appetite on something they don’t genuinely want. Protein and nutrient density matter more. The incidental, grab-and-go eating that much food marketing has long been built around gives way to something more deliberate.

That presents an opportunity, not a threat, for food brands willing to think about it properly. UK retailers have been moving in this direction already. High-protein ranges have expanded across Aldi, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer, and the language around satiety and nutrition has become more prominent in product positioning. The next step for savvy brands is connecting that positioning explicitly to the mindset shift GLP-1 culture represents, without making the medication the story. Part of the audience has changed. The product brief can also change with it.

Wellness has a new register

The wellness sector is navigating this with particular energy. Brands that built their identity around weight loss, whether through clean eating plans, calorie-tracking apps or transformation-focused fitness content, are finding that the old language lands differently now. ‘Results’ used to mean a before-and-after. That framing feels thinner (so to speak) when a prescription can deliver a comparable outcome.

The smarter wellness brands are pivoting toward what medication cannot easily provide: the feel-good architecture around health. Energy, sleep quality, strength, gut health, mental clarity. These are genuine and growing consumer priorities and they are not displaced by GLP-1 use; in many cases they are amplified by it. Brands that can speak to this broader definition of feeling well, rather than anchoring everything in a dress size, are finding a receptive audience. Boots have launched a campaign for its ‘Summer Club’, which focuses on a plethora of different body types, races and abilities. This shift to showcase real people, instead of picture-perfect influencers works well and allows their demographic to broaden.

A growing audience that looks different

What many social media users are increasingly vocal about is specific: the gap between the bodies brands present as aspirational and the bodies their customers actually live in. That tension predates GLP-1 culture, but these medications have sharpened it. Whilst GLP-1s are becoming more popular, a significant portion of consumers are not interested in weight-loss or becoming smaller, so  brand activations cast entirely from narrow physical mould starts to look less like inspiration and more like a decision. Gone is the body-positive movement of the early 2020s, catapulting us straight back to the outdated ideation that skinny = better.

The backlash, when it comes, is swift and well-documented. UK audiences on TikTok and Instagram have become adept at calling out influencer lineups that feel homogeneous and the commentary travels fast. Critique of a recent campaign with M&S shows that users are paying attention to these ideals. They want to see diversity in content, despite many influencers and celebrities shrinking by the day. A 2024 Dove study found that only 3% of women in the UK feel represented in advertising. That figure has sat uncomfortably in the industry for a while. GLP-1 culture has given it new urgency. There are many creators who fit in diverse categories such as race, gender, disability and body type. In 2026, there is simply no excuse for brands to overlook this.

What this means for social strategy

Knowing your audience has shifted is one thing. Making sure your content reflects that is another. None of this requires brands to reference GLP-1s, take a position on weight loss medication or wade into contested health territory. It requires something simpler: paying attention to who your audience is now.

Casting decisions are the most visible place to start. A genuine audit of who appears in your brand content, what range of bodies and experiences is represented and whether that lineup bears any resemblance to your actual customer base.

Content briefs are less visible but equally important. Food content that only speaks to abundance, indulgence and effortless eating is addressing a narrower slice of the audience than it used to, especially with HFSS restrictions (UK laws designed to tackle obesity by restricting the promotion and visibility of foods and drinks High in Fat, Sugar, or Salt). Content that has considered choices, quality over quantity and honest nutrition sits alongside that rather than replacing it. The brands doing this well are not abandoning appetite; they are expanding what appetite looks like. A brand that has navigated HFSS changes well is Tunnocks, who’s recent ad focused on the lifecycle of their brand, whilst avoiding any mention of the biscuits whatsoever.

GLP-1 culture has exposed assumptions that were already under strain. The brands that treat this as a prompt to think more honestly about their audiences, their casting and their messaging will find themselves better positioned, not despite the shift, but because of it.

From newsroom to agency: What five years in PR has taught me.

This summer marks five years since I moved from journalism into PR. Given I’m close to reaching a decent landmark in my new – or not so new – career, I thought I’d reflect on a few things I’ve learned along the way.

Firstly, yes, I know I look too young to have had a 17-year media career – 12 years in journalism career, followed by almost five years in PR – but here we are. There are plenty of transferrable skills that have helped me along the way, such as having a strong feel for what a good news line is, being comfortable picking up the phone, as well as being a decent writer. Agency life has reinforced some points and made me learn a few lessons along the way.

The importance of the case study

My time in PR has reinforced just how powerful human stories are. The stories that perform the best are those where someone is named and pictured [or filmed] – and has an interesting story to tell. However journalism adapts in the months and years ahead, I’m confident that won’t change.  

In one recent example, we spoke to mum-of-four Yasmin Whittington as she was taking part in the Glasgow Kiltwalk to thank The Archie Foundation – a charity which supports babies, children and families across the North of Scotland who are experiencing a hospital stay or bereavement – for how they supported her family as they try to get a diagnosis for their daughter Elyza’s rare condition. The powerful nature of her family’s story led to strong media interest across the UK and beyond, and helped raise money for Yasmin’s charity challenge and shine a light on the great work carried out by the charity  

Relationships are important, but a good story will always win

Whether it’s with journalists or clients, being someone that people like and trust is a great starting point, especially in this new AI world. On the journalist point: One day on LinkedIn you’ll see a post from a PR arguing that relationships with journalists aren’t important, it’s all about the story and if the story is poor, you stand no chance. The next day you’ll see a counter post saying PR is all about relationships, and you need a good contact book to secure coverage. For me the truth is somewhere in between. Being friendly with a journalist improves the chances of them answering your call or reading your email, but ultimately story is king and determines the end result.

Be nice to people along the way

This can apply to any career, but I’ve always tried to be nice to people I work with whatever their role in the business. There’s never been a cynical motive to doing this but it’s interesting the way things pan out. Various younger journalists I became friendly with in my newsroom days are now senior in journalism or PR in similar roles to me, so simply being a considerate human being can be very helpful as you progress with your career.

Becoming a mini-expert in all sorts of subjects

One of the most enjoyable aspects of agency life is slowly building knowledge on a variety of topics -often in areas you knew very little about. I already had a decent grounding in sport but over the past five years I’ve also worked with an accountancy firm, renewable companies and a port operator, as well as clients in football, basketball and many others. One day you might be writing about how George Pig wearing a hearing aid can help removing stigma around hearing loss and the next explaining growth in the liquid bulks market. The variety has been really interesting, and it’s been great to visit clients in person and see first-hand the work they do.

Great coverage rarely happens by accident

As a journalist, especially at the start of my career, I wasn’t that clued into the PR work that goes on behind the scenes to help turn a good story into a great outcome. The best results rarely come from sending out a press release and hoping for the best. For companies, they come from working with people who take the time to really understand your business and its priorities. This is essential to identifying the best news angles and navigating a busy news landscape to secure meaningful coverage that supports the client’s business objectives.

Nearly five years in, I’m still learning all the time, but it’s been a great move for me both professionally and personally. I look forward to seeing what the next five years bring and writing my next blog in 2031.

Great marketing usually comes down to one simple thing: get your brand right, then tell people about it.

Obviously, there’s a lot that sits underneath that. Research, positioning, audience insight, messaging, creative development, media planning, measurement, all the useful grown-up stuff. But as a basic principle, it stands up.

Before you start thinking about media plans, TV ads, billboards, social campaigns or anything else, you need to be clear on who you are, what you stand for, why people should care and what you actually want them to remember.

Because before a brand becomes a billboard, it has to become a clear idea. And by “brand”, I don’t just mean a logo, a colour palette or a nice line on a presentation slide. Those things matter, but they are not the whole brand. They are the visible parts of it.

A brand is the thing people come to understand, feel and remember about you. It is your reputation, your role in people’s lives, your point of difference and the promise you keep making, whether you mean to or not.

Building a brand starts with a few simple but important questions: Who are we? Who are we for? What do we stand for? Why should people choose us? What should we be known for? And how do we want people to recognise us every time they come across us?

Once that is clear, everything else has something to work from. The identity makes the brand recognisable. The tone gives it personality. The message gives it clarity. The campaign gives it reach.

That is the job of brand building: to create a clear thread from what you stand for to how people experience you.

The trouble is a lot of brands lose that thread. They either get stuck in strategy, endlessly refining the thinking until it becomes a polished deck that never properly leaves the boardroom, or they jump straight to execution before the bigger brand idea has really been nailed.

That’s when the work starts to feel disconnected, because the most important bit is often the journey in the middle: turning the brand strategy into identity, messaging and communications that people can actually see, hear and remember.

Before you buy the media space, build the thing you want people to remember

A good brand strategy should create a clear path for everything that follows. It should define the core idea, shape the identity, sharpen the message and guide how the brand behaves across creative, media, channels and the customer journey.

The order matters, because if you start with the channel, the work often becomes about filling space: We need an outdoor campaign. We need a TV ad. We need something for social. We need a banner ad.

But without a joined-up idea behind it, that activity can quickly become random. Different messages, different executions and different bits of budget all pulling in different directions.

That doesn’t just make the campaign weaker. It makes it harder for people to understand what you actually want them to remember.

That’s where one clear idea becomes so important.

And that’s the difference between a genuinely integrated campaign and a media plan with matching assets. I noticed a really good example of this recently with the 7UP Pink Lemonade activity I spotted in Manchester, which felt like a really smart bit of joined-up brand activity.

On the bus into work, the free paper had a front-page wrap. Then across town, the digital and static out-of-home screens were full of that distinctive pink, with simple messaging around refreshment and mood-boosting. As I walked through the city, there were samples being handed out, bits of experiential activity and merch giveaways. Then when I opened my phone, I was served digital banner ads.

None of it felt complicated. But it all made sense and felt connected. That was the point.

It was pink. It was refreshing. It was everywhere. And it all felt like part of the same moment.

That’s what happens when clear brand thinking meets good channel thinking. It doesn’t just repeat the same advert in different sizes. It builds a world around the idea, and a quick burst of activity can suddenly feel much bigger than the media spend because people experience it in different places, in different ways, across the same day.

A paper wrap gives it visibility. Out-of-home gives it scale. Sampling puts the product in your hand.

Experiential makes it feel active. Digital picks it back up when you’re on your phone.

Each channel has a job. But brand holds it together.

Make every channel do the right job

In my opinion, that’s why out-of-home, TV and even print still have such an important role, especially in a digital-first world. They are not competing with digital. They complement it.

In a world of endless scroll, anything physical or public can have disproportionate impact. A billboard interrupts differently to a banner ad. A TV spot lands differently to a paid social post. A print wrap feels more deliberate than another thing disappearing up a feed. Experiential can turn the idea into something people actually touch, taste or do.

That doesn’t make one channel better than the other. It just means they do different things. The mistake is expecting every channel to do the same job.

The better way to think is to ask: what role does this channel play in the journey?

Because people don’t experience brands in neat media plan columns. They don’t think, “That was my awareness touchpoint, now I’m entering consideration”. They just notice things. Remember things. Click things. Talk about things. Walk past things. Try things.

So, the job is to make those moments feel connected.

That’s where brand strategy earns its keep. Not by making everything more complicated, but by making it easier to understand what every piece of activity is there to do.

If your brand is clear, your message gets sharper. If your message is sharper, your creative gets stronger. If your creative is stronger, your media works harder. And if your media works harder, your campaign has a much better chance of being remembered.

Make it easy to recognise, wherever it appears

This is also why the basic building blocks matter. The proposition. The positioning. The message. The tone of voice. The logo. The line. The colours. The visual world.

Some of those are strategic. Some are verbal. Some are visual. But together, they create a system people can recognise. They help people join the dots quickly. They make the brand easier to spot, easier to understand and easier to recall.

In the 7UP example, the pink did a lot of the heavy lifting. You didn’t need to stand there decoding the campaign. You just got it. The colour, the message, the product and the media all worked together.

That’s the sweet spot: simple enough to recognise, strong enough to stretch and distinctive enough to remember.

Because the billboard is not the brand or the strategy, nor is the TV ad or the social post.  They are where it becomes visible.

So yes, get your brand right, then tell people about it. But don’t skip the bit in between: defining what the brand is, building the system around it, turning that strategy into a clear message, and then creating a connected set of moments that work together across channels.

That’s when “telling people about it” becomes more than buying media space. It becomes something people actually notice. Or better still, something they actually remember.

Brands combining SEO and PR have always outperformed brands relying on just one. New 2026 research strengthens the case, especially for AI search visibility.  

Almost half of the brands ranking on Google’s first page are invisible to ChatGPT for the same queries. That gap has a structural cause and a familiar fix. Backlinks and referring domains have been measurable evidence of integration paying off for two decades. AI citations are the new layer, sitting alongside the long-running link signals as evidence the work pays. Both functions still work on their own, but they’ve always worked better together. AI search has made the combination matter more. 

Google rankings no longer guarantee AI citations 

EMGI’s SaaS AI Citation Gap Report, published April 2026, analysed 150 SaaS companies across 120 keywords. 44% of brands ranking in Google’s top 10 received zero ChatGPT citations for the same queries. Conversely, 81% of ChatGPT brand mentions came from companies outside Google’s top 10. 

The reason is structural. Google works from an index of pages it has crawled and stored. AI search systems pull sources when a user asks a question, then synthesise an answer from the places they trust. The two systems reward different signal mixes and brands captured in both are those running both functions. 

Your website is still the foundation 

Your website must do its job. If it doesn’t clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and how well you do it, the rest of the visibility stack has less to work with. Owned content is a baseline. AI models retrieve and read what’s there and so it follows that a thin website limits the impact of off-site efforts. 

Where AI citations actually come from 

The sources of AI citations beyond the website will feel familiar to digital PR teams: mentions, backlinks from credible publications, branded search demand and presence in trusted channels.  

Airops’ 2026 State of AI Search found that brands investing in off-site presence are 6.5× more likely to earn AI visibility with around 85% of those mentions living on external domains. 

LinkedIn is worth singling out. SEMrush’s analysis of 325,000 prompts found LinkedIn is now the second most-cited source in AI search behind Reddit, with around 11% of answers referencing a LinkedIn URL. ChatGPT and Google AI Mode pull most LinkedIn citations from individual posts rather than company pages, making employee thought-leadership the lever for B2B brands. We treat that as part of brand footprint anyway and the data confirms it. 

Where the combination outperforms 

The compound effect is critical. Brands that earn a Google ranking alongside an AI citation are 40% more likely to resurface in subsequent AI runs than brands cited only once. A B2B SaaS ranking #1 on Google can be invisible in ChatGPT for the same query if competitors have built more mention volume on review sites and trade press. The ranking still earns the click in traditional search. It just earns less from the AI answer. 

The dual-signal payoff also lifts traditional performance. Seer Interactive’s analysis of 25.1 million organic impressions across 42 organisations found that brands cited in AI Overviews earned 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than uncited competitors. Earned coverage doesn’t only feed AI search – it tightens performance across the whole search ecosystem. 

We see the engagement signal in our own client data. For a UK housebuilder, ChatGPT referrals delivered 3.80 pages per session between October 2025 and February 2026, ahead of every other traffic source on the site (Bing 3.00, Google 2.77, direct 2.65, Rightmove 2.24, Facebook 1.67). Volume was modest at 230 sessions over five months, but ChatGPT was the clear leader among AI sources, well ahead of Gemini (13 sessions), Copilot (7) and Perplexity (3). These visitors viewed more pages per session, aligning with broader findings about AI-referred intent. 

AI citations are the latest measurable output of the same work that has earned the third-party coverage backlinks depend on. Brands consistently visible across Google and AI search are running them as one programme. 

AI models are getting more selective 

ChatGPT cites only 15% of the pages it retrieves. When GPT-5.3 Instant became the default earlier this year, it cited 20% fewer domains than its predecessor and subsequent updates have continued the trend. Brands that maintain visibility through those changes tend to run a steady earned-media programme. Whether any specific citation today survives the next model is uncertain – the programme that produces the citations is more stable. 

Three pieces of an integrated programme 

For brands already running SEO and PR as one programme, this argument is settled. For everyone else, the obstacles are familiar: separate teams, budgets, and reporting lines. The case for integration is now stronger. 

The work splits into three pieces. 

A shared brief between search and PR teams identifying which third-party publications, review platforms, and forums AI models retrieve from, mapped against the queries where the brand has thin authority.  

Reporting against AI citations alongside press coverage and link metrics, with tools like Profound and Ahrefs Brand Radar. 

Patience to let the curve develop. One B2B SaaS case study showed AI citation rates rising from 8% to 24% over 90 days, generating 47 qualified leads and $64,000 in closed revenue. The pattern resembles early-stage SEO. 

This isn’t about rebuilding marketing around AI search. AI search is still a small share of total traffic for most brands. The real value is that the same work improves both AI and traditional search performance, positioning brands ahead of future shifts.  

What this changes in the planning brief 

The argument for integrating SEO and PR isn’t new and the evidence isn’t either. What’s new is the type of evidence. AI citations have joined the long list of signals that earned coverage produces. For integrated teams, the data validates the model. For everyone else, it makes the business case for integration harder to ignore.  

We’ve all seen it. Brands invest heavily in experiential, get a single social post out of it and then it disappears.

No pickup. No sharing. No second life.

That’s not a budget problem, it’s a thinking problem as the idea was never designed to travel beyond that moment.

If your concept only works in real life, it was never built to go anywhere. The best campaigns aren’t just experienced, they’re designed to catch on and spread.

A stunt is a moment. Social makes it scale.

Working with Aldi Scotland, we develop creative ideas to travel, rather than just land.

A stunt might reach a few hundred people in the flesh, but amplification on social turns that into thousands, sometimes millions, but only if the premise translates.

Taps Aff and AL-Date worked because they were instantly clear. You got them in a second.

Taps Aff started as an April Fools’ product then became something people could actually get their hands on through influencer packs.

AL-Date moved from hijacking Hinge with voice notes into a microsite, in-store vox pops and a stream of content.

If you need to explain it, it won’t take hold and carry.

The post matters more than the moment

When it comes to landing ideas, it’ not about how it looks in person, it’s how it registers  on a screen.

What’s the hero frame?
Does it make sense instantly?
Would you stop scrolling?

If it doesn’t work as a post, it doesn’t work – full stop.

Most people won’t see your activation. They’ll see a single image on their phone, which means you’ve designed for the feed, not to increase footfall.

Keep it simple. Make it read fast.

Build the headline in from the start

If you want PR, build the story in.

The best ideas come with their own headline:

Aldi launches a dating service for Scots
Scotland’s own canned tap water

If a journalist has to figure it out, you’ve already lost them.

One idea, multiple outputs

With Aldi, every idea is built to connect and stretch.

If it can’t break through , it’s not strong enough yet

.

One idea should flex across:

Social
Motion
Press
Influencers
Interactive

Taps Aff and AL-Date became full content ecosystems.

If you’ve only got one asset in your playbook, it’s under delivery.

Our AR filters for Aldi at the Royal Highland Show turned a physical activation into something people could use and share long after the event.

The difference between a stunt and a story

A stunt happens once; a story keeps moving.

A stunt is an act; a story resonates and people pass on.

The value of experiential isn’t the moment, it’s what happens after.

So instead of asking “how do we make this big?”, ask: “Would anyone share this if they weren’t there?”

If the answer’s no, it’s not a story – it’s a one-off.