MediaCat UK Podcast

'Technology is going to make the open web as efficient as the walled gardens, but still allow it to keep its independence.' Stephanie Himoff is bullish on the future of the open web. As EVP for publishers at Teads, it's practically in her job description. But in this episode of the MediaCat podcast, Himoff talks about why she thinks the immediate future of the open web has promise, from new technologies that will rid the medium of its 'complexity tax' to the return of the 'human premium'.

A substantial proportion of the advertising that people see and heard now does not come from the ad industry but from other sources — sources that don't care much whether the content is legal, decent, truthful or honest. The markets, and the platforms that host a lot of the scam ads, won't fix this problem by themselves, argues media agency veteran Nick Manning. Only legislative intervention can do that. It might be time for the ad industry to embrace the idea of being more heavily regulated.

In this episode of the MediaCat UK podcast, editor James Swift talks content marketing with Carlotta Rossi Spencer, head of branded entertainment business development at Banijay. Banijay is the world's largest independent production company (and it might be about to get even bigger), with titles including MasterChef and Peaky Blinders in its library. As media commentators predict that more brands would pivot to become content creators in their own right in 2026, Spencer talks about the costs and rewards involved in making branded entertainment, and why there’s more of it around than you may think.

Craft Media London doesn't buy or make ads. The agency provides clients with comms strategy, filling the hole that exists between media and creative agencies, but nothing else. Given the agency's neutral position, we thought it'd be fun to ask Craft's co-founders, Sally Weavers and Jenny Jones, to weigh in on a bunch of the biggest media debates of the year. And we were right — it was a lot of fun. In this episode of the MediaCat UK podcast, Weavers and Jones give 2025 a score out of 10 and discuss fragmentation, AI and influencers, as well as full-jaw replacements and Angel Delight. NB: We had some issues with the sound recording on this podcast: the volume sometimes drop, and it sounds like the guests were recording from a broom cupboard. We were, however, in the same room.

The state of social media depends very much on the perspective you take. Financially speaking, it's in rude health. WARC predicts that brands will spend $300bn on the channel in 2026, which would represent something like a quarter of global advertising expenditure. It's no less prevalent than it was, either. According to Ofcom, 60% of news consumption now takes place on 'online intermediaries', which includes social media platforms, as well as online news aggregators. And yet... A great many people who post or lurk on social media would argue that it's passed it's peak. There's no longer one platform that sets the agenda in the same way that Twitter did in the years before Elon Musk acquired it, for example. And public feeds have increasingly become colonised with video content from professional (or aspiring) creators. There isn't much data to quantify that social media has become less social, but in 2023, Instagram's Adam Mosseri seemed to confirm in an interview, when he said: ‘Your friends don’t post that much to feed’. Against this backdrop, we chatted with Beth Thomas and Michael Corcoran, a former campaign operations manager at TikTok and the head of social at Ryanair, respectively, who have co-founded a new consultancy called Slice Social. Listen to find out whether 'enshittification' has irreparably worsened social media, how marketers can make the channel pay, and which brands Thomas and Corcoran are doing it right (and neither of them say Duolingo, which makes a nice change).

Nick Manning has got principal-based media buying in his sights. The former media agency co-founder — who has begun a movement to help the industry ‘get its mojo back’ — has published a paper on the money-making practice, called A World of Pain. Principal-based media buying is sometimes presented as a win-win-win situation for everyone involved: agencies get extra income, advertisers get cheaper media, and media owners don’t have to hustle so hard to sell their inventory. But that’s not Manning’s view. In this 45-minute podcast, Manning talks to MediaCat UK's editor, James Swift, about why he thinks, in the long-run, everyone loses out when agencies become re-sellers of media. Main image by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

For this podcast MediaCat's Opinions Editor, Mike Piggott, spoke to Dan Calladine, head of media futures at dentsu, and Grace Letley, head of strategy UK at iProspect, about dentsu's new report, The Year of Impact: 2025 Media Trends. They went through the report, section by section, discussing the rapid evolution of the media landscape and how they now believe the industry to be moving into the algorithmic era of things. The discussion touches on AI-powered media solutions, micro-moments and forging stronger connections with customers, niche communities, CTV and live sport, media publishers boosting shopper capabilities, and localisation and personalisation issues for global brands. We hope you find this podcast insightful. The report In its fifteenth year, dentsu’s latest media trends report delves into the trends that are shaping today’s media landscape. It details how 2025 will drive towards a fully addressable, shoppable, and accountable media ecosystem, marking a shift into what is being defined as the 'Algorithmic Era of Media.' The report explores the ten trends that will shape this era — including the tangible value of generative AI, the new territories for storytelling, and the quest for quality across the media value chain — and how brands can harness them to drive tangible impact and growth.

For this podcast MediaCat's Opinions Editor, Mike Piggott, spoke to Tom Gent, founder and Head of Creative at award-winning content agency, Founder Creative. With a career spanning two decades in the media and entertainment industries, Tom has done a lot. He’s worked for the BBC on a plethora of sports content, produced Top Gear for a year, directed a film for UEFA, and worked as Global Creative Director for video games publisher, Electronic Arts. He now has clients on his roster, including McLaren, EA, Mercedes and mobile gaming studio, Supercell. Mike spoke to Tom about the early days working for MTV on Pimp My Ride UK, getting into creative producing with his work on sport for the BBC, and winning BAFTAs for work on the Summer Olympics and Formula One. They also discussed how, during his time at EA, he managed to work with legendary composer Hans Zimmer on video game FIFA, blending the virtual and physical worlds, working with football stars like Ronaldo. Tom also talks about how music is fundamental, in terms of creating compelling video content, evoking emotion, and linking narrative. He reflects on what's changed with the media and entertainment industries over the last twenty years, and how this has impacted briefs from clients in terms of formats of content and delivering video content across multiple platforms, as well as proving effectiveness of content in terms of client briefs. Finally, they end by discussing Tom's time working on Top Of The Pops and Top Gear — and how the focus for his agency going forward is on gaming and sport clients; which is where Tom expects growth, and believes this is where the industry is ultimately going. We hope you enjoy this podcast.

For this podcast our Editor Mike Piggott spoke to Bob Sheard, co-founder of brand design agency FreshBritain. They discussed how Bob got into brand design, and how he was quite possibly the first man in Yorkshire to own a certain pair of adidas trainers. They talk about how he got into buying and selling denim, and how he was once brought on board to 'unfuck Levi's'... in the words of the client. The discussion then moved onto how Bob loves the 'elegant decay of denim' and the preloved fashion market, and how imperfection in products are actually a good thing. They discussed how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are becoming more defined by what they do rather than what they own, and how Bob is working with Central St Martins to create pathways for more creatives to work their way up to the boardroom. They talk about brand design being on the cusp of massive change, how brands need to shift from making things to selling intelligence, experience and knowledge. And finally Bob shares how he once told Noel Gallagher he couldn't have a free pair of trainers.

In this podcast MediaCat's Opinions Editor Mike Piggott spoke to Simon Akers (founder and partner at Archmon) and Jaz Poke (Business Development Director EMEA at Omnicom Media Group), co-founders of new industry initiative, Neurodiversity in Media (NDIM). They discussed how the initiative got started and why there is a need for it in the industry, NDIM's Manifesto and what change and action they'd like to see from industry leaders, and how there is simultaneously both more understanding of neurodiversity in the industry right now, but also still a lot of neurodiverse ignorance to overcome. If you work in the industry and would like to get involved and understand ways you can get your agency or brand involved, see Simon's post here, or head to their Substack and subscribe. Featured image: Hiki app / Unsplash

In this podcast MediaCat's Content and Social Media Editor, Svilena Keane, speaks to the founder of The Empowered Author and Meet The Booktokers, Samantha Missingham. They discuss the evolution of book marketing and the idea behind the newly-launched platform, Meet The BookTokers. This interview has been shortened for clarity and length. Hi, Sam. Please introduce yourself to our readers My name is Sam Missingham, and I'm the founder of a new community called Meet The BookTokers. I also have another community called the Empowered Author. My background has always been in marketing in magazines and then marketing in books. So, I started working in business to business and consumer magazines, on magazines such as Marketing Week and Design Week. I also worked on consumer magazines about cars, weddings, photography, gardening and all kinds of things. But I guess they all have something in common; which is actually about building a community around content as the number one thing. And then secondly, trying to convince that community to spend some money on your content in a number of different ways. How have you seen book marketing evolve over the last two decades? Book publishing is one of those industries that has had a healthy and robust book selling. We've had physical bookshops, we've had some chains, and we've also had independent booksellers who've always done really well. The digital transformation of the book industry, which started in about 2009, gave tons of opportunities but also some huge risks that book publishers had to get to grips with. When Amazon came along and successfully implemented its ebook platform, that was the starting point. They started with print books, but once they went into digital, publishers feared that the whole industry would go from a physical to a digital-only world. We then also had Apple coming into the market with their iPhones and their iPads, which opened up a whole potential of apps, and book publishers thought everybody was going to read book apps or ebooks. At the time, some of the deals going on for ebooks were for just 20p. That is not a great model for a book publisher. Book publishers have one revenue stream, which is the money from selling their books. So if suddenly your books have no value, it's not a great outlook for you when you start putting that into the future. So, publishers panicked and tried lots of things that failed. They're not good at innovation on many levels, while Amazon was busily innovating and doing incredible things for books. The marketing that happened for books was actually about marketing to booksellers. So that would be a whole strategy of how to communicate to the likes of Waterstones or your independent booksellers to sell as many books as possible. The difference between a bookshop and any online retailer is that a bookshop has a finite number of books. Now, if I put this into context, on Thursday (10 October) we had what is called Super Thursday in the industry, which is when the most and the biggest books are published because it's the run-up to Christmas. On that day, 1,900 new books were published. But what do you think about trying to get 1,900 new books into a bookshop? You have to think they are only going to stock the books that they think are going to do the best. What would you say we're seeing today? I used to work at Harper Collins, so I'm using them as an example. Harper Collins will have a number of different imprints. In those imprints they have a marketing person or a team, not very many people at all, and most of the marketing happens for a publication date. But the marketing stops at or close to publication. So you will have quite a lot of energy put into your book, it will get to publication day, and then it will tail off really quickly. But of course, if you've never read a book then it's a new book to you, and that's always true. So if you have never read an Agatha Christie book and you read it for the first time, it's new...

On this week's episode, MediaCat's Head of Content and Partnerships Selin Ozkan and Content and Social Media Editor Svilena Keane take over the MediaCat Magazine Podcast to discuss Future of Media, Adwanted's annual conference looking into the future of commercial media. Selin and Svilena give an overview of the event, identify the trends from the talks and dig deeper into specific sessions.

In the latest MediaCat Magazine podcast our Editor Mike Piggott chats to the Global Head of Research & Insights at We Are Social, Paul Greenwood, about their latest report, Next Gen Influence — trends defining a new era of brand and creator collaboration. They discuss each section in detail, from 'relatable realism' to 'extreme influence'. They talk about cosiness, redemption arcs for creators, and creators moving through different stages of their lives, culture becoming flat and brands being weird and subversive to cut through. They also briefly touch on why Mike hasn't watched Geordie Shore (and why Paul thinks he's missing out). So listen out for that. This pod is forty minutes long, and filled with wisdom and insight from Paul. We hope you enjoy. More about the report A parent explaining the health benefits of ketamine. A Manhattanite it-girl, swapping ‘NYC’s best cocktail bars’ for Connecticut's best horse riding spots. A puppet show in which children’s dolls are sent to rehab for stealing a Marc Jacobs bag. One glance at the content made by today’s creators, and we see a culture in flux. Everything from tone, to topics, to production norms have changed in the decade since influence’s infancy. In the context of dramatic industry growth, creators and brands are having to keep pace with an increasingly professionalised landscape. But it’s not just the scale of the creator economy that’s changing — the wider tectonic plates of culture are shifting, and the values of creator culture along with it. As the world’s leading socially-led creative agency, that’s been working with influencers since 2008, We Are Social has helped brands navigate the growth of the creator economy for the last 16 years — from its baby steps to its present existential teen-hood. To understand what’s coming next, it’s essential for brands and creators to have one eye trained on the next gen of influence. We’ve uncovered five trends illustrating what that next generation will look like.

In the latest MediaCat Magazine podcast our Editor Mike Piggott chats to the Global Head of Research & Insights at We Are Social, Paul Greenwood, about their latest report, Next Gen Influence — trends defining a new era of brand and creator collaboration. They discuss each section in detail, from 'relatable realism' to 'extreme influence'. They talk about cosiness, redemption arcs for creators, and creators moving through different stages of their lives, culture becoming flat and brands being weird and subversive to cut through. They also briefly touch on why Mike hasn't watched Geordie Shore (and why Paul thinks he's missing out). So listen out for that. This pod is forty minutes long, and filled with wisdom and insight from Paul. We hope you enjoy. More about the report A parent explaining the health benefits of ketamine. A Manhattanite it-girl, swapping ‘NYC’s best cocktail bars’ for Connecticut's best horse riding spots. A puppet show in which children’s dolls are sent to rehab for stealing a Marc Jacobs bag. One glance at the content made by today’s creators, and we see a culture in flux. Everything from tone, to topics, to production norms have changed in the decade since influence’s infancy. In the context of dramatic industry growth, creators and brands are having to keep pace with an increasingly professionalised landscape. But it’s not just the scale of the creator economy that’s changing — the wider tectonic plates of culture are shifting, and the values of creator culture along with it. As the world’s leading socially-led creative agency, that’s been working with influencers since 2008, We Are Social has helped brands navigate the growth of the creator economy for the last 16 years — from its baby steps to its present existential teen-hood. To understand what’s coming next, it’s essential for brands and creators to have one eye trained on the next gen of influence. We’ve uncovered five trends illustrating what that next generation will look like.

For the latest MediaCat Magazine podcast our editor, Mike Piggott, spoke to Grace Francis, Jamie Mancini and Katy Collins — co-founders of new independent creative studio, Wonderful Things. The theme of this pod mirrored the magazine's August theme of 'Doing Things Differently', where Grace, Jamie and Katie discussed why they started the agency in the first place, looking to be more nimble, and how clients are increasingly more open to working with smaller businesses these days, not just traditional agencies. They discussed creating meaningful work, with Grace saying they want to 'say yes to work that can exist and lasts longer than a heartbeat'. And that it's about 'choosing consciously to put things into the world that have value'. Jamie talked about what he defines as meaningful work, creating things that potentially resonate with a small group of people you are trying to speak to. And Katie added that meaning can also mean work (and clients) that mean something to her personally. The conversation then moved on to longevity, and the challenge of creating work that lasts. Grace told a story of their 17-year-old self remembering a campaign from water brand Evian, that really stuck with them. 'I want to make stuff that makes the 17-year-old say, I can do that too', Grace said. They discussed which brands and groups they'd love to work with (including Grace and Jamie trying to pitch an idea that would have had them meet hip-hop group, the Beastie Boys), Jamie's lemon spritz brand and his desire to make a short film, and Katie's love of sports and wanting to work with any dog brand possible. The conversation then turned to the current state of the marketing industry, with Grace saying the industry is going through seismic change, but 'it's essential that commercial creativity gets to exist'. This podcast is around thirty minutes long, and packed full of wisdom. We hope you enjoy.

For this podcast we had a guest host, regular contributor to the magazine, author and co-founder of Genius Steals, Faris Yakob, take control. His guest was VP of Creative at Liquid Death, Andy Pearson. They discuss Liquid Death's creative process and how not getting bogged down in details helps creatively, as long as everyone agrees that what they're doing is a good idea and can be brought to life. Andy talks about how the creative process often lasts all the way into the edit room, and how it's important to allow every piece of that process to develop in real time — to get the best creative product. Faris questioned Andy on the writing process, with Andy saying how he sees parallels with sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). Andy then mentioned the mutually beneficial relationship they have with celebrities like Tony Hawk (in one stunt they put Tony's blood into limited edition skateboards), and how Liquid Death products made their way onto TV show productions and movie sets — meaning it was less of an uphill battle to work with actors, for example, as many knew the brand well from the get-go. The conversation then moved onto their punishing production schedule and managing creative energy, with Andy saying 'ensure the creative process feels easy and fun — don't make it hard on yourselves. Don't red line all the time — find ways to sit under that.' Faris asked Andy about how Liquid Death see themselves as a brand or business, to which Andy spoke about how a lot of what they do feels like an 'elaborate art piece', where they really make the things they put out there as products — like their collaboration with snowboard brand Burton, where they made 'Deathtrap', a snowboard so extreme you would literally die if you rode it (as their lawyers were keen to point out). The boards cost a few hundred dollars and sold out within 25 minutes of going on sale. They also talked about their collaboration with disruptive golf apparel brand Bad Birdie, where they created the 'Uro club', a hollow golf club which you could use to relieve yourself on the golf course if you got caught short — obviously from drinking too much Liquid Death. Again, this club, at the time of writing, is available to purchase, but has also sold out. He also talked about working with The Deep (a character played by Chace Crawford on satirical superhero TV show, The Boys) and how when creating scripts it was important that they took the world of The Boys seriously — that Liquid Death exists there, as much as The Deep exist in ours. 'One of the things we try and do is toe the line between "Is this thing real or not?" and "Oh my god, it is real"', Andy said. 'We're just a humour brand at our core', he added, and 'we cut counter to culture and marketing — ultimately we want to be an entertainment company'. Speaking further about entertainment, Andy then touched on The Adventures of Murder Man, an animation show they're creating with Liquid Death's mascot as its main character. He was keen to point out that this wasn't to be an advert, but a proper show that they were keen would be picked up. Editor's note: this podcast is 46 minutes long and, as you can probably tell from this piece, packed full of interesting discussion about Liquid Death's creative process. We do hope you enjoy it. And huge thanks to our podcast guest host, Faris Yakob.

For this podcast we had a guest host, regular contributor to the magazine, author and co-founder of Genius Steals, Faris Yakob, take control. His guest was VP of Creative at Liquid Death, Andy Pearson. They discuss Liquid Death's creative process and how not getting bogged down in details helps creatively, as long as everyone agrees that what they're doing is a good idea and can be brought to life. Andy talks about how the creative process often lasts all the way into the edit room, and how it's important to allow every piece of that process to develop in real time — to get the best creative product. Faris questioned Andy on the writing process, with Andy saying how he sees parallels with sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). Andy then mentioned the mutually beneficial relationship they have with celebrities like Tony Hawk (in one stunt they put Tony's blood into limited edition skateboards), and how Liquid Death products made their way onto TV show productions and movie sets — meaning it was less of an uphill battle to work with actors, for example, as many knew the brand well from the get-go. The conversation then moved onto their punishing production schedule and managing creative energy, with Andy saying 'ensure the creative process feels easy and fun — don't make it hard on yourselves. Don't red line all the time — find ways to sit under that.' Faris asked Andy about how Liquid Death see themselves as a brand or business, to which Andy spoke about how a lot of what they do feels like an 'elaborate art piece', where they really make the things they put out there as products — like their collaboration with snowboard brand Burton, where they made 'Deathtrap', a snowboard so extreme you would literally die if you rode it (as their lawyers were keen to point out). The boards cost a few hundred dollars and sold out within 25 minutes of going on sale. They also talked about their collaboration with disruptive golf apparel brand Bad Birdie, where they created the 'Uro club', a hollow golf club which you could use to relieve yourself on the golf course if you got caught short — obviously from drinking too much Liquid Death. Again, this club, at the time of writing, is available to purchase, but has also sold out. He also talked about working with The Deep (a character played by Chace Crawford on satirical superhero TV show, The Boys) and how when creating scripts it was important that they took the world of The Boys seriously — that Liquid Death exists there, as much as The Deep exist in ours. 'One of the things we try and do is toe the line between "Is this thing real or not?" and "Oh my god, it is real"', Andy said. 'We're just a humour brand at our core', he added, and 'we cut counter to culture and marketing — ultimately we want to be an entertainment company'. Speaking further about entertainment, Andy then touched on The Adventures of Murder Man, an animation show they're creating with Liquid Death's mascot as its main character. He was keen to point out that this wasn't to be an advert, but a proper show that they were keen would be picked up. Editor's note: this podcast is 46 minutes long and, as you can probably tell from this piece, packed full of interesting discussion about Liquid Death's creative process. We do hope you enjoy it. And huge thanks to our podcast guest host, Faris Yakob.

In this pod our Editor Mike Piggott chats to regular MediaCat Magazine contributor, Emily Fairhead-keen, Senior Strategy Partner at Wavemaker who, in her career, has also worked at MediaCom, Vizeum and Starcom MediaVest. They talk about an award-winning paper Emily wrote in 2015 (and subsequent MediaCat article), where she made the argument that brands need to be more superhuman and godlike. They also discuss brands and showmanship, fairies and superman, oversharing and mystery, how it's OK for brands not to jump on trends, and how Jeremy Bullmore once offered her a cup of tea. Featured image: Roy Reyna / Pexels

In this pod our Editor Mike Piggott chats to regular MediaCat Magazine contributor, Emily Fairhead-keen, Senior Strategy Partner at Wavemaker who, in her career, has also worked at MediaCom, Vizeum and Starcom MediaVest. They talk about an award-winning paper Emily wrote in 2015 (and subsequent MediaCat article), where she made the argument that brands need to be more superhuman and godlike. They also discuss brands and showmanship, fairies and superman, oversharing and mystery, how it's OK for brands not to jump on trends, and how Jeremy Bullmore once offered her a cup of tea. Featured image: Roy Reyna / Pexels

Why copywriters and creatives need to go premium in the age of AI AI makes things easier. It does the grunt work quicker. It’s a machine. This isn’t speculation, it’s just the way it is. It means copywriters need to focus on what makes them unique, what makes them employable beyond the grunt work. This is something direct-response copywriter and The Fix co-founder, Nick O’Connor, talks about with Glenn Fisher in this fascinating discussion. This is the fourth in a series of episodes we are running in partnership with Fix Fest 2, a festival dedicated to copywriting, marketing and creativity. This year, the event’s theme is ‘AI or Die’, and as well as Nick, a whole host of industry experts will be speaking on the day. It takes place on 3 July. In London. We’ll be there, along with copywriters and marketers from all over the world. You can find out how to join us here, and find out more about the event by listening to the first episode of the series with Fix Fest’s creator, Glenn Fisher. Featured image: Darina Belonogova / Pexels