Programme

The tools have never been better. Media monitoring, social listening, competitive analysis, sentiment data from every direction. AI now promises to deliver the insight layer too, faster and cheaper than ever before.

And yet campaigns still miss. Strategies get built on what leadership assumes rather than what audiences actually think. The problem is rarely a lack of information. It is the gap between tracking a conversation and understanding the people having it. Between seeing the data and being willing to act on what it is actually telling you. When AI becomes the researcher, the brief, the analyst and the strategist, that gap widens. And the strategies that come out the other end reflect the noise, not the signal.

This session, hosted by FINN Partners' Global Intelligence Lab, brings together three practitioners who live inside that gap: Gabriela Weiss Clarke, Head of Communications at the PRCA; Inma Quirante, Corporate Communications and PR Senior Manager at Palladium Hotel Group; and Jacob Howard, founder of Financial Marketing Insights and former Deutsche Bank Global Investment Bank Marketing lead.

Moderated by Thomas Morris, co-lead of FINN Partners' Global Intelligence Lab, the discussion will get into the questions that do not always get asked. Is the industry using research to find answers or to avoid them. What happens when the intelligence tells you something leadership does not want to hear. And if every agency and every brand is looking at the same data through the same tools, what is actually left to differentiate on.

Jo Burford, Edelman’s EMEA Head of Creator Marketing, joins Nathalia Amadeu, Global Brand Director for Vaseline, to discuss how The Nipple Sponsorship  transformed an authentic running community hack into a brand idea built to travel.

Through the lens of the London Marathon partnership, the session will explore what it takes for brands to credibly tap into cultural moments: detecting the right community signals, partnering with creators in ways that feel earned, and connecting PR, social, and creator activity so each strengthens the other. It will be a practical look at how earned-led thinking can drive relevance in an algorithm-shaped media environment, where audiences discover, share, and validate ideas in increasingly non-linear ways.

Senior creative figures from some of our Innovation SABRE-winning agencies will join Paul Holmes to discuss how firms can build a culture that encourages and rewards creativity and delivers award-worthy work on a consistent basis.