Event Recaps
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How State Farm Lets Culture Carry the Brand
Event Recaps July 9, 2026State Farm's head of marketing reveals how a century-old insurer is letting creators, gamers, and entertainment communities reinterpret its brand. The strategy may redefine how legacy brands balance stewardship with cultural relevance.
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How Leading Companies Are Orchestrating Buyer Groups in an Age of Complexity
Event Recaps July 8, 2026At the 2026 ANA Masters of B2B Marketing Conference, Nalina Athyantha of ServiceNow and Emily Hean of Pretzl introduced the Buyer Group Index, a new benchmark based on global research. The session explored how leading organizations orchestrate buying groups, align sales and marketing, and use data and AI to improve pipeline velocity, conversion, and revenue growth.
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How AstraZeneca Turned Scope Data into Strategy
Event Recaps July 2, 2026AstraZeneca manages more than 1,000 scopes of work annually and is using aggregated scope data to shift procurement from cost control to investment strategy. The approach could reshape how marketers and agencies collaborate on staffing, pricing, and asset decisions.
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How General Mills Rebuilt MarTech Procurement
Event Recaps July 2, 2026General Mills is rebuilding its marketing technology procurement model around governance and capability — not cost-cutting. The approach may offer a replicable framework for marketers navigating fragmented vendor portfolios and constrained budgets.
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From MarTech Chaos to B2B Growth Engine
Event Recaps July 1, 2026John Hardy of the ANA and Robert Tas of McKinsey & Company introduced a new B2B marketing technology (martech) playbook built on global CMO research. They outlined how leading organizations align marketing and sales, integrate martech systems, and use data and AI to orchestrate account-based journeys that drive pipeline and revenue growth.
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Reed Smith Warns Brands to Treat Legal Risk as a Growth Variable
Event Recaps June 30, 2026Legal exposure is quietly eroding marketing value as contracts, privacy terms, and artificial intelligence governance fail to keep pace with modern practice. Reed Smith partner Keri S. Bruce, speaking at the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference, outlines the risks that could reshape how brands manage agency relationships and campaign accountability.
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ServiceNow Built an AI-Native Studio to Consolidate Creative Production
Event Recaps June 26, 2026ServiceNow restructured its entire creative production model around a centralized, artificial intelligence (AI)-native studio after an internal audit revealed thousands of underperforming assets. The shift could deliver 15 percent savings from consolidation alone — with 30 percent more in first-year AI efficiencies on top.
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A Legacy Brand, Reimagined for the Member: An In-House Team's Journey
Event Recaps June 25, 2026A 93-year-old health insurer confronts uncomfortable truths to rebuild its brand around the individual member. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina approach to accessibility, skepticism, and in-house partnership may reshape how legacy brands modernize.
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An ANA In-House Award Winner Explains How Culture Is What Drives Stellar Creative
Event Recaps June 25, 2026Bruce Bildsten, who led Best Buy's in-house agency to ANA In-House Agency of the Year honors, argues that culture — not tools or process — drives breakthrough creative work. His framework for recruiting talent, protecting craft, and building inspiration rituals may reshape how in-house leaders think about their role.
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Building Creative Culture From Nothing — and What Happens When the Plug Gets Pulled
Event Recaps June 25, 2026At the 2026 ANA In-House Agency Conference, Todd Miller shared a candid account of building The Cooler, Experian's in-house agency, from scratch into a high-performing creative operation — and what happened when it ultimately got shut down. His session offered practical lessons on culture, creativity, business integration, and the realities of operating inside complex organizations.
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Built for Breakthroughs: How In-House Media Brings Pfizer Closer to the Patient
Event Recaps June 25, 2026At the 2026 ANA In-House Agency Conference, Joshua Palau, VP of performance media and enablement at Pfizer, outlined how an in-house media model enables faster decision-making, stronger alignment with business goals, and improved outcomes across the patient journey.
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How Taylor Morrison's CMO Revived the Brand by Bringing Everything In-House
Event Recaps June 25, 2026Taylor Morrison CMO Stephanie McCarty turned a two-person marketing team into a full in-house agency over seven years. Her approach may redefine how home builders and marketers of all kinds think about brand as a business asset.
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How Wolverine Worldwide Built a Scalable In-House Engine
Event Recaps June 25, 2026The Wolverine Worldwide in-house creative and production model now handles about 90 percent of campaign work across 11 footwear and apparel brands. The integrated structure — combining strategy, studio space, and embedded talent — could redefine how brand teams measure creative capacity.
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Inside Lenovo's Shift from Cost Savings to Strategic Power
Event Recaps June 25, 2026Quinn O'Brien, CMO of Carnegie Learning, argues that in-house agencies built around cost savings may be losing ground to artificial intelligence (AI). His Lenovo experience shows how pursuing the work that matters most to the CEO could redefine an in-house team's value.
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Keeping the Brand-Agency Spark Alive: Whirlpool's In-House Story
Event Recaps June 25, 2026Whirlpool's in-house studio, WoW Studios, is rewriting how internal creative teams earn bold mandates — from immersive trade show environments to a Big Boi sweepstakes that drove measurable market share gains. The studio's "anti-manual" approach may signal a broader shift in what proximity to a brand could make possible.
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The End of Mediocrity at Scale: Making Marketing Feel Human Again
Event Recaps June 25, 2026At the 2026 ANA Masters of Data Conference presented by TikTok, Dean de la Pena of Resonate explained why marketing has become less effective — and less human. De la Pena outlined how predictive, person-level intelligence can restore understanding and enable more relevant, measurable growth.
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The Futureproof Project: AI Is a Friend, Not a Foe, to in-House Agencies
Event Recaps June 25, 2026At the 2026 ANA In-House Agency Conference, Lauren Evans and Adam Kleinberg of Traction shared how in-house teams can turn AI into a strategic advantage. Drawing from insights from the Futureproof Project community, they explained how to integrate AI into operations, redesign organizational structures, and build scalable systems that enhance both efficiency and creative output.
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A Former Creative VP for Disney Shares Her Tips for Turning Efficient Processes into Engines for Stellar Creative
Event Recaps June 24, 2026Disney and Lionsgate veteran Jessica Klein argues that smarter systems — not fewer constraints — may unlock better creative work. Her framework for workflow visibility and intake design could reshape how in-house teams approach capacity and output.
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From Cost Center to Value Creator: Scaling a Modern In-House Agency
Event Recaps June 24, 2026At the 2026 ANA In-House Agency Conference, Jared Martin, VP of creative and video at Fiserv, shared a practical framework for transforming in-house creative teams into value-driving organizations. By leading like entrepreneurs, measuring cost avoidance, and scaling through cross-training, internal agencies can shift from order-takers to strategic business partners.
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How Target Turns Customer Signals into Personalization at Scale
Event Recaps June 24, 2026At the 2026 ANA Masters of Data Conference, Target's Samantha Schumacher shared how the company uses first-party data, machine learning, and generative AI (gen AI) to operationalize personalization across marketing touchpoints while designing for speed, scale, and privacy.
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