The Subthread

Uncut with Emily Ricard, CEO of Buck Sitting down this week with editor‑in‑chief Alex Zeevalkink is Emily Rickard, CEO of global creative company Buck. In Uncut, Emily reveals how Buck has won over some of the biggest brands in Silicon Valley, how her team is constantly learning, and why she will always make space for new talent. Jul 8, 2026

Sitting in Canva’s cabana in Cannes, Rory Dolan, head of marketing strategy at the design platform lays out a vision of marketing that’s equal parts rigor and risk. Rory’s read is that macro-economics and culture inside organizations have made it so the edges of modern advertising have become sanded down. “Businesses are under more pressure than ever to deliver within‑year outcomes,” Rory says.

The attention economy is fading. The next wave of brand building is about presence, mythology, and lore you can’t catch up on secondhand, writes Emma Runevad. For more than a decade, marketing operated on a single premise: attention is the most valuable resource in culture. Brands earn it, hold it and optimise for it. That premise is now breaking down. Register Here Already have an account? Sign in

For much of the AI boom, tech leaders have touted that the promise of AI would be efficiency and lower costs. Emily He thinks that's the wrong conversation. The chief marketing officer at Gong believes the AI industry has become obsessed with efficiency and job cuts, when the real opportunity is using artificial intelligence to grow revenue. "AI is equated with killing jobs," she tells The Subthread.

For Saffron Inkster, global master brand director at Dirt Is Good, successful sports partnerships are built on more than reach and visibility. "The most important thing is shared values and a shared sense of mission of where we want to go and what we want to achieve," she says in a recent episode of The Partnership Game. That philosophy has underpinned Dirt Is Good's partnership with Arsenal.

For much of the AI boom, tech leaders have touted that the promise of AI would be efficiency and lower costs. Emily He thinks that's the wrong conversation. The chief marketing officer at Gong believes the AI industry has become obsessed with efficiency and job cuts, when the real opportunity is using artificial intelligence to grow revenue. "AI is equated with killing jobs," she tells The Subthread.

Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube In this episode, Lynsey talks through Carlsberg's relationship with Liverpool – now over thirty years old and, by her account, the longest-running in the Premier League – and how that long-term trust gave the brand room to build Signs of Unity, a campaign that taught sign language to thousands of fans at Anfield so deaf and hard-of-hearing supporters could be part of You'll Never Walk Alone for the first time.

Audiences encounter brands through increasingly scattered moments: a social ad, a product notification, a customer service interaction, an app interface, a retail environment, a search result. On their own, none of these moments looks especially significant. But together, they define what people think a brand is. But the fragmentation makes it harder to truly capture attention and build the consistency needed to be remembered.

Kenny Annan-Jonathan was the first – and remains the only – creative director in the Premier League. He is also the founder of a talent management and creative agency and serves as sports director at Cannes Lions. Despite those credentials, Kenny would not describe himself as a sports marketer. “I work in sports, but if I’m honest, sports is a vehicle that I use to tell stories through. I’m a creative first,” he says.

There is a question that does not get asked enough in conversations about artificial intelligence and the future of advertising. It is not about which jobs will disappear, or how fast creative production will be automated, or whether agencies are ready for what is coming. It is a simpler question, and a more awkward one. Why hasn’t anyone built the tool?