We’ve all seen those dreamy influencer videos. Sun-drenched cafes in Milan. Cool, crisp mornings on Lake Geneva. Cobblestone strolls through Krakow. That’s the promise Flynas wanted to sell with three new summer destinations. Except there was one small problem. They had no way to get there. Visas for influencers? Too late to process. Permits to film in the cities? Impossible. Pre-production meetings? Out of the question. In Saudi Arabia, where trust is paramount in influencer marketing, this wasn't just an inconvenience. It was a deal-breaker. Because here’s the truth: audiences need to believe the dream.

Sir Martin Sorrell took the Debussy Theatre stage at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025 with a clear message: AI will impact marketing so deeply, it’s too important to outsource. In this panel, hosted by S4 Capital and joined by Linda Sheng (MiniMax) and Tanzeen Syed (General Atlantic), the discussion revolved around rethinking how brands approach creativity, production, and media in the age of AI. The star of the session? Monks.Flow Built over the last 18 months by .Monks this is more than a tool. It’s an end-to-end AI Marketing Orchestration Platform.

There’s a moment in the paper where Claude 3.7 Thinking is solving a puzzle, finds the right answer early, then proceeds to waste its time exploring wrong answers for thousands of tokens. That’s not intelligence. That’s corporate overconfidence in disguise. Apple’s new research paper, The Illusion of Thinking, (Thanks Luke for sharing) quietly detonates a bomb in the middle of the AI industry’s favourite narrative: that today’s “thinking” models are a genuine leap towards reasoning. Not performance. Not faster benchmarks. But reasoning. Understanding. Cognitive agility. Turns out, they’re not. Or at least, not yet.

Last week, I flew out of Dubai. The next day, I was at Download Festival 2025 in the UK. Three days of mud, sweat, noise, and standing shoulder to shoulder with 100,000 people under grey skies. One day off. Then I fly straight into Cannes for the Lions Festival of Creativity. My watch says I’ve done an average of 10km and over 15,000 steps daily. I say my legs are still recovering. This isn’t a flex. It’s survival. I’m 40 and I’m not in any healthy or athletic shape in any form.

Download Festival by Live Nation Entertainment UK, Donington Park. June 2025. No fireworks. No fluff. Just Korn. Finally, after 21 years of showing up and showing out, the Bakersfield icons stepped into the spotlight where they always belonged: headlining Download Festival. It wasn’t just deserved. It was overdue. For anyone who’s followed their journey, or caught their last few shows, this wasn’t a surprise. The songs were there. The crowd was always there. But something about 2025 hit different. This wasn’t just a nostalgic booking. It was a crown that had been waiting for them.

A few years ago, Saudi Arabia wasn’t even in the top 50 tourism destinations globally. Today, it ranks in the top 10. At Cannes Lions, Fahd Hamidaddin, CEO of the Saudi Tourism Authority | الهيئة السعودية للسياحة, walked us through how they did it… not through slogans, but with strategy, storytelling and soul. Tourism accounts for 10% of global jobs and GDP. It’s also growing at 6.6% annually. But most of the industry still chases impressions. STA isn’t. They’re building what they call a “media model for memorability.” At Cannes, Fahd showed us how it works and why it matters far beyond tourism.

Tomorrow, SXSW comes to London for the first time ever. And while there are plenty of headline speakers, glitzy panels and big tech announcements, one part of the programme deserves a bigger spotlight: the queer cinema slate. What It Feels Like For A Girl Still. Laura Haddock as Lisa & Ellis Howard as Byron Let me say it simply: I’m excited. I’m proud. And I’m already queueing. From 2 to 7 June, Shoreditch will host the SXSW Screen Festival. This year’s screen programme is diverse, daring, and full of fresh voices, but it’s the queer films that feel especially urgent.

From 2 to 7 June, Shoreditch won't sleep. The inaugural European edition of SXSW is about to take over East London, and the final lineup is out. It includes over 860 speakers, 600 music performances, and 110 screenings. More than a festival, this is the city’s newest collision point of culture, creativity, and global ambition. New additions to the programme include Sophie Turner, Marina Abramović, Regina King, Jimmy Wales, Rankin, and Ed Balls. On the red carpet? Orlando Bloom, Bryce Dallas Howard, Nick Mohammed, Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Munroe Bergdorf.

A few years ago, the idea of being served a glass of wine in Saudi Arabia sounded like fiction. Now, it’s policy. Saudi Arabia plans to lift its alcohol ban at 600 tourist sites by 2026. Let that sink in. Not for homes. Not for shops. Not for public spaces or fan zones. But at controlled, licensed venues: five-star resorts, luxury compounds, and expat bubbles. The goal? To compete with the UAE and Bahrain. To make sure hotel rooms in Neom and the Red Sea Project aren’t sitting empty by the time the 2034 FIFA World Cup rolls around.

A year ago, I defended Jaguar. While the LinkedIn mob queued up with their pitchforks and prewritten LinkedIn outrage, I argued their rebrand wasn’t just bold, it was necessary. Because when nobody’s spoken your name in 30 years unless it’s about how much your sister brand outsells you, you don’t need polish. You need a reinvention. And now? The Telegraph reports Jaguar is reviewing its global creative account, and all eyes are on Accenture Song. As if the agency is to blame for what happens when a brand doesn’t follow through on its own bravery.

Here we are again. A few months ago, I shared a post asking people to stop casually throwing "strategy" into their CVs. You know the type. Two years in the industry, a few decks under their belt, and suddenly "strategist" next to "social media content wizard" and "client servicing expert". Now, it is worse. Not just candidates inflating their titles, but agencies themselves. Especially the smaller ones. Many now genuinely believe account managers can "strategise" on the side. As if strategy is a quick brainstorm or a neatly copied template. As if strategy is something you bolt onto a campaign instead of building it from the ground up.

I'm excited to share that I've been officially accepted to attend SXSW London this June as accredited media. This is a big one. For the first time ever, the legendary South by Southwest (SXSW) is coming to London. From June 2nd to 7th, the capital will host a massive mix of culture, tech, music, film, gaming, and creative innovation across dozens of venues from Shoreditch to Westminster. And I cannot wait. The Screen programme was just announced over the weekend and it is packed. It kicks off with the world premiere of…

Everyone’s out here obsessing over legacy. “What will I leave behind?” As if it’s some rite of passage. As if the point of being alive is to be remembered by people who won’t even pronounce your name right in twenty years. I’ve come to realise I don’t want to leave anything behind. Not a company. Not a quote. Not a foundation. Not a TED Talk that people clip out of context. Am I weird for saying that? Absolutely. But leaving a legacy doesn’t make anyone more normal either. It just means you’re building something for a world that may not even want it.

There’s a lot of noise right now about B.Laban - بـ لبن’s downfall. Food poisoning. Closures. Investigations. The kind of headlines no brand wants to earn. It’s serious. It’s concerning. And it deserves scrutiny. But let’s not rewrite history to fit a narrative. TikTok didn’t cause the collapse. It created the lift. The argument that “TikTok entertains, value chains protect” sounds clever. But it’s the kind of blanket statement that folds under pressure. Because TikTok has, very clearly, built brands. Real ones. With reach, revenue, and resilience. Let’s start with the obvious.

There’s a small panic that happens in every security queue. You pat your pocket. Check your bag. Pretend to look calm while you slowly melt inside. Is the passport there? The boarding pass? The ID? The printed hotel reservation you probably didn’t need? For most travellers, that micro-moment is part of the ritual. A little anxiety with your airport coffee. But if 2024’s numbers are anything to go by, the ritual might be dying. According to SITA’s 2024 Passenger IT Insights, 76% of travellers say they’re comfortable using a Digital Travel Identity.

There’s something oddly satisfying about surrendering yourself to cinema for four straight days. No Zooms. No decks. Just a badge, a Berlinale bag, and a crammed schedule that would terrify even the most seasoned cinephile. This year, I flew into Berlin with one mission: get a proper hit of festival madness. And somehow, across less than 100 hours, I watched five films, scribbled half-legible notes, and even made it to a few press briefings without spilling coffee on anyone important. The 75th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) was chaos in the best way.