Over the years there have been many attempts to define experiential, and generally they have fallen short. This is hardly surprising, as recognisable examples of the discipline have taken on an unlimited number of forms.

What, for instance, is the link between these two ideas?

We can see they’re both “experiential”, yet behave very differently. They share no format or formula, goal or purpose, and we wouldn’t even place them in the same strategic marketing territory.

What marketers need is a holistic definition of experiential that encompasses all the discipline has to offer, acting as a platform from which to create great work yourself.

It seems McDonald's has been having a little bit of fun with its fast-food competitor Burger King this week, having built an intriguing temporary billboard near Brioude in the Haute-Loire region of France. 

The two temporary installations poke fun at the fact that with more than 1,000 drive-thru locations across metropolitan France, McDonald's is more accessible than Burger King with less than 20. 

McDonald's has turned its customer proximity into a major asset by highlighting how close the next Drive-Thru is, while the other billboard displays 258km of directions (nearly a 5 hour car ride) detailing directions to the next Burger King drive-thru. 

The execution, from agency TBWA\Paris, sends out a pretty clear message and is sure to turn a few heads... Check out the short video below for more.

Advertising has always been in competition with entertainment media, and has always tried to copy it in order to borrow some of our attention. We’ve seen our love of movies and drama condensed into 30 second spots. Our tastes in art have carried over to print. In infomercials we see the aping of our favourite chat shows, and in advertorials a shameless camouflage of sales in the trappings of editorial.

Recently however, entertainment media has undergone a far more fundamental change to which advertising is yet to fully adjust.

It all started with reality TV. Pioneers like Jeremy Beadle and Jade Goody have now seen their art form expand, in one guise or another, to become the dominant media style we consume today. When it comes to video, YouTube has of course dramatically advanced this kind of content, but beyond that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and services like Whatsapp and Tinder have rendered almost all we consume “reality” in some way. What is the Facebook News Feed if not, essentially, a reality “TV” stream of people you know?

The dominance of this kind of content has changed the tastes of the public. People are now trained to respond more favourably to “real” content than fictional – it’s more significant because, ultimately, it actually happened. Even the more traditional media forms have sought to update themselves in order to keep up. For instance, in cinema there has been an explosion in “reality” films, with the number of documentaries released in British theatres growing from a measly four in 2001 to 86 in 2014.

They are responding to a wholesale paradigm shift.

The devil’s in the detail – or so they say.

This certainly holds true for design.

Something may look amazing, but if one small element is out of step with the overall mission, it will fail from a design point of view.

No matter how well designed an environment may appear – a living space, office, meeting room, exhibition environment – if your chair, for example, is uncomfortable, it will leave you with a negative feeling, undermining everything else.

Designing or choosing the right chair that fits not just visually, but also functionally is the essence of good design. With 140 sales staff holding hundreds of meetings over three days at global entertainment market MIPCOM in October, a key part of designing the BBC’s live experience at the event was testing furniture with the team on the ground for the comfort factor.

All in all, Super Bowl 50 was probably not the best year for creative, but one campaign stood out head and shoulders above the mass of mediocrity.

The annual sporting extravaganza yet again served up some of the highest budget campaigns of the year, with brands vying to compete for the attention of a worldwide audience. Overall, humour and celebrities were the core themes of the day, but despite brands forking out a record $5 million for a 30-second spot at the big game, the quality of creative left a lot to be desired.

While various companies had their own scoring systems – from social buzz to video virality and brand sentiment – there was one ad in particular that beat its rivals by capturing a key marketing quality that stands for something much bigger in the long-term – and it was the ad that most resonated with me.

Love is in the air, which can only mean one thing - it must be February, that time of year where we all get a little soft and mushy as we approach Saint Valentine's Day.  

Brands and retailers the world over have been hard at work with various promotions and themed activations to celebrate the annual feast of love and affection. 

From Durex attempting to 'Cut the cliché'… 

Mindshare is leading the nominations for this year’s Festival of Media Asia-Pacific (FOMA) Awards, with fellow GroupM agency MediaCom and Omnicom’s PHD in hot pursuit. 

Twenty of Mindshare’s campaigns have been shortlisted for a FOMA Award, with MediaCom and PHD tied on 14 shortlisted cases each. Mindshare China alone has secured nine nominations. 

Australia once again leads the shortlist, with 27 entries, closely followed by India with 24. Other strongly performing markets include China (17 shortlisted entries), Hong Kong (14), Malaysia (14), Philippines (eight) and Singapore (seven). 

The work will be evaluated by a jury of over 50 industry leaders, including Bhavana Mittal, GSK’s head of media and CSR, Indian Sub-Continent, Margot Torres, VP marketing for McDonald’s Philippines, and Ryan Verschoor, SABMiller’s head of global brands, Asia Pacific. Winners will be decided by a final jury meeting in Singapore, where the FOMA Awards will take place at the Twitter HQ, Tuesday 22 March, 2016. 

As always, we'll be working hard to bring you all the shortlisted case studies on Cream. Links will be updated regularly so be sure to check back but in the meantime check out the full shortlist below.  

It's hard to believe that Twitter's short form video sharing platform Vine has been around for three years now. It was one of the first platforms that paved the way for the new era of snackable video content giving brands new and creative ways to share content.  

To mark the occasion, Vine has selected 10 of the moment memorable six second clips from brands in the UK throughout 2015. Fancy a bit of inspiration? Then check them out below: 

Walkers - #BackToTheFuture