If brands struggle with one thing in the audience engagement stakes, it’s getting people actively involved. They can develop highly creative and striking cross-channel ad campaigns, target consumers through social media and mobile, entice them with offers, boost customer experience both online and offline, and more, but arguably more valuable than all of this is driving a direct action – getting people to participate. To do this, brands need to push the boundaries of marketing a little further.

Lego is great at this. It’s Yoda Chronicles offers short tales from the legendary sci-fi story told through animated Lego figures via YouTube. It provides a safe way of presenting to kids what could otherwise be violent stories, is a wonderful soft sell for the Stars Wars Lego range, but more importantly it’s a very clever way to reinforce the world of Lego via social media using content, which is far more engaging and effective than simply advertising its toy range. What’s more, it has proved so engaging that some consumers have been creating their own Lego animations – and we all know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Essentially, this provides a great way of participating in Lego outside of the traditional brick building, while reinforcing this core proposition.

Naked Juice and blowUP media have teamed up to install a ground-breaking  pollution-eating Giant Poster in the heart of London, promoting Naked’s healthy juices to millennials in an environmentally healthy way. 

The ad showcases not only one of its fruit smoothies but at the same time how it is doing good to clean-up the air pollution surrounding the poster. The ad was treated with PURETi, a photocatalyst that reacts with natural UV light to eat pollution, which not only enables the poster to clean the air around it but also keeps it cleaner. 

The campaign was planned and bought by OMD UK and specialist agency Talon.  

Check out the ad in situ below:

In a consumer world that craves personalisation and hates the sell, native should have been brands’ golden ticket to engagement and loyalty, by delivering key branded insight to consumers of online media to complement editorial.

In a highly competitive online media world dominated by clutter and intrusive advertising that’s driving away readers, native should have been publishers’ route to readability and working with brands not simply to increase revenues, but also to add value to the consumer experience through co-creating relevant content.

So what went wrong?

The answer is content.

The most important part of the native equation was neglected by brands, agencies and publishers.

UM Romania was among the top winners at the Festival of Media Global Awards 2016, taking home the Agency of the Year Award after winning Gold, Silver and Bronze trophies across seven categories, in addition to the highly coveted Campaign of the Year trophy for its Vodafone campaign ‘Sunday Grannies’. 

Agency Network of the Year was awarded to OMD, having collected a total of 11 trophies across six offices representing eight different brands.   

Outside the big media agencies, Atomic 212, an independent full service media agency, based in Australia won a Silver in the Best Launch category while the creative agency DPZ&T won Bronze in the newly introduced category D’Atlas Brand Purpose Award sponsored by Discovery Communications. 

A growing blindspot in the marketplace is the continued association of Millennials with the youth lifestyle, but it’s time to the face the facts – the era of Millennial youth marketing is over.

As Millennials quickly age out (the oldest now being in their mid-30s) a new generation of youth – Centennials – is moving in and bringing a decidedly different dynamic to the market, one that will create new rules for the marketplace and have influence beyond their size and years.

Centennials (born from 1997 to the present day) represent approximately a third of the world’s population, according to global census figures. Unlike their predecessors, Centennials are growing up with a less idealistic and more pragmatic edge. They’re facing situations that Millennials didn’t have to deal with until early adulthood, and, as a result, they are growing up far more savvy, in graver times when choices are limited and success is harder to come by.

In the charity sector, many approaches are taken in order to get a hard-hitting message across. The latest effort from PETA Asia is something quite extraordinary. 

Working with Ogilvy & Mather, PETA set up a pop-up store in one of Thailand's hippest shopping centres. The twist? Shoppers were shocked to find a little more than they bargained for when browsing the latest exotic-skins bags, belts, jackets, gloves and shoes...

*WARNING* Do not watch the following video if you are squeamish or eating while you read this!

As the industry evolves, native advertising is becoming a core component of digital advertising.

Publishers are leveraging this format because of its ability to match the form and function of an editorial or product experience.

For consumers, native ads provide less disruptive and more engaging advertising. For advertisers, there is a new way to communicate marketing messages more naturally. As digital consumption continues to increase and evolve, so will the opportunity for native advertising.

The next generation of digital experiences will be much more visual, feed-driven and personalised, and native ads will evolve in a similar way.

As an industry, it is important that we nurture this opportunity and do not to stifle the growth of native advertising by too narrowly defining the space. Native comes in many types, ranging from search advertising (the earliest form of native), to in-stream ads to in-game native formats and beyond.

How do you generate hot sales at 5 degrees Celsius?

Well, that’s a good question to ask the guys at Ogilvy Denmark as the agency’s latest execution for Danish tabloid newspaper Ekstra Bladet took a fresh approach to flogging newspaper copies, resulting in a 30% increase in sales.

With the rapid uptake of online and mobile news consumption, selling print newspapers is never an easy job – these days people find printed news old and outdated. But Ekstra Bladet claims to be the first for breaking news in Denmark. So how could it prove that?