Hot Topics: LBB’s 2023 Editorial Trends

2023 was a lot of things, but it was also a bit wobbly. The advertising and industry world has been full-on committed to the ‘change is the new normal’ vibe for quite some time but with so much happening at once it was, perhaps, understandable that we might bottle it on occasion. Progress on AI and important topics like accessibility did roll onwards but, in other areas, it did feel like we were kids on bicycles who’d just realised the stabilisers had come off. But even the global economy couldn’t decide what it was doing. At LBB we saw a few interesting threads of conversation emerge across the past 12 months that look set to continue into 2024.

Growing polarisation and shrinking trust proved to be fertile ground for the so-called Culture Wars. Even the most innocuous ad could find itself being set upon by keyboard warriors and extremists like Andrew Tate were finding the modern media ecosystem the perfect place to build an audience. Throughout 2023, we found ourselves drawn into various explorations of this disorientating new reality.  It kicked off with a piece that investigated ‘How Should Brands Navigate the Culture War?’ in March, which saw strategists advise that as much as they’d like to ignore what’s going on, brands will need to contend with it sooner or later. In this confusing and contentious environment, misinformation has become easier to spread, and while people appear to have more faith in brands than they do in traditional institutions, this low trust environment may well have ramifications for marketers, as Zoe Antonov explored in her piece  ‘Are You Ready to Dance the Trust Tango in 2024?’.

There have been multiple casualties in the Culture War, but one that the ad industry had largely ignored was young men and boys, many of whom are finding themselves alienated and vulnerable to exploitative influencers and an algorithm that reinforces their social isolation. In 

‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Laura Swinton and Alex Reeves asked whether marketers had neglected boys in their drive to empower young girls and whether there’s a role for industry to play.

The Climate Crisis - remember that? In 2021 and 2022 the industry was falling over itself to save the planet but in 2023 it seemed that global warming was not such a hot topic. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance of flying the flag while advertising for major polluters (as summed up by *that* Rob Mayhew Tiktok) had just gotten too much.

Earlier in the year, the Purpose Disruptors Earth Day event tackled the elephant in the room and a guest post from Amelie Lambert outlined the in-fighting and need for a renewed resolve. By the time Cop28 rolled around we were asking 'Is the Advertising Industry Backsliding on Its Climate Crisis Commitments' though agencies in the UAE were finding that the controversial summit had put environmental impact on clients' agendas locally.

That’s not to say that progress on the environmental impact on advertising had stopped. Since the pandemic, the focus has largely been on reducing the carbon footprint of production as it’s reasonably tangible and straightforward to track - but in those trickier parts of the industry, there are people trying to move things forward. Ben Conway found out ‘How Adland Is Tackling the Environmental Impact of Its Media Buy’, while Nisna Mahtani tackled a sector that traditionally has been about temporary, throwaway projects with ‘Can Pop-Up Experiences Be Sustainable?’.

And if it really does all come down to money, the growing cost of living crisis that emerged as many countries in Europe circled the drain of recession without fully, officially plunging in,saw the emergence of a Make Do and Mend economy of re- and upcycling as Alex Reeves discovered in ‘For Planet and Pocket: Marketing in the Make Do and Mend Economy’.

At the beginning of 2023, we were primed for the possibility of recession with warning from the likes of the IMF and agencies keen to talk to reporter Nisna Mahtani about ‘The Value of Marketing in a Recession’. The reality was a bit more wobbly - aforementioned drain circling perhaps - but agencies, brands and production companies certainly felt the pressure to find new revenue streams and explore new business models.

The landmark move was, of course, the mega merger between VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, a power move of consolidation and efficiency. We also saw some of the brightest hopes in indie agencies take the cheque as Uncommon joined Havas and Gut was acquired by Globant. And then, just this week the news emerged that Havas may be spun out from parent company Vivendi. It’s all musical chairs.

In production, the message that Zoe Antonov found resounded loud and clear from companies was ‘Evolve or Die’. It wasn’t just a case of finding new revenue, or efficiencies however - in some cases the twinned pressures of the economy and new technology also forced competitors to band together. In Germany, production companies rallied together tog push for pitch reform, which Nisna explored in ‘What Germany’s Pitch Reform Means for Commercial Production’ and of course, in Hollywood the actors and writers went on strike to fight for better conditions in the age of streaming and AI. While advertising production was still open for business, it still had an impact on production, service and post companies with a foot in either camp and also presented some interesting challenges for media companies. 

Perhaps in response to the, quite frankly tedious, culture warrification of everything, we also saw a backlash of pure play. Barbie’s Pink Girl Summer led the charge, even dragging sad old Oppenheimer along with her, like a manic pixie dream girl in a romcom, creating the Barbenheimer meme. Brands and agencies embraced everything pink for an extravaganza of silliness and meta humour, as Nisna Mahtani discovered in her piece ‘Marketing Has Been Barbie-fied and It’s Worked’. 

This loosening up has also hit some major brands, like Heinz which has cast open its gates to invite a diversity of agencies for all sorts of holding companies and none to go a bit Jackson Pollock with creativity, as Laura Swinton discovered in ‘Heinz Meanz Creativity: What’s Driving Heinz’s Creative Momentum?’

And, perhaps counterintuitively, given the overarching atmosphere of offense-taking, we’ve actually seen an uptick in comedy and humour. Not only has Cannes Lions launched a new humour category, we found that overall more ads are using humour, and landing the joke in ‘Do This Year’s Christmas Ads Prove Brands Have Found Their Funny Bone?’

People keep talking about the importance of humanity in technology but we suspect they weren’t intending for it to be interpreted quite so soap operatically. There was so much to gossip about. There was, ofcourse, the magnetic Real Housewives energy seen at X, formerly known as Twitter - and as Addison Capper found out there was a lot to talk about. Apple kept trying to make fetch - err, we mean VR - happen, and, of course there were the unfolding scenez at OpenAI, which, of course, we all had an opinion about. Who knew the singularity would be quite so Bravo?

The thing is, all that popcorn fodder was an easy distraction from all the somewhat more boring day to day stuff that actually impacts a big chunk of the advertising industry’s daily grist. Take, for example, the gradual shift to a cookie-less world, which Josh Neufeldt investigated in ‘The New Privacy Paradigm: How Brands and Agencies Can Navigate the Modern World of Data’. As Pink Floyd says, how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

One area that just doesn’t stop changing is gaming. There’s so much going on in that space - even though the main annual event E3 appears to have died on its arse. There’s mobile gaming, there’s storytelling, there’s subscription models and there’s GTA VI just around the corner.

2023 saw accessibility and accessible design become a much more prominent part of the conversation, though it certainly was a journey and there’s lots more work for brands, agencies and production companies to do when it comes to creating content, services and experiences that everyone can enjoy, whether or not they have a disability. In January, Alex Reeves started a piece hoping to find how agencies and production companies were making their content more accessible, inspired by Google’s own internal audit - things were not as advanced as we’d imagined to be, with a few key players leaving the rest in the dust. However throughout the year we found that major brands like Microsoft, Diageo and Samsung are pushing on this - for example at our LBB & Friends Beach panel in Cannes ‘Why Brands Need to Open Up to Accessible Design’. We also found the UX space to be a font of knowledge on the topic and an area that should be tapped by marketers and people working in other media areas.

Another wobble trend. When it comes to women in advertising and marketing, it was a case of one step forward, one step back. Yes the Women’s World Cup had record engagement and viewership, with brands like Unilever to support it - but, as Casey Martin found there was fairly damp engagement on the ground in the Australian industry - and that’s before the very gross non-consensual kiss at the final. After years of breathless ‘empowerment’ campaigns, we’re starting to contend with the reality that things might not be as straightforward as we thought. Even the pneumatic ‘girlboss’ doesn’t have the same ring to it, as this discussion led by Zhenya Tsenzharyk uncovered. And all of that is happening within the context of a new kind of misogyny that’s rising - think caveman with an algorithm - and hijacking many of the tools and platforms that brands and advertisers are also using. Perhaps that expertise means that advertising people have the skills to fend off this new wave of woman-hating  - but it looks like the work is only getting started.

I mean, come on.  Of course it was the thing that everyone was talking about, pretending to be knowledgeable about and desperately trying to figure out. You can dive deep into everything we’ve featured relating to artificial intelligence here - but when it comes to changes in our day-to-day work we found a lot happening.

And in the burgeoning world of virtual production, AI is unlocking all sorts of exciting new possibilities as Alex Reeves found out in 'When Generative AI Meets Virtual Production, What Does It Mean for Advertising?' - but it’s also been shaking things up in the world of post production and VFX for years. Our very own Zhenya Tsenzharyk even spoke to the team behind the uncanny valley nightmare ‘Synthetic Summer’ spoof beer ad that went viral In 2024 - and is likely to become our new reality sooner than we’d think. We look forward to finding more grounded and practical ways that AI is changing people’s day to day work as the hype settles down.