Kerry Bennett

Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.

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83% of retail media campaigns can be gamed on iROAS. Not by changing the creative or the audience targeting -- just by changing the math. New research from Albertsons Media Collective, Ovative Group, and Northwestern's Kellogg School tested 42 real campaigns and found that methodological choices alone can swing iROAS by 6.5x. The brands with data science teams already knew this was messy. The mid-market brands taking iROAS reports at face value are the ones who get burned by creative math. My latest column for The Drum breaks down what the research found, why transparency beats standardization, and the questions every brand should be asking their RMN partners 👇 https://lnkd.in/eJbJbh-k Really enjoyed picking the mega brains of Liz Roche and Derek T. Nelson for this one!

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Have you noticed any change in Amazon’s brand identity lately? If not — that’s actually a huge success. At least in the short term. 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻’𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘁. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆. No launch film. No press blitz. No brand anthem with orchestral strings. Just a quiet rollout across 15 global markets—an initial phase in a broader global refresh. Billions of touchpoints, refreshed without making a scene. In branding, sometimes the boldest move is the invisible one — Subtle. Repetitive. Relentless. Until one day, you look up and think: “𝘏𝘶𝘩. 𝘏𝘢𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴?” 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆. 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱. Frankly, I’m surprised it took them this long. Managing a brand ecosystem under a masterbrand without a unified visual identity is like conducting an orchestra where each musician’s playing a different song. Loud and memorable — but for all the wrong reasons. Amazon’s old brand system was starting to drift — each sub-brand doing its own thing. The new identity brings it all into sync. One smile. One tone. One visual rhythm. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱? • A warmer, more human smile in the logo (you’ll squint and see it) • A new typeface — Ember Modern — made for global legibility and digital elegance • A sharpened palette: Smile Orange with a bit more zing, Prime Blue turned richer • Refreshed iconography • A smarter visual identity system and architecture that makes 50+ sub-brands feel like one coherent family This isn’t just about being consistent — it’s also about being coherent and flexible. As a brand shows up across more surfaces and contexts, adaptability becomes just as important as alignment. 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗥𝗢𝗜? According to Deloitte (2019), consistently presented brands are 3.5x more likely to enjoy strong brand visibility. And a Lucidpress (Marq) (2021) study found that brands with consistent identity systems can see up to 23% higher revenue over time. Consistency across a billion touchpoints isn’t just a virtue — it’s a growth engine. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗠𝗢𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿. Spotify did it. So did Burberry. And Airbnb didn’t just change their logo — they built a system that made their brand feel both personal and global. Because when all the noise fades, this remains: 👉 Campaigns build salience and trigger short-term awareness and action. 👉 Visual identity systems build long-term memory structures and brand recognition. If you’re into design, identity, and the quiet work that drives real growth, have a look at the fascinating details on Koto's site:🔗 https://lnkd.in/gfhSfKpF #BrandStrategy #DesignMatters #MemoryStructures #Amazon #VisualIdentity #BrandArchitecture

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I listened to an Invest Like The Best podcast with Wolfgang Hammer this week. Wolfgang helped create House of Cards and has run major studios. Now he’s working with Mitch Lasky and Marc Andreessen on a new model for building films. His thinking applies directly to founders. He breaks a company’s story into three layers: 1. External: what the product does. 2. Emotional: the motivation behind building it. 3. Philosophical: the beliefs about how the world should work. The companies that communicate well operate cleanly across all three. The ones that struggle usually stay stuck in the external layer. Hammer’s prompts are simple: • What are we doing? • Why am I doing this? • How should the world work? Run these for your customer. Run them for your company. Look for the alignment. That’s the narrative you use with executives, frontline teams, customers, and investors. The logic is straightforward: people act when they understand what you do, why it matters, and how it fits into their own view of the world. A clear story makes decisions easier and keeps teams moving in the same direction. Hammer also makes a strong point about the role of a CEO. Communication is the job. The audience changes constantly, but the underlying philosophy should hold steady. When the story is clear, the context-switching becomes manageable. One pattern shows up across every strong narrative: hardship, money, status, and transformation. Almost every meaningful story traces a shift from one state to another. People respond to change, not static descriptions. Takeaway: revisit the three layers often. As the product, market, and team evolve, the narrative needs to evolve with them. A sharp, coherent story makes everything else easier.

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Love this - AI is the Oppenheimer moment for marketing. It fundamentally collapses the time and cost of production. A $2.5 million campaign that used to take four months can now be delivered for $500,000 in four weeks. Legacy firms that charge based on hours with the 'time-driven' model are existentially threatened by this.

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The Senate is tightening teen ad targeting; the House will vote on a bill that bars behavior-based ads for under-17s, pushing brands toward contextual plays.

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Jenelle Sheridan has her finger on the pulse here! Good read below👇 Recommerce is a strategic imperative for brands and reverse logistics players. That's why we extended the ThredUp platform to invent the Resale-as-a-Service category. In case your interest is piqued, I'll be sharing my perspective at ReCon NYC this year. See you there!

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CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

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When Cracker Barrel unveiled its new logo last week, the intent was clear: modernize. Instead, the rollout erased nearly $100M in market value and sparked a customer backlash so strong the brand reverted to its original mark in less than a week. Legacy brands carry an emotional weight with their audiences. The old Cracker Barrel logo wasn’t just a man in a chair; it was shorthand for memory, ritual, and a very specific idea of “home.” Remove that symbol without framing the narrative, and you risk removing the trust that comes with it. The lesson here is simple but often overlooked: modernization must honor memory. Design without context is decoration. Branding, when it’s done right, protects heritage while building space for the future. Curious to know your thoughts, is this modernizing—or erasing? #BrandDesign #DDNYC #BrandingStrategy #DesignLeadership

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#AgenticCommerce is moving fast, and Richard Crone’s post below makes a simple point every CEO and board should hear: if you let AI agents control discovery and checkout, value quietly shifts away from your brand. In a recent The Wall Street Journal piece I co‑authored with Brian McCarthy and Roland Ehi, my argument is that winners will be the companies that keep the buying decision, the data, and the payment flow inside their own ecosystem – and make AI work for them, not around them. Adding the article link here for anyone shaping their agentic commerce strategy, keeping agentic commerce optimization (#ACO) in mind: https://lnkd.in/eY9xQptJ If your scenarios are “do nothing” or “light experimentation”, they aren’t neutral or no-regret options. These will actually destroy margin, weaken your customer relationship, and compress your multiple over time. Going “all-in” is the only scenario that will pay off, but tha will happen only when leaders treat product pages, checkout, and customer data as strategic assets, with clear rights, controls, and monetization. Agent-to-Agent (#A2A) is disrupting the game faster than you think. Prepare for it or risk getting disintermediated. Choice is yours!

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Most brands aren’t short on #martech—but they are short on profitable growth. Here’s a fresh breakdown of how Kurt Geiger went from plateaued performance to incremental ecommerce revenue by layering Wunderkind on top of their existing ESP and CRM, not ripping anything out. The story gets into why #identity is the “eyes” of your stack, how an autonomous marketing platform becomes the “brain,” and what actually changes when you double down on onsite capture and triggered messaging. If you’re staring at flat ESP performance and wondering what lever to pull next, this one’s worth a read:  https://lnkd.in/gN6QmWAQ

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In January 2026, the E-commerce landscape underwent its most significant structural shift since the invention of the checkout button. We moved from "Search and Browse" to "Purpose and Execute." As a strategist who has spent a decade scaling brands, I see this not just as a technical update, but as the final collapse of the traditional marketing funnel. Here is my take on the Agentic Paradigm Shift and how we are rewriting the bibles of Kotler and Drucker for the modern era. The January 2026 Reality Check: What Just Happened? January wasn't just another month; it was the month the "Webless Web" went live. The #UCP Revolution: Shopify and Google co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). This is the new "handshake" of global trade. It allows AI agents (Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot) to talk directly to your backend. They don't "read" your site anymore; they query your capability. The 4% #AI-Discovery Tax: OpenAI confirmed a 4% transaction fee for checkouts within ChatGPT. For some, this felt like a burden. For the world’s top marketers, it’s a "Toll on Certainty." You aren't paying for a click; you are paying for a resolved purchase intent. #Agentic Storefronts: Your store is no longer a URL. It is a node in an AI-powered grid. With Microsoft Copilot Checkout and Gemini AI Mode, the transaction now happens where the conversation is, not where the website is. Redefining the Foundations: Kotler & Drucker 2.0 We are witnessing the evolution of the core principles that governed business for more then 50 years. 1. From the "4 Ps" to the "4 Is" (Kotler Reimagined) In the Kotler era, we focused on #Product, #Price, #Place, and #Promotion. In the Agentic era, the AI decides based on: #Integrity: Is your data clean and machine-readable? #Instant-Availability: Can you fulfill the specific constraint (e.g., "Deliver by 3 PM")? #Interoperability: Does your system speak UCP/MCP? #Insight: Does the AI trust your brand's relevance for this specific user? 2. Efficiency vs. Effectiveness (Drucker Reimagined) Peter Drucker said, "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." In 2026, Effectiveness is Delegation. A business that requires a human to "browse" is inefficient. An effective business is one that an AI agent can "buy from" autonomously. The brand that wins is the one that is easiest for a machine to trust. At eWebster Infotech, we don't just build stores; we build the infrastructure for the next hundred years of commerce. The budget is set. The protocols are live. The agents are shopping. Is your brand a partner or a ghost in the new machine? #AgenticCommerce #UCP #Shopify2026 #ModernMarketing #AEO #GeminiAI #EcommerceRevolution #StrategicGrowth #BusinessWisdom #eWebste

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