Selfstorming Blog
Insights on advertising, creativity, marketing science and AI in Marketing.
Byron Sharp and Mark Ritson Agreed on Five Things at Cannes. I Was in the Room.
Two marketing legends who disagree about everything sat down at Cannes Lions 2026 to agree. I was in the room. Here is what Byron Sharp and Mark Ritson nodded along to, from mental availability to the great distinctive brand assets naming truce.
Cannes Lions 2026: Day 1 Top Campaigns, Deconstructed
Day 1 of Cannes Lions 2026 is in the books. Here is our brutally honest breakdown of the campaigns that chose human truth over corporate wallpaper.
Cannes Lions 2026: Watch every Grand Prix winner from day 1
Day 1 of Cannes Lions 2026 just wrapped. Here is our brutally honest strategic breakdown of the Grand Prix winners that actually earned their metal.
The Week AI Got Brand Controls, and What It Means for Your Asset Pipeline
A sober look at this week's AI updates from Claude, Midjourney, Adobe, and Meta, analyzed through a strategic marketing lens for brand directors and planners.
The Best 2026 FIFA World Cup Ads
Most soccer commercials are expensive, sweat-soaked corporate sermons. Here are the 2026 campaigns that chose chaotic human truth over generic stadium roars.
Synthetic Actors and Search Agents: The Brand Strategy for an Automated Web
A sober look at this week's AI news - including ElevenLabs, Perplexity, and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 - and what it actually means for your brand strategy and media budget.
The 2026 LIONS Titanium Shortlist Is Out - and I Already Have 3 Favourites
The Cannes Lions 2026 Titanium shortlist just dropped. I broke down all of it and picked three favourites - Škoda DuoBell, Heineken Tocayos Inc. and Sea Cleaners' Reverse Media Schedules. Here's why they matter, and why I'll be in Cannes when the Lions land.
AI News: Faster Pixels, Faster Emails and Dreaming
A weekly, sober look at the latest AI updates - from ChatGPT's email plumbing to Runway's video editing - and what they actually mean for brand strategy and consumer attention.
The Million Dollar Puzzle: When Your Super Bowl Ad Is Also Your Stress Test
Salesforce and MrBeast turned a 30-second Super Bowl spot into a 276,000-player scavenger hunt that ran live on Salesforce's own infrastructure. The ad did not describe the product. It was the product, under load, in public.
Messaging & Communication Frameworks: Turning Strategy Into Something Worth Saying
Strategy that nobody can repeat is just an expensive secret. These four messaging frameworks - Venn Diagram, Idea Cascade, Pyramid of Truth, and Message Map - take a clever strategy and turn it into one line a stranger could say back to you.
The Audience & Insight Frameworks: How to Actually Understand the Human You're For
Most audience work describes people instead of understanding them. These six frameworks - Jobs To Be Done, Bullseye Customer, Empathy Map, Customer Persona, Customer Journey Map, and the Insight & Tension Statement - get you to the human truth that unlocks the idea.
Business Strategy Frameworks: 14 Tools for the Bigger Calls
Fourteen business strategy frameworks, grouped by the job they do - positioning, analysis, customer value, the creative brief, diagnosis, and goals - with an honest note on when each one earns its keep.
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