Last week I had the pleasure (and terrifying experience) of invading the ranks o
By Joshuaclarkson ยท September 24, 2026 ยท Curated by George's Blog
Last week I had the pleasure (and terrifying experience) of invading the ranks of real Media folk when I was invited to speak at The Future of Media in Manchester, on the dark and dangerous topic of #RetailMedia.
Lucy Barnes (Havas Market) kindly stepped in to ask me a ton of questions on said topic and, whilst our time on stage flew by, we still managed to unpack a lot! This included pretty much everything that Mark Ritson and Andrew Lipsman argued over in their competing ADWEEK articles the week before - notably the flawed definition which led to a flawed initial article and POV!
๐๐๐ง ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ข๐ฅ ๐๐๐๐ข๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ซ๐๐ง๐๐ฌ? ๐๐จ๐ฎ ๐๐๐ญ ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐*๐ฅ๐ฅ๐จ๐๐ค๐ฌ ๐ข๐ญ ๐๐๐ง!
For the agencies in the room, I asked them to be the voice of reason for us silly brands who sometimes let our (short-term, commercial, single customer) hearts lead us, instead of our (longer-term, marketing, total market) heads... Please agency partners, guide us through our silliness.
And for Brands? It comes down to how your P&L is structured, who owns Retail Media vs other media, and how it is measured alongside and against other media. I was firmly in camp #Lipsman when it came to the Adweek debate, though it should be noted that, given I'm currently doing Mark's MiniMBA, whilst cheating is encouraged, bad mouthing the professor probably isn't! So I played nice.