At Cannes Lions 2025, Susan Kingston-Brown, Global Brand President, UM Worldwide, joined Neeta Nair of IMPACT to reflect on her experience as a Media Lions juror and the trends shaping the global media landscape. This year, the boundaries of what defines ‘media’ expanded significantly, with entries stretching beyond traditional channels into earned, owned and paid. “There were nuggets of magic all the way through,” she said, pointing to a broad range of work that sparked real debate around what media means today.
The conversation inevitably turned to the IPG–Omnicom merger. Kingston-Brown emphasized the potential it holds, adding that the merger could unlock complementary tech stacks and offer agency teams a powerful ‘new set of tools’ to drive smarter work. She also mentioned the various challenges and opportunities a merger of this scale could present, even as fears of job losses compound across the industry.
Kingston-Brown also spoke about UM’s strategic planning approach, shaped by the ‘Brand Patterns’ framework— a tool built to identify how each brand can grow on its own terms. Integrated into UM’s broader ‘Full Circle’ philosophy, this framework helps teams connect the dots between nuance, insight, and measurable growth, ensuring that strategy is tailored as the creative follows.
As agencies evolve with technology, automation and AI, she concluded, “The future agency is people at the heart, powered by technology.”
