After the Buzz: GingerMay’s MAD//Fest London marketing insights
This year’s summer event season came in hot, in more ways than one. Following many people’s ‘hottest Cannes ever’ came a sweltering MAD//Fest, packed with bold content, great conversation and its usual festival atmosphere.
Now the dust has settled, here’s how our Gingers soaked it all in, and our top marketing insights and takeaways from the event.
“Be Less Boring”
This theme resonated across MAD//Fest’s main stages. Whether it was Disney’s Angela Affinita discussing emotion-first brand experience or Diageo’s Will Harvey urging us all to ditch the safe and predictable, the focus was clearly on how to keep marketing fun, engaging and effective.
GingerMay embraced the theme too, traversing the show to record attendees’ favourite anti-boring philosophies. Take a look at the round up of attendee marketing insights.
Masterclasses & Expert Clinics
MAD//Fest offered game-changing clinics and one-on-one sessions, including everything from innovative insights tools every brand strategist needs to local experiential activation labs that blurred the lines between fun and feedback – think Mr Whippy ice creams as activation tools.
Our takeaway? Elevating brand marketing campaigns with playful yet data‑driven activations can ignite deeper customer engagement. We can’t wait to see how marketing leaders experiment with this in the next few years.
Networking, Experiential, & Culture
Beyond speaker sessions, the festival was buzzing. Packed stages, immersive activations, DJs, parties, and spontaneous chats over free bagels and ice cream topped the season off with a bang, matching MAD//Fest’s reputation for being a high-energy, human-first environment in which to network, discuss the hottest topics and learn.
The Independent Agency Awards also took place at the event, bringing together a fantastic group of skilled and creative industry talent. The GingerMay team enjoyed meeting their industry peers and celebrating our shortlisting in the Purpose Awards as well as the year’s stand-out campaigns.
Agency Innovation & Purpose
Stories from founders and CMOs — like WUKA’s Ruby Raut on sustainability and Cano Water’s Josh White replacing plastic — spotlighted brand purpose in action.
MAD//Fest reaffirmed some of the marketing insights we already know: stand‑out campaigns are creative, data‑informed, and purpose‑led. From immersive tech to new ways to gain valuable insights, every session reinforced how being bold and human‑centric beats playing it safe.
Now the event season is complete, we have a moment to reflect on how valuable face-to-face time with old and new contacts has been. In an industry that doesn’t stop for anyone, with new innovations, strategies, and technologies being launched weekly, taking the opportunity to discuss and learn from others is crucial.
Interested in organising your own event to drive valuable conversations with the most relevant people in the industry? Find out more about how we can help.