Skyler Mattson

I’ve been working with the team at Springboards.ai for just over a year now - but I’ve known Pip Bingemann and Amy Tucker for close to two decades, as friends, collaborators, and fellow strategists. That long-standing trust and shared curiosity is exactly what powers this kind of work: bold, timely, and grounded in the belief that better questions lead to better futures. They’ve always been the kind of thinkers who don’t just keep up with change; they challenge it, shape it, and keep asking the questions that move things forward. Many of us use LLMs daily for research, for speed, for early-stage thinking. But how often do we actually stop and ask: can they think creatively? Today, that question gets a proper stress test. A global coalition of creative and marketing bodies - 4As, Advertising Council Australia, APG, D&AD,International Advertising Association, IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), and The One Club for Creativity - led by Springboards, has just launched the first-ever creativity benchmark for LLMs. It’s designed to test the creative muscle: idea generation, lateral thinking, and the kind of problem-solving that underpins great, unexpected work. Think “Tinder for ideas” - you swipe through model responses and choose what feels strongest or most original. But this isn’t just a test. It’s a collective build. The more people who participate, the sharper the data becomes. We’re not just measuring creativity, we’re mapping it. Across industries, disciplines, and instincts. To do that, we need a broad, rigorous, and diverse set of creative minds involved. So if you’re curious which LLM thinks most like you, or if you just want to help shape the way we evaluate creative potential in this next chapter, dive in and take the test. CreativityBenchmark.ai Let’s find out what these tools are really capable of, together.

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I've always believed that the most impactful connections happen in the physical world—when people can try, touch, and experience products for themselves. In this new piece for WARC, coauthored with Andrew Lipsman, we unpack the rise of Experiential Retail Media: why it matters, how it works, and the role identifiability plays in creating closed-loop, in-store engagement. The future isn’t just digital. It’s physical, personal, and profoundly scalable. Link in comments #RetailMedia #ExperientialMarketing #ShopperEngagement #MeasurableMedia #Freeosk #MarketingInnovation

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The Hollywood sign did not burn, and there were no sharks on the 405 during the rains of '24. A recent Nielsen study told us that more than half of audiences don't like AI-generated content—especially when it's used in #advertising and #media. And that number is even higher among #multicultural #audiences. I want to thank Drew English, our brilliant analyst, for pulling together the #Nielsen insights behind this Forbes article by Gary Drenik. #AI has so much potential, but its use can also pose risks around trust, representation, and transparency for marketers and creatives. https://lnkd.in/gUuBbuVY

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On our anniversary of founding FUSE Create on January 16, 2003, I thought I’d share 22 Lessons from 22 Years of building an agency:  1. Great culture builds great agencies. Creativity flows much better when the team feels included, engaged and motivated.   2. Remove those who conflict with your culture. And remove them fast.   3. Cash-flow has the power to impact my sleep way more than Donald Trump or spicy curry.   4. You don’t need to be friends with everyone you work with, but you have to respect them.   5. The number of employees at the agency is vanity; EBIDTA and the resulting bonuses is the true metric that counts.   6. Never be the most drunk at the holiday party. It’s more fun watching them.   7. People leave. It’s advertising. Your goal as a leader isn’t to have them stay forever, rather that they grow and enjoy their time with you, so they depart an advocate.   8. Be proud of your age. Once young, I’m now surrounded by team members whose parents are my age. Now I offer perspective (and proof you can age in this business).    9. When things are going badly, be transparent with your team about what the agency is going through and what you’re doing to fix it.   10. If your client fires you, learn from it. Open your eyes to see what led to this decision. You can only fix problems if you can see them.   11. Winning is always more fun than losing.    12. Know when to get off centre stage and let others take the lead. Trust the team you’ve built to run what you started. It creates more value than you can foster on your own.   13. Be extremely judicious on what you pitch. Just because the client wants you on the list doesn’t mean you should.  Fight for what you have the right and passion to win.   14. Be aggressively entrepreneurial. Build your network. Open your own doors. And never rely on RFPs for your new business strategy.   15. Be polite, friendly and approachable -- no one likes an entitled little sh_t.   16. When you make a bad decision, own it, we all make them.   17. Have a group of advertising friends who empathize with the chaotic world you live in. Then have other friends who offer you sanity and escape.   18. Your agency is a brand. Treat it like a client by allocating the resources and creative leadership you give to your best clients. The results pay off.   19. Diversity of your team shouldn’t be an HR policy; it should just be.   20. Building an agency requires a long game mindset. Make strategic decisions that payoff over time and adjust tactics when your quarter isn’t coming through. Blur these two and you’ll zig-zag your way to nowhere.   21. Celebrate our industry. Where else do you get to spend your life creating, ideating and laughing.    22. Creative is our product. Our product determines our future value and longevity. Excellence in creative must be your primary focus (and as Steve Miller taught me, when the product is good, so are the profits).  

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This is No.07 of 25 Years. 25 Lessons. Data and insight are often confused or conflated. It’s like confusing coal and diamonds. Data is fact. Insight is why. Data tells you what’s happening. Insight tells you why that matters. Data can lie. Insight reveals truth. Data is sociopathic. Insight has empathy. Data is linear. Insight is exponential. Data is a science. Insight is an art. You can download to print, or scroll, the other 24 lessons here: https://lnkd.in/gtRbGDAD

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🧠Independent Agencies often provide Big Thinking without the Big ZIP Code There’s a persistent myth in our industry: that the best creative and media talent only lives in New York, LA, or Chicago. But right now, some of the most ambitious, strategic, and award-winning work in the country is coming from independent agencies in DMAs ranked 25 through 50—the cities often overlooked, under-briefed, and underappreciated. Let’s clear that up. 📍 DMA #27 – Nashville GS&F (revived as a fully independent shop) is driving standout creative for LP Building Solutions and KFC Southeast co-ops, pairing local insight with national polish. Their recent work on the “Build Bold” platform just earned a 2024 ANA B2 Award. 📍 DMA #33 – Raleigh-Durham Baldwin& helped launch Kioti Tractor’s “Together We Rise” campaign with sweeping, cinematic storytelling—picked up in The Drum for its authenticity and edge. A brand that easily could’ve gone with a New York AOR chose Raleigh talent instead. 📍 DMA #37 – Columbus, OH Ron Foth Advertising brought home a National Addy for their work on Columbus Zoo, blending VR, TikTok creators, and traditional media to drive foot traffic in a post-COVID tourism slump. Ad Age spotlighted it as a smart regional turnaround story. 📍 DMA #43 – Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville Brandon Agency launched a hyper-targeted campaign for Fish Hippie, a Southeast lifestyle brand, combining high-impact Amazon DSP with storytelling content. Their media mix strategy was featured in a recent Digiday roundup on DTC regional growth. 🤔 So what do all these agencies have in common? They’re not in holding company cities. They don’t need a SoHo loft to win the pitch. And they’re absolutely crushing it. ⸻ If you’re an independent in a mid-sized market, here are three ways to win more national attention and new business: 🎯 Market size ≠ market value. Don’t compete with big shops on scale. Compete on focus, responsiveness, and authenticity. The best brands know a good idea can come from anywhere. 🎯 Build a national body of proof. Use targeted awards (like the Addys, Effies, and ANA B2), earned press, and platform-native case studies to showcase what makes you great. When the coasts are bloated, nimble wins. 🎯 Leverage regional wins into national momentum. Use your biggest regional client success to ladder up. Brands are watching—especially in tourism, higher ed, healthcare, and B2B verticals. ⸻ 🍾 Clients aren’t just hiring agencies in big cities anymore. They’re hiring agencies that understand their business, move faster, and make every dollar work harder. What market is on fire 🔥 that shouldn’t be missed??? Want to talk about it on our Rise of The Independent podcast? Tag your team below 👇 #solvedontsell NOTE: MiO Marketplace provides #independentagencies the tools & tech they need to succeed. Win and keep more business with MiO!

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Disposable thoughts are the ideas you have at the beginning of a project, when you only have a surface-level understanding of a company. A lot of creative teams are briefed with a 30-minute meeting and a sheet of paper… we’re building blueprints. I’ve worked with Lindsay Poulton at a couple different agencies now, her ability to lean into the details and stitch them into CX maps and blueprints is inspiring. It offers a framework to elevate all aspects of a company, not just the parts customers see on the outside.

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We’re in a new era of brand partnerships. Not the safe, predictable ones. The crossovers that don’t make sense on paper but work in the real world. Aura x Talkspace. Touchland x CROCS. Heinz x Absolut Vodka Some simple rules separate the winners from the gimmicks: → There has to be shared audience visibility. No overlap, no point. → Values need to line up, even if aesthetics don’t. People feel when it’s forced. → Both brands need to carry weight in trust and promotion. → The creative has to actually surprise people. That’s what drives organic attention. When it’s done right, you get things like the Liquid Death x Dr. Squatch (two OpenFortune 🥠 clients!) drop, exclusive at Target, sold out in under a week. Brands are realizing collabs are one of the fastest ways to expand reach. And the smartest ones aren’t staying in their lane.

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