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Part Two: After last week’s instalment with S4 Capital’s founder and former WPP boss, Sir Martin Sorrell – in which he explained why the market cap of his next generation marketing services firm had plummeted from £5 billion to £300 million in the past three years – he’s back for part two. We cover the consolidation of the $700 billion global digital ad market down to a handful of global tech media players. Is that dangerous for brands and the broader marketing supply chain? Maybe, but Sir Martin thinks they’re only going to get bigger. Plus, we go deeper into AI and mass personalisation – Netflix style – along with the dodgy, inaccurate, but thriving online user data trade that was revealed a month or so ago by UM’s former chief privacy officer, Arielle Garcia (which is now Mi3’s top podcast and story so far this year). For the record, Sorrell agrees with Garcia: “Garbage in, garbage out … There are some murky parts of the market, but that’s our role to expose that, not to be a part of it.” Either way, he thinks the platforms will only get closer to marketers at the expense of intermediaries – and there is little agencies can do to stop it. Plus, he says OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who reckons AI will displace 95 per cent of advertising jobs, is “directionally right”. The timeframe? “Three years,” per Sorrell. “It’s going to be uncomfortable.” Conversely, Sorrell says the big platforms won’t be shrinking any time soon. On a GDP basis, “these are countries, they are not companies anymore.” He thinks that means regulation, unless co-ordinated globally, is ultimately powerless.

It’s had to revise projected unit sales figures down from 7,000 annually because of the economic climate, Australia’s competitive, nuanced automotive market and changing EV regulations, and it’s faced early challenges with product reliability globally and a digital sales process locally. But the team behind Volkswagen-owned Cupra are sticking to their ambitions of becoming a design and performance-led brand either loved or hated by consumers – never just liked. Cupra’s global brand chief, Ignacio Prieto, EVP of sales, marketing and aftersales, Sven Schuwirth, and Australian director, Ben Wilks, share the inspiration and story behind the latest car brand on the Australian block, how they’re balancing brand distinctiveness and design with local flavour, commercial setbacks thus far and the tribal community and performance play they’re executing to win over a nuanced set of younger-than-average car buyers who still enjoy driving, not being driven.