Vanessa Nicol.
The AdNews end-of-year Perspectives, looking back at 2025 and forward to next year.
Vanessa Nicol, Chief Operating Officer, Creative, dentsu ANZ.
I’ve just returned from four years working for dentsu in Asia. And I’ve seen some things: the shift to Key Opinion Leader as most effective form of marketing in China, social-commerce shifting from experiment to mainstream channel across Southeast Asia and the continual overflowing of content across channels.
Having worked in acquisition marketing in Optus in the mobile growth era, to stepping into advertising and media leadership roles running key clients such as Telstra, Spark/Skinny NZ and eBay and partnering with Google, Meta and Tik Tok on multiple initiatives, one thing I’m certain of is that creativity is not just what we make; it’s how we make it.
The shift isn’t from craft to speed. It’s from disconnected craft to system-powered consistency, where design systems hold the brand together across platforms.
The problem isn’t making more content; it’s making content that makes sense together.
Most brands keep reinventing the wheel campaign after campaign, producing hundreds of mismatched assets that don’t add up to a coherent brand story. It’s the same old problem.
What brands require is a design code system that defines how form, motion and interactions all come together to tell a coherent brand story across platforms. The system ensures brand consistency without sameness — making sure the brand feels recognisable everywhere it appears, while flexing its voice, tone, and visuals to suit each context. It’s a strong (and simple) strategic POV with creative and experience together that we can deliver on.
A system isn’t in what it restricts — it’s in what it enables.
A design-system-powered workflow built for speed, scalability, and personalised rollouts. From strategy and creative design through to build, deployment, dynamic content, and analytics, all streamlined under one model.
When we approach deploying an enterprise solution for our clients, it’s a three-stage approach.
Stage 1 - How could we automate repetitive tasks?
- Templatising repetitive tasks so that we can introduce automation at scale
- Streamlining repetitive email marketing workflows and introducing automation
- Standardised assets and content to deliver consistency in brand and creative
Stage 2 - How do we apply generative AI to unlock efficiency, increase value and velocity?
- Image modification, upscaling and expansion
- Introduction of generative video and audio
- Cohesive asset creation and expansion aligned to brand and campaign hierarchy
- Agentic copywriting and proofreading to enable mass personalisation
- Introduction of intelligent quality assurance and compliance
Stage 3 - How do we shift from augmentation to intelligent end-to-end generation?
- AI-assisted campaign orchestration across channels
- Dynamic creative and messaging based on real-time media insights
- Autonomous asset and copy generation, guided by brand and performance data
- Predictive personalisation across lifecycles
And the results a reduction in variation creation time, creating faster campaign turnarounds and most importantly brand consistency and channel relevance.
What does this mean for 2026? We’ll continue to optimise our workflow systems, reduce duplication of work and streamline the production process. This provides our clients with scale, speed to market and costs efficiencies, especially important in an era of shrinking budgets.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.