Meaning Is Scarce: What Campaign's Data, Creativity & Culture Briefing Means for Brand Experience
On 11 September, the Just Honest team joined around 150 marketers, agency leaders and technology partners at Campaign Middle East's Breakfast Briefing on Data, Creativity and Culture in Dubai.
The morning covered some important conversations around agentic AI, personalisation, data and the future of advertising. Despite the focus on automation, the same theme kept coming back: human judgement, meaning and real-world connection.
Several points from the morning bear directly on how brands should think about experience in 2027. Campaign's full wrap-up of the event is definitely worth reading.
These are the four that stood out to us...
1. Content is abundant. Meaning is not.
George Yaryura, SVP Marketing at Mashreq, put it most clearly:
"AI is creating content abundance, but it makes meaning scarce."
His point was that customers already feel overwhelmed. Another message adds nothing for them. Relevance does.
For experiential, this changes what an experience is for. A lot of activations have been designed to produce content, such as the photo moment or the installation built for the feed. That content is now the easiest thing in marketing to manufacture.
What AI can't produce is first-hand experience: a conversation with a person, a product someone has held, a space they explored, the feeling of having been there. As synthetic content fills every feed, those moments become rarer, and rarity creates value. The brands that benefit will be the ones that design experiences around what people do and feel, not what gets posted afterwards.
2. Every channel now has to prove itself, experiential included.
The pressure on marketing to show commercial impact came up repeatedly. The topic of CMOs under pressure to prove their value in the boardroom, with organisations wanting faster reporting and a clearer link between marketing and business results came up a few times throughout the morning.
On the brand side, Aditya Deb of Beiersdorf framed the questions he wants answered after an activation. Did it bring in shoppers new to the brand? Did it grow the category? Did sales come from new customers or existing ones? Mohamed Toutou of Ferrero warned against confusing KPIs with marketing objectives. Engagement, reach and views are useful signals, but they don't tell you whether a campaign changed how people see the brand.
This is the gap we see most often in experiential. Footfall, dwell time, reach and leads captured are KPIs. The objective is a change in behaviour: trial, consideration, purchase, advocacy. If an experience is measured only on the first list, it will struggle to defend its budget, and in a year of tighter regional spend, it will be one of the first lines questioned.
3. The physical world is becoming a brand and data asset.
Amit Kumar of ADNOC Distribution spoke about the value of a physical-world presence. Customers visit fuel stations habitually, which gives the business a distinct view of real behaviour. He described personalisation as more than product recommendations, extending to testing new services and brand experiences in privacy-safe environments.
The fireside chat also made a point every experiential team should take on board. Consumers expect personalisation, but expectation doesn't grant permission. Brands earn the right to use data by giving something back.
Well-designed experiences are one of the few places where that value exchange happens face to face. Someone chooses to take part, gets something worthwhile in return, and shares information because the trade feels fair. Experiences built with this in mind can produce first-party data and behavioural insight that no media channel can match.
4. AI will expose weak briefs.
Campaign's own summary of the morning ended with an observation that stayed with us: AI will not replace marketing craft, but it will expose weak craft faster. Messy briefs, vague KPIs and generic creative will have fewer places to hide.
Donna Glasper of Shamal Holding gave a good example of what remains human. Presenting a bold strategy to a board means reading every reaction in the room as it happens and adjusting delivery in real time. AI can help prepare the deck. It can't feel the room.
Experiences work the same way. Their value comes from human judgement at every stage: what the brief asks for, how the journey is designed, how staff respond to the people in front of them. It starts with one question we put to every brief: what do you want people to do differently because this experience happened? If a brief can't answer that, no amount of technology in the build will fix it.
What we're taking into 2027 planning
The morning reinforced something we believe: as more of marketing becomes automated, experiences in the real world will carry more weight. That will only happen if they are designed and measured against real business outcomes.
Before approving your next experience, ask what evidence would convince you it worked? Then design the experience to produce that evidence.
If you are looking at your next RFP and would like to discuss with one of our strategists, you can book a Free strategy session here →
If you've already delivered an experience and want to know what it actually achieved, talk to us about an Experience Audit where we review the evidence you hold and shows what to measure differently next time.
For more insights from Just Honest, sign up for our quarterly briefing on brand experience.
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The content published on this blog is for informational and inspirational purposes only. While we strive to provide up-to-date insights, expert opinions, and industry trends, the information shared should not be considered as professional advice tailored to any specific event or business need. All views expressed in our blog posts are our own and are intended to inspire creativity, spark innovation, and provide valuable insights into the world of brand experience, event marketing, experience design, event design and event management. However, event strategies, technologies, and trends evolve rapidly, and we recommend consulting with a professional before making any major event or experience-related decisions. Additionally, any third-party tools, platforms, or services mentioned in our blog posts are referenced purely for educational purposes. We do not endorse or receive compensation for mentioning them unless explicitly stated.
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