Under the deal, Whalar will be integrated into Accenture Song, adding scaled creator and influencer capabilities to its customer growth offering. The move reflects Accenture Song’s continued push to embed creator-led marketing more deeply into client experience and commerce strategies, combining social commerce, real-time insights and AI-driven discovery.

“The creator economy demands a new kind of expertise, one that blends authentic creator relationships, deep platform knowledge, and the technology to activate both at enterprise scale,” said Dimitri Maex, global marketing practice lead at Accenture Song. 

He added, “Bringing Whalar into Accenture Song lets us pair creator authenticity with the intelligence and scale to deliver work that’s not just produced but felt. Because as the agentic economy grows, what wins won’t be the most content—it will be what is most original and the most human.”

The acquisition comes as social platforms have become central to brand discovery and engagement, with the creator economy among the fastest-growing segments in digital advertising. 

Whalar brings established scale in creator marketing, having delivered more than US$600 million in campaigns across over 40 countries and 15 languages and managing thousands of creator activations annually. Its work spans major platforms and is supported by measurement tools including media mix modelling and third-party research.

Founded as a specialist in creator-led marketing, Whalar has evolved into one of the most recognised agencies in the space.

“We’re incredibly proud of what the team has built over the past decade,” said Neil Waller and James Street, co-founders & co-CEOs of Whalar Group. “Accenture Song operates at a level of scale and ambition that is truly unique, and we believe there is no better partner to take Whalar Agency to its next phase of growth.”

Following the acquisition, Whalar Group will continue to operate its remaining businesses, including Sixteenth, Foam, Moby Ventures, The Lighthouse and The Business of Creativity, and will enter a three-year strategic partnership with Accenture Song.

Whalar co-CEOs Emma Harman and Jo Cronk will continue in their roles and join Accenture Song, along with the agency’s more than 170 employees across the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Germany and Spain.

“This is a special moment for our remarkable team and us,” said Emma and Jo. “We are immensely proud of what we have built over the past decade in partnership with our clients, partners, and the creator community. Joining Accenture Song allows us to build on our unrivalled foundation and accelerate our ambition for the next chapter in the creator revolution.”

The acquisition follows Accenture Song’s earlier moves to expand its creator capabilities, including Superdigital in 2025 and Unlimited in 2024. Terms were not disclosed, and completion is subject to customary closing conditions.

“Accenture Song exists to help the world’s most ambitious companies grow—and today, growth is inseparable from relevance,” said Ndidi Oteh, CEO of Accenture Song. “Social is where brands are discovered, where modern commerce is happening and where consumer habits tell us what products and services are going to win next. Whalar brings a creator capability that strengthens how we drive meaningful impact and growth for clients.”

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As part of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ platform, at the heart of the campaign is a 60-second cinematic film that brings together Son Heung-min, Atlas, and five rising football talents across the world as symbols of the next generation shaping the future of both sport and innovation.

Through the creative, Hyundai Motor draws parallels between emerging football stars and advancing robotics technology, reinforcing its belief that the future is not something people wait for, but something they create today.

The campaign also celebrates Hyundai Motor’s 27-year partnership with FIFA, using football’s biggest stage to showcase the brand’s vision for progress, innovation and the next generation of talent. 

“‘Next Starts Now’ captures the essence of who we are as a brand… We’re thrilled to share this vision with football fans across the globe during the FIFA World Cup 2026™,” shared Sungwon Jee, Executive Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer at Hyundai Motor Company. 

Beyond the hero film, the campaign will expand through a series of fan engagement initiatives designed to connect football, culture and technology.

Earlier this year, Hyundai Motor hosted youth football camps across Atlanta, Miami, New Jersey and Los Angeles, featuring football legends Mia Hamm and Tim Howard, with participants taking part in coaching sessions, experiential activities and opportunities to win tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Hyundai Motor is also set to bring the campaign to life via immersive fan experiences at FIFA Fan Festival sites in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Toronto, Guadalajara and Monterrey, as well as the NYNJ World Cup 26 Fan Zone in Queens, New York. 

Additional campaign extensions include the “School of Football” content series featuring Son Heung-min and Atlas, the FIFA Museum’s “Legacies of Champions” exhibition at Rockefeller Center, and the “Be There With Hyundai” National Team Bus campaign showcasing children’s artwork from around the world.

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The acquisition comes as large language models and AI-generated answers increasingly shape how users research products, compare options and make purchase decisions online.

It also reflects a shift in how brand visibility is determined, with AI systems influencing which products and companies appear in answers, which competitors are referenced and which sources are cited—often before users reach a brand’s own channels.

“AI has changed buyer behaviour forever. We’re at a pivotal moment where companies must rethink traditional digital strategies and accept that the internet must be written for machines to understand if we want humans to experience it,” said Eric Stine, Chief Executive Officer of Sitecore. 

Stine added, “With Scrunch, we enable our customers to understand how they are represented in AI-generated answers and automatically act on those insights, maximising how they reach, engage, and serve their customers. We’re helping brands show up with greater clarity, authority, and relevance so they can build trust, increase share of voice, and influence decisions early in the buying journey when it matters most.”

Against this backdrop, Scrunch provides visibility into how brand messaging appears across AI-generated responses, including gaps or misrepresentations, and feeds these insights into SitecoreAI to support content optimisation across digital channels.

The deal combines Scrunch’s Agent Experience Platform (AXP) and analytics capabilities with Sitecore’s digital experience platform (DXP), creating an integrated system designed to connect insight with content activation and measurement.

Carrie Grapenthin, Chief Marketing Officer of Perficient, said, “At Perficient, we’re building an AI-first marketing engine focused on speed, relevance, and real impact. As a customer and partner of both Sitecore and Scrunch, this combination is an exciting opportunity for our team. Insight without action isn’t enough. Scrunch helps us see where our brand is showing up, where gaps exist, and what needs to improve. Sitecore helps us act on those insights across the content and experiences we already manage, so we can move faster and deliver differentiated content in our unique brand voice.”

Sitecore said the combined platform will help organisations distribute and manage content across channels with greater consistency, with the aim of improving engagement, conversion and performance tracking.

Scrunch’s approach focuses on Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), extending beyond traditional website analytics by mapping how brands appear across large language models such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity, and identifying opportunities to improve visibility.

“Control of the brand narrative is shifting, and customers are increasingly trusting AI to define brands, rather than the organisations behind those brands,” said Chris Andrew, Chief Executive Officer of Scrunch, a Sitecore company. 

He added, “By joining forces, we’re helping companies meet buyers where they are, moving beyond traditional SEO to win inside AI-generated answers. That’s where Scrunch’s AXP is a critical advantage, delivering content in a format AI agents can read and use without disrupting the human experience, allowing brands to become the trusted sources that power those answers.”

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Created by BBH Singapore, the campaign centres on the brand’s 20-year streak as the global TV market leader with a cinematic hero film inspired by a long-standing football tradition where national teams receive stars for every World Cup victory.

Drawing from this idea, Samsung transforms its 20 years at the top of the TV market into 20 stars, which are dramatically flown across Europe by helicopters before arriving at a packed football stadium for the reveal of a brand new 20-star campaign logo.

Benjamin Braun, Chief Marketing Officer at Samsung Electronics Europe, shared that the campaign celebrates the brand’s long-standing market leadership “in a visually memorable way that football fans would instantly relate to.” 

“We’re incredibly proud celebrating Samsung’s achievement with such a powerful brand platform. Especially doing so in a World Cup year when everyone is looking to upgrade their TV,” said Sascha Kuntze, Chief Creative Officer at BBH Singapore. 

Rolling out across 25 European markets, the massive campaign spans digital, social and in-store channels, bringing Samsung’s 20-year milestone to life through football-inspired interactive displays and fan-focused experiences. 

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Created with TBWA\Media Arts Lab, the campaign is the latest chapter in Apple’s long-running “Privacy. That’s iPhone” platform to focus on how Safari helps users navigate the web with greater privacy. 

At the heart of the campaign is a short and unsettling hero film that reimagines online trackers as intrusive “clingers” dressed in metallic tracksuits to show how easily internet users are followed across the web without their knowledge.

As the story unfolds, the trackers relentlessly attach themselves to web users until Safari steps in to block them, illustrating the browser’s privacy-focused approach.

The campaign also highlights Safari’s built-in privacy protections, including Intelligent Tracking Prevention and Fingerprint Defense, which help block online trackers and make it harder for advertisers to identify and follow users across the web.

Through the campaign, Apple aims to raise awareness of online privacy at a time when consumer data is increasingly used across the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Clingers” will roll out globally across television, out-of-home, digital display, social media, cinema, YouTube and Apple’s owned platforms from June 3.

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As part of the initiative, learners who previously built a streak of 30 days or more can restore it by completing three lessons in a single sitting. The feature is available until June 30.

The event follows sustained user demand, with tens of thousands of requests for streak recovery submitted across social media in more than 80 countries over the past year. Duolingo said the timing coincides with Duo’s birthday, adding a celebratory element for users seeking to reclaim their longest streaks.

The streak feature is a core part of the app’s engagement model, designed to support daily learning habits. Duolingo noted that losing a streak is also a common reason some users stop returning to the platform, and the new initiative is intended to reduce that barrier.

Cem Kansu, Chief Product Officer at Duolingo, said, “For years, learners have asked us for a way to recover lost streaks, and Duo’s birthday felt like the right moment to do it. We’re excited for learners to come back and discover an even better learning experience, with more ways to practise and even more to learn than when they left.” 

The company added that returning users will find an updated app experience, including expanded advanced content through CEFR level B2 across its nine most popular languages, as well as new interactive features such as Speaking Adventures, Flashcards, Explain My Answer, and Practice Hub.

Other updates include a Duolingo Score aligned with curriculum standards, a chess course that has reached 7 million daily learners within a year of launch, and a math course covering elementary to high school-level concepts aligned with Common Core State Standards.

“Streaks represent hard work, time, and energy spent learning, so they mean a lot to our learners. Streak Revival gives people a chance to pick learning back up without feeling like they’ve lost all the progress and momentum they built before,” commented Bozena Pajak, Head of Learning Science at Duolingo.

The event runs from June 1 to 30, 2026, with eligible users prompted to participate directly in the app.

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Titled “Light on, time off,” the campaign is positioned as a manifesto translating the sensory experience of the candle into a moment of pause and introspection, where time appears to slow or suspend.

At the core of the platform is a contemplative film that focuses on the combustion of the candle in extended real time, tracking the transformation of wax and the movement of the flame in a hypnotic, slow rhythm. The format, designed around the candle’s 50-hour burn time, departs from conventional short-form advertising and algorithm-driven content consumption.

The campaign also adopts a deliberately restrained tone, positioning itself against fragmented digital content. The film is presented not as a message designed to trigger immediate response, but as a sustained visual presence intended to be experienced over time.

As part of its rollout, Diptyque has deployed large-scale DOOH activations across key markets, including a 50-hour continuous broadcast in Seoul, a 36-hour daytime takeover in London, and hourly 3-minute excerpts in Hong Kong over one week.

The campaign is further extended through global retail installations featuring in-store screenings across France, the UK, Japan, the US, and China, as well as a 50-hour public event in Paris at the Jardin du Palais-Royal.

A longer 12-hour version of the film will also be released on YouTube, designed as ambient content accompanying daily activities such as work, rest, and sleep.

Across all formats, the flame is presented as a steady, evolving visual rhythm, reinforcing the campaign’s focus on slowness, contemplation, and sensory continuity.

More than a brand campaign, “Light on, time off” positions itself as an exploration of duration and attention, framing restraint and extended time as creative and experiential choices within contemporary luxury communication.

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Dano Kwan joins Zendesk from Amplitude, where she was CMO and led its go-to-market transition into an AI-native analytics platform. During her tenure, she oversaw a 52% year-on-year increase in website traffic and built a global marketing engine that contributed more than a third of the marketing-sourced pipeline.

Prior to Amplitude, she spent nearly a decade at SAP, serving as CMO for SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass, and held senior marketing leadership roles at Collibra and Dropbox.

Commenting on her appointment, Dano Kwan said, “Agentic service is the defining opportunity in CX right now, and there’s no brand better positioned to lead it than Zendesk. Years of category leadership have built a level of trust and credibility with the market that you can’t manufacture overnight, and that equity is exactly what’s needed to take AI from promise to proof.”

She continued, “Our true structural moats lie in our deep industry vertical expertise, our massive knowledge and data foundation, and a platform with trust and governance engineered directly into it. I’m excited about the opportunity to further extend and amplify Zendesk’s category leadership in the AI era.”

The appointment comes as Zendesk reports growing traction for its AI offerings, with AI bookings more than doubling in fiscal year 2026. The company expects this figure to more than double again in FY2027 to over US$400 million, driven by adoption of agentic messaging as well as new voice and email AI agents.

Zendesk is positioning the development within its broader push toward an “Autonomous Service Workforce” as demand rises for outcome-based AI solutions. Dano Kwan’s experience spans multiple global markets, including Singapore, Sydney, Paris and San Francisco, which the company said will support its international growth strategy.

“Tifenn is a disciplined leader who understands how to connect marketing strategy to measurable growth,” said Tom Eggemeier, CEO, Zendesk. “As we reinvent Zendesk for the next generation of customer service, Tifenn’s deep expertise in scaling pipeline, leading AI-driven marketing, and aligning GTM functions will be essential. Her ability to articulate the tangible value of our technology makes her the right person to lead our brand as we move toward an autonomous service workforce.”

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The campaign positions the fruit juice and nata de coco beverage as a response to everyday moments that cannot be avoided, drawing on the idea that Gen Z consumers can skip digital content but not real-life situations. It frames the product’s chewy texture as part of a “Tangible Fun” experience designed to make such moments more manageable.

Mogu Mogu, which has built a presence in markets including the Philippines, South Korea and the United Kingdom based on NIQ data, is promoted as a category pioneer in fruit juice with nata de coco. The campaign highlights chewing as a sensory action associated with relaxation, aligning it with moments of stress or lack of control.

Targeting Gen Z audiences, the initiative encourages consumers to “keep going” through unavoidable situations by reframing them as more playful experiences through the drink’s texture and format.

The rollout will run across a 360-degree mix of digital and physical channels, including social media activations and influencer partnerships, as well as in-store sampling and experiential campaigns in key markets such as the Philippines, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Piyajit Ruckariyapong, Chief Executive Officer of Sappe Public Company Limited, said, “Generation Z is a powerful force shaping global trends. They value experiences, fun, and authenticity. The ‘Wanna Skip? You Gotta Chew’ campaign reflects our deep understanding of their behaviour.”

She added, “‘Mogu Mogu’ is not just a beverage; it is an experience that helps consumers navigate everyday moments in a fun and natural way. This aligns with our ambition to grow a Thai brand into a truly global brand that resonates with consumers across diverse markets.”

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This article explains how the acquisition signals a much bigger shift and that in the AI era, customer identity and intelligence infrastructure are becoming strategic enterprise control points.

The ‘customer graph’ is becoming the operating system for enterprise AI. That is the real story behind Publicis’ acquisition of LiveRamp

It’s not about consolidation, scale, or martech synergies. The question this deal forces every brand to answer is simpler and more consequential: who controls the intelligence layer your AI runs on?

For years, identity resolution and data collaboration were treated as plumbing — necessary, unglamorous, largely invisible. Publicis just paid $2.2 billion to make clear that they are now the foundation on which AI understands customers, makes decisions, and drives action across the enterprise. That is not infrastructure anymore. That is leverage.

Here is what most AI strategies get wrong: The model is not the moat

Foundation models are commoditising fast, and within a few years most enterprises will have access to roughly equivalent AI capabilities. The differentiation will not come from which model you run. It will come from what that model knows about your customers, and how accurately, durably, and quickly it can act on that intelligence.

In that environment, identity, first-party customer data, and interoperability become foundational enterprise infrastructure. The companies that win will be the ones capable of creating trusted customer context that AI systems can act on in real time.

That is the bet Publicis just made. And it should prompt every brand to ask whether they are making it too — or ceding that ground by default.

AI does not fix broken customer intelligence

There is still a tendency in the market to talk about AI as though the model itself is the differentiator. In practice, the differentiator is whether AI has access to accurate, durable, and real-time customer context.

If the underlying customer data is fragmented, duplicated, stale, or disconnected from durable identity, AI simply accelerates poor decisions. A recommendation engine becomes confidently wrong. Suppression fails. Media spend gets wasted targeting customers who have already converted. Personalisation becomes irrelevant because different systems hold conflicting versions of the same customer.

We already see this problem today. A customer purchases in-store but continues receiving acquisition ads for days because identity systems across retail, media, and CRM environments are disconnected. AI does not solve that problem. It amplifies it if the underlying customer graph is inaccurate.

That is why this acquisition matters beyond advertising technology.

The industry is shifting from systems of record to systems of decision and action. The companies pulling ahead are not necessarily the ones with the most data. They are the ones capable of continuously transforming customer signals into intelligent decisions in real time.

Durable identity is the moat. Not the model.

Brands should own the intelligence layer

LiveRamp built its business on neutrality. Sitting between advertisers, publishers, retailers, and agencies, it acted as trusted connective tissue — a Switzerland of identity. Publicis acquiring it changes that, regardless of what the integration roadmap says. You cannot be neutral infrastructure when you are owned by one of the largest buyers of media on the planet.

The conflict of interest is not subtle. Publicis now has a financial stake in how your identity data is resolved, governed, and operationalised — and a separate financial stake in winning your media budget. Those two incentives do not point in the same direction. Enterprises should not need to trust that they will be managed independently. They should not have to trust at all.

This is not a criticism of Publicis. It is a structural reality. And the right response for enterprises is not to hope for the best — it is to own the layer that makes the question irrelevant.

This will accelerate demand for independent customer intelligence layers that sit above activation and media ecosystems rather than inside them — particularly for enterprises operating across multiple agencies, retail media networks, cloud providers, and AI platforms simultaneously.

Most large enterprises do not want their customer intelligence strategy dependent on a single identity, media, or activation ecosystem. They want the flexibility to choose the partners and activation rails that best fit their business while maintaining ownership of the customer graph itself.

That becomes especially important as more enterprises build internal AI capabilities and deploy AI agents across marketing, service, and commerce. The intelligence layer powering those systems is becoming too strategic to fully outsource or embed inside a single activation ecosystem.

The black box problem gets harder in the AI era

There is a harder conversation underneath this deal that the industry has been reluctant to have. Black-box identity systems are increasingly incompatible with AI-driven enterprises.

As AI becomes more deeply embedded across marketing, commerce, and service operations, enterprises will demand greater visibility into how customer identity is resolved, governed, and operationalised.

Black-box identity systems become harder to justify when customer intelligence is powering automated decisioning at scale.

Brands increasingly want to understand how identity is being resolved, how customer data is governed, whether customer intelligence remains portable across systems, and how AI-driven decisions are being made from that data.

That pressure toward transparency and governance will only intensify as AI agents become more operationally embedded across the enterprise.

Interoperability will become a strategic advantage

One of the most important implications of this acquisition is that ecosystem flexibility itself is becoming strategically valuable.

The future will belong to enterprises that can create a durable customer intelligence foundation once and operationalise it everywhere.

That requires more than a customer database. It requires an enterprise-owned intelligence layer capable of interoperating across cloud environments, media ecosystems, retail networks, identity frameworks, and AI systems without forcing businesses into rigid architectures or closed ecosystems.

This acquisition will accelerate enterprise demand for warehouse-native and composable architectures. Brands that locked themselves into closed ecosystems are already feeling the cost. The ones building on open, portable foundations are better positioned for whatever comes next — whether that is a new AI platform, a new identity framework, or the next acquisition that reshapes the landscape.

The more fragmented the ecosystem becomes, the more valuable neutral orchestration layers become.

The next competitive battle will be won at the intelligence layer

The Publicis-LiveRamp deal is a signal, not an anomaly. The intelligence layer is being consolidated. The only question is whether your enterprise is building one you own, or inheriting one someone else controls.

The companies that win will not be the ones most dependent on a single media or activation ecosystem. They will be the ones that own their customer graph, control their intelligence layer, and preserve the flexibility to orchestrate across whatever partners, channels, and AI systems the future brings.

In the AI era, the customer graph is becoming the operating system for enterprise decisioning.

**

This thought leadership piece is written by Tony Owens, CEO, Amperity.

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