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The Clean Read

Issue 1
Monday 2 November 2026

Villagers who bought their pub stand behind the bar of The Street Bar, Kilteely, holding pints
The Street Bar, Kilteely, Co. Limerick: some of the 26 villagers who bought it. Photo: Heineken Ireland press kit

Bravery, with receipts.

Five pieces of work that won big and moved numbers, the creative leader behind this year’s Film Grand Prix, and the week the media money moved.

Before the coffee goes cold

Welcome to the first issue of The Clean Read, a weekly magazine about the work, the people and the business of advertising and design. Each issue comes in three parts: the work, one creative leader in depth, and the business underneath it all.

The filter is simple: bold, unforgettable and proven. Every campaign here won at the top of Cannes Lions 2026, and wherever the brand or agency has published hard numbers, they sit next to the work. Where nobody has published results, the piece says so. Applause is not evidence.

Two threads run through the issue. First, insurers and banks, the dullest categories on paper, made the bravest work of the year: AXA, Suncorp and Coinbase. Second, the best ideas this year turned a product truth into a public act. A clause in a contract. A pub that the village owns. A tracker for stolen chocolate.

This week’s person is Felix Richter of Mother, Ad Age’s Chief Creative Officer of the Year, whose Claude films took the Film Grand Prix. He is worth reading for how he runs a department: a polyphony, not one voice. Then the business: Coca-Cola and PepsiCo reshuffled billions in media in seven weeks, and WPP hired a new head of creative.

Part one

The Work

Five Grand Prix winners from Cannes Lions 2026, each with a business result that stands up in a boardroom.

1.1 AXA France · Publicis Conseil

Three words that rewrote an insurance policy

The only campaign ever to win Titanium and then come back a year later and win Creative Effectiveness.

An empty bathtub in a red-tiled bathroom
An empty bathroom, from the Three Words film. Still: AXA / Publicis Conseil, via The One Show

What it was

In France every household has to hold home insurance by law, and those contracts already pay for emergency relocation when a home becomes uninhabitable through fire or flood. AXA added three words to the clause: “and domestic violence”. A victim calls the emergency number and is relocated immediately: a driver collects her and any children and takes them to a secured hotel, and she gets free psychological, legal and financial support to find a longer-term solution. The clause went into all 2.5 million AXA home contracts, retroactively.

Why it worked

It is a magazine-cover provocation done with a contract instead of a cover. There is no metaphor and no film doing the heavy lifting. The product itself changed, and the change was small enough to say in one breath. The idea also lived where insurance actually lives, in the policy document, so it couldn’t be dismissed as cause marketing. It cost AXA something real and every customer already owned it.

Notice the order of operations. Product first, then PR, then advertising. Competitors had to answer it: Unblock Coffee’s case write-up notes that rivals followed with clauses of their own, which turns a campaign into a category standard with AXA’s name on it.

A Grand Prix should always feel personal. And this one resonates deeply with all of us.

Bertille Toledano, Creative Effectiveness jury president

Results

Per the Clio entry: 121 people supported in the first month and 1,292 in the first ten months; website traffic up 321% in month one; a 9% uplift in new contracts, holding at +9.1% over six months; and 67% consideration against a 43% market norm. It won the Titanium Grand Prix in 2025 and the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix in 2026, the first Titanium winner to do so.

Sources and further reading

1.2 Suncorp Insurance · Leo Australia

Haven: the house that talks back

The Titanium Grand Prix, the most coveted Lion of the year, went to an insurer’s tool for preventing the claim in the first place.

A hand holding a phone showing the Suncorp Haven app
Haven on a phone: the personalised film for one house, and the repairs it suggests. Still: Suncorp, Haven explainer film

What it was

Type in an Australian address and Haven builds a cinematic, personalised film about that specific house: its flood, bushfire, cyclone and storm risk. Homeowners then get practical actions, links to local trades and a downloadable resilience report. Under the hood it pulls 12 datasets through APIs, using Suncorp’s own data plus partners including Google, CoreLogic and WillyWeather.

Why it worked

The insight was a gap that fits on a slide: per Adweek, 81% of Australians have experienced extreme weather but only 17% have a plan to protect their home. Insurers usually show up after the disaster. Haven moves the brand to before it, which is better for the customer and for the loss ratio. That is why the jury called it a business strategy and not an ad.

Craft matters here too. The output is a film about the homeowner’s own house, not a dashboard. Personalisation at that scale used to be a gimmick. Here it is the whole product. For any data-rich brand the lesson is direct: turn the data into a story about the individual customer and give them one useful next step.

It’s a business strategy about resilience, as opposed to just recovery, which is a game changer in the insurance business.

Chaka Sobhani, Titanium jury president, via Adweek

Results

Per its One Show entry, Haven drew more than 280,000 visits with an average engagement of 2 minutes 55 seconds; 95% of users found it informative and engaging and 74% said they were likely to make their home more resilient. Suncorp has not published claims or sales effects. Besides the Titanium Grand Prix it won Silver in Creative Data, Silver in Brand Experience & Activation and Bronze in Direct.

Watch

Sources and further reading

1.3 Heineken Ireland · LePub Milan / Publicis Dublin

The pub that refused to die

Twenty-six villagers in Co. Limerick bought their last pub. Heineken made the film, then took the playbook on tour.

The Kilteely shareholders behind the bar of The Street Bar
Some of the 26: the new owners behind the bar of The Street Bar, Kilteely, Co. Limerick. Photo: Heineken press kit

What it was

Kilteely in Co. Limerick had already lost its shop and post office. When the last pub came up as its owner approached retirement, 26 locals with no hospitality experience raised €300,000 and bought it. Heineken’s local sales rep, Shane Boland, heard about it; the brand stepped in with business guidance and bar-staff training through its Ahhh-cademy, and commissioned Irish filmmaker Gar O’Rourke to document it.

Why it worked

The film is the advertising, but the strategy is the product: a repeatable model for community ownership with a resource hub, training and a roadshow. Contagious cites more than 2,100 Irish pubs closed since 2005, so it answers a real national anxiety. And it is the third year of the For the Love of Pubs platform after Pub Museums (2024) and Pub Succession (2025). That consistency is what made the Grand Prix possible.

It also wins the hardest fight in Irish beer: being loved in Guinness country. The jury president said exactly that. The brand earns that love by protecting the place where its product is drunk, not by talking about the product.

It’s a brilliant cultural engagement strategy, that captured the national attention, and enabled Heineken to find its way into Irish people’s hearts and pints.

Sarah Lemarié, Creative Strategy jury president

Results

The documentary premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2026 and toured communities across Ireland. Per Heineken Ireland’s agency Thinkhouse, one of those communities has since bought its own local pub. No sales figures have been published. Beyond the Creative Strategy Grand Prix it won four Bronze Lions in PR, Direct, B2B and Entertainment. Watch the whole ten-minute film; it earns its length.

Sources and further reading

1.4 KitKat · Burson London with VML UK

The KitKat Heist

Thieves stole 413,793 bars a week before Easter. KitKat turned the crisis into a national game of detective.

What it was

Just before Easter 2026, a truck carrying 12 tonnes of KitKat (413,793 bars) vanished between Italy and Poland. KitKat said so publicly, with its own voice: the thieves had taken have a break too literally. Then came act two, the Stolen KitKat Tracker. Anyone could type in the batch code on their bar to see whether it was part of the haul. The truck and cargo were recovered by 31 March.

Why it worked

Speed and tone. Crisis comms is normally the department of caution; this team treated the theft as a heist movie the public could star in. The tracker gave people something to do, which is why more than 115 brands joined in for free. And every line was judged against the risk: the jury president called it choreographed risk, not eliminated risk.

For brand teams this is a rehearsal question: could they go from incident to on-voice public response in hours? That needs pre-agreed tone, legal on speed-dial and a creative lead empowered to ship.

This work didn’t eliminate risk, it choreographed it. Every pun, every quote was calibrated to keep the brand on the right side of the line.

Dana Tahir, PR Lions jury president

Results

Per Burson: 800 million+ earned reach across 6,000+ articles, 29 million daily views at peak (up from a one-million baseline), a 44% share of voice on Meta, 2.2 million tracker engagements and real leads for the police. LBB adds a 31% share of voice across 93 markets and $224 million in earned media in ten days. Nestlé says the work won a Grand Prix, four Golds and four Silvers.

Sources and further reading

1.5 Coinbase · Isle of Any

Your Way Out

A crypto exchange ad, shot almost entirely in camera, about the NPCs of the old financial system. The Film Craft Grand Prix.

An isometric, game-like street of suited NPCs with one man highlighted by a yellow marker
Player one, marked. Every suit, sign and pavement was printed and built in camera. Still: Coinbase / Isle of Any. Dir. Oscar Hudson, MJZ. Via LBB

What it was

A man stuck in a PS2-era video game, an NPC with a Stamina, Health, Obedience and Will meter, makes a run for it, chased by a targeting arrow, and transitions from game movement into human movement. Coinbase’s line: many of us are still financial NPCs in a system built for institutions.

Why it worked

The craft is the argument. Per SHOOT and Contagious, almost nothing is CG. The sets were built to look pixelated from an isometric angle, costumes were printed to look two-dimensional, faces were recreated as low-poly masks, and performers were choreographed to move like game characters. The system feels fake because it is physically, uncannily real.

It is also category-brave. Most crypto advertising sells price or fear of missing out. This sells a feeling of agency and leaves the product almost entirely off screen. Isle of Any made the earlier Everybody Coinbase Super Bowl singalong, so this is a brand with range: a broad stunt one quarter, a crafted film the next.

Many of us are still financial NPCs… operating inside a system that works against us.

SHOOT, on the film’s premise

Results

Coinbase and Isle of Any have not published business results for this film. It is here for craft and for the category lesson. It won the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2026. Watch the extended cut, then the behind-the-scenes.

Watch

Sources and further reading

Part two

The People

Felix Richter, Global Chief Creative Officer of Mother and Ad Age’s CCO of the Year 2026.

2.1 Profile · Mother

Felix Richter

A law student from a town whose name translates as ‘Sadfield’, who now runs the creative output of the agency that won this year’s Film Grand Prix.

Black-and-white portrait of Felix Richter
Felix Richter, chief creative officer, Mother London. Photo: Susannah Wheeler for Ad Age

Richter grew up in Kummerfeld, near Hamburg; he told Creative Review the name translates as “Sadfield”. He studied law first. Later he said that in Germany, unless someone was painting fifteen hours a day as a child, people assumed a creative career was nonsense. Two cousins, one in an agency and one a director, pulled him in. He went to Miami Ad School in Hamburg and then to Y&R New York with his creative partner Alexander Nowak.

He joined Droga5 in 2011 and stayed eleven years. He was named Ad Age’s Creative Director of the Year in 2017 and became co-CCO with Tim Gordon in October 2019. His Droga5 years include Under Armour’s I Will What I Want, which won the Cyber Grand Prix in 2014, and Rule Yourself, whose Michael Phelps film won the Film Craft Grand Prix in 2016. On the side he made FLORIAN, a music-video trilogy for Paul Kalkbrenner, with director Björn Ruehmann.

In 2022 he moved to Mother London as Chief Creative Officer and Global Creative Partner. Mother is independent, with offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Shanghai, and he was later made its first Global CCO (Ad Age dates the move to 2025). Under him, Mother London was named Campaign’s Creative Agency of the Year for 2025 and Ad Age named Richter its CCO of the Year 2026. Their headline: a “polyphonic” creative culture.

The agency

Mother’s London roster includes KFC, IKEA, Uber Eats and Anthropic. The Anthropic relationship is the one to study. Mother launched Claude’s Keep Thinking platform, then used the 2026 Super Bowl to make fun of ad-supported AI. The films ran weeks after OpenAI said ads were coming to ChatGPT. They won the Super Clio and the Film Grand Prix at Cannes.

I believe the strongest creative departments are true polyphonies.

Felix Richter to IAA Romania, 2023

Why he matters

He is a creative leader at scale who argues his own voice shouldn’t dominate the output. For anyone who cares more about building a great department than a great personal portfolio, that is the place to start. Next: the work, then the philosophy in his own words.

Sources and further reading

2.2 The best work

Six films, one standard

From Droga5 to Mother: watch them in order and listen for how differently each one sounds.

Claude, “A Time and a Place” (Mother, 2026). Four films directed by Jeff Low show an ad-funded assistant, played by a human, derailing questions about health, family and work with irrelevant pitches. The end line: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” Results: per Appfigures data reported by TechCrunch and The Economic Times, Claude’s US downloads rose 32% to about 148,000 in the three days after the game, and the app reached No. 10 on the US App Store. Film Grand Prix and Super Clio.

Claude, “Keep Thinking” (Mother, 2025). The platform those films sit on. It positions Claude as a thinking partner rather than an attention machine, and it is how a tech brand avoids a spec war.

KFC UK & Ireland, “Believe in Chicken” (Mother). The cover of this issue. It is surreal and cinematic, and it doesn’t look like fast-food advertising. Mother has been KFC’s UK agency for years. Watch it for art direction.

Under Armour, “Rule Yourself” (Droga5, 2015–16). “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.” The Phelps film won the Film Craft Grand Prix, and the craft disappears into the idea.

Under Armour, “I Will What I Want” (Droga5, 2014). It made a football-native brand matter to women. Richter later named it one of his hardest briefs. Cyber Grand Prix.

Watch

Sources and further reading

Claude: Can I get a six pack quickly? Mother London. Uploaded by PUB Magazine
Claude: How can I communicate better with my mom? Mother London. Uploaded by Campaign Unpacked
Keep thinking with Claude Anthropic
KFC: Believe in Chicken KFC UK & Ireland

2.3 Philosophy · in his own words

No dogma. Outrageous dreams.

Four ideas from Richter’s interviews worth putting on the wall of a creative department.

1. Build a polyphony, not an echo

“I don’t think my creative voice needs to, or even should, come through strongly in our output. So I try to set up each creative to find the thing only they can do better than anyone else.” He says leadership can mean being supportive or demanding, and that, as with clients, everyone needs something different. The only constant: “ambition needs to be sky-high at all times.” (IAA Romania, 2023.)

2. Sometimes ignore the idea a little

At Droga5 he pushed back on the industry rule that the idea is the compass for every craft decision: “A lot of times that’s good, but it also limits the work. When we craft work, we allow ourselves to go left or go right and sometimes ignore the idea a little bit and try this and try that.” He saw that freedom in almost all of his favourite Droga5 work. (LBB, 2021.)

3. Know when it clicks, then protect it

“There is a moment in the process of crafting something where it clicks, and things start feeling really good.” That can happen on paper, in the fifth edit or only with the music. “After that point, it’s just a matter of protecting it and not doing too much more.” His test for an idea is also simple. If it solves the brief but the mechanic feels familiar, be wary. If it feels true or unseen, “that’s usually a good sign.”

The minute there are no outrageous dreams for what the work can be, it all becomes a drag.

Felix Richter

4. Advertising at its best is poetry

“I like whenever advertising starts to feel like poetry, in the sense that it articulates what can’t be expressed through everyday language.” His all-time references: Guinness Surfer, Cadbury Gorilla, the old Quiznos rat ads. On AI in 2023: today’s production is “like cutting out images from magazines with nail scissors compared to what will be possible soon”. But don’t believe the hype that it replaces everyone “five minutes from now”. On Claude, three years later: “We made funny ads about how unfunny it would be.”

Steal this for Monday

The practical version: name the thing only one particular creative can do, then write the brief that needs exactly that.

Sources and further reading

2.4 Talks & interviews

Watch, read, and one book

Richter gives few long talks. This is what is publicly worth the time, plus the book he called his creative highlight of 2025.

Video of Richter speaking at length is rare. The clip below is a short TV segment from his 2023 Creativity4Better appearance in Bucharest, broadcast on PRO TV. The best long reads are the two interviews in Philosophy above, plus Ad Age’s CCO of the Year profile (paywalled).

His creative highlight of 2025 wasn’t an ad. It was Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World: science stories based on real events that become more fictional as they go. Andrew Stirk, Anthropic’s head of brand marketing, recommended it to him. It is a good book to keep on the iPad for after this issue.

Watch

Sources and further reading

Part three

The Business

Two soft-drink giants moved their media money in seven weeks, WPP hired a creative chief, and Kevin the Carrot’s agency lost the account.

3.1 Account move · 22 Oct

Coca-Cola splits its media: WPP keeps the world, Omnicom takes North America

The biggest pitch of the year ended in a split decision, and creative stayed with WPP Open X.

The Coca-Cola Company headquarters tower in Atlanta, behind a red-brick church
The Coca-Cola Company’s headquarters, North Avenue, Atlanta. Photo: DXR, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

On 22 October Coca-Cola ended its global marketing review. WPP Open X keeps media everywhere except North America, Japan and South Korea. Omnicom wins North American media and will work with WPP’s StudioX. Dentsu keeps Japan and Korea. Creative was not in the review: WPP Open X remains the global creative partner. The new structure phases in from 1 December.

Context matters. Publicis had won Coke’s North American media and data from WPP the year before. It then took PepsiCo’s global media (next story) and withdrew from the Coke pitch. Omnicom, which had just lost PepsiCo after decades, took the North American consolation prize. On its Q3 call the same day, Omnicom said the IPG integration was “substantially completed”, with integrated media up over 10%.

Why it matters: clients are buying data and operating systems from holding companies (WPP’s Open Intelligence, Omnicom’s connected media, CRM and loyalty) and keeping creative separate. The leverage for creative agencies is the ideas no data platform can make.

Sources and further reading

3.2 Account move · 3 Sept

PepsiCo leaves Omnicom for Publicis, without a pitch

More than 25 years of Omnicom media ended by email.

A Japanese maple on the lawn in front of the low glass headquarters of PepsiCo
PepsiCo headquarters, Purchase, New York. Photo: angela n., Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

PepsiCo confirmed to Marketing Dive on 3 September that its global media was moving to Publicis Groupe, with no formal pitch. Publicis is building a “One PepsiCo” model that integrates media strategy, planning, activation, data, connected identity and technology across markets. Per Campaign, Omnicom had held the account in most markets for more than 25 years and stays on for creative (through BBDO, TBWA and Goodby Silverstein), sports and PR. COMvergence puts PepsiCo’s global media spend at $1.9bn.

Campaign says Omnicom executives heard only hours before the announcement. Omnicom’s stock fell 5% that afternoon, and Barclays estimated the loss at around $100m a year in fee income. Publicis shares rose 4.4% the next day and it pulled out of the Coca-Cola pitch, which handed WPP its path to keeping Coke (previous story).

Why it matters: the no-pitch move is the signal. When a client trusts a partner’s data and AI stack enough to skip a review, pitches stop being about ideas. For in-house teams, it is a reason to own the brand’s creative standard rather than rent it.

Omnicom had run the work in most big markets for more than 25 years.

Marketing Newsroom

Sources and further reading

3.3 Leadership · 8 Oct

WPP hires McCann’s Tyler Turnbull to run WPP Creative

One of Omnicom’s senior leaders crosses the street, as WPP bets on creative to lead its turnaround.

Portrait of Tyler Turnbull
Tyler Turnbull. Photo: WPP

WPP announced on 8 October that Tyler Turnbull, Global CEO of McCann, will join as CEO of WPP Creative in early 2027, succeeding Jon Cook. Before McCann he spent twelve years at FCB, running Canada, North America and then the global network.

CEO Cindy Rose framed the job as putting “creativity at the centre of growth”: connecting WPP’s agencies (Ogilvy, VML, AKQA and others) with its media, data, production and commerce through WPP Open, while protecting each agency’s culture. Turnbull’s own line: “distinctive enough to protect the unique magic and cultures of our iconic brands.”

It also fits a pattern at Omnicom. Marketing Dive notes recent senior departures from its creative division, including Turnbull and the retirement of Omnicom Advertising chief Troy Ruhanen, while the advertising segment’s revenue fell by mid-single digits in Q3.

Why it matters: watch where the creative leaders go. They are the people who build teams, and talent tends to follow them.

Create the conditions for the world’s best talent to do the best work of their careers.

Tyler Turnbull

Sources and further reading

3.4 Account move · 23 Oct

Aldi and McCann Manchester split after twenty years

The agency behind Kevin the Carrot is out of Aldi’s global creative review.

An Aldi sign on a pole beside a road and a low supermarket under a blue sky
An Aldi store on the edge of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Photo: Barbara Carr, geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0

Aldi’s regular global creative review is down to two holding groups, and Omnicom isn’t one of them. That ends McCann Manchester’s more than twenty-year run on the creative account. McCann gave the UK Kevin the Carrot, the Like Brands work and the Cuthbert-versus-Colin caterpillar banter. Aldi says the process is ongoing and no appointments have been made. Prolific North notes that the social account is a separate contract and its future isn’t yet confirmed.

Why it matters: an agency can build a national icon and still lose the account when the client consolidates globally. Brand assets like Kevin belong to the client. The craft and the people who made them can walk. The lesson for brands: build distinctive assets in-house, or at least make sure the thinking behind them stays with the brand.

Sources and further reading