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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. The economy is something of a rollercoaster and consumer behavior is shifting just as fast. From fluctuating costs to changing shopping habits, todays market represents a real opportunity to support transformation for brands. As trusted marketing partners, our role isnt to predict whats next but to help clients confidently navigate the complexity, adapt with agility, and stay closely attuned to what their customers need right now. The evolving climate requires media and marketing professionals to develop a deeper understanding of how macroeconomic forces directly impact their clients’ decision-making processes. For example, when tariffs increase for say, a tequila producer targeting the U.S. market, the ripple effects are immediate. Those costs must be accounted for, either through increased pricing, which affects consumer purchasing patterns, or adjusting allocations elsewhere, including ad and marketing budgets. It is imperative to maintain client-centricity. So how can we, as agency leaders, support clients during unpredictable economic times and show up as more strategic business partners? Stay informed Every business is dealing with unprecedented shifts in how people shop, plus inconsistency in the market and supply chain. Everything is moving faster, and agencies need to move with agility, forecasting marketing plans for clients in real time. Theres HUGE opportunity out there, but also high risks. Clients consistently tell us they value partners who adapt quickly to changing circumstances and who not only keep pace with the changing tides, but anticipate the shifts. Earlier this year, one of our retail clients faced potential sales losses when a major publication was ending print circulation in a key market. We responded with a proposal to shift advertising based on data insights that could potentially exceed the lost sales. The ability to respond to shifts in real time can provide a competitive edge in client service. Instead of resisting this uncertainty, embrace it. Stay informed and stay current in the newsready to adapt, innovate, and lead the conversation. While we cant control market fluctuations, we can control our response. Focus on human, not just machine While businesses race towards AI adoption and automation, its easy to get swept up in the speed and scale of technology. Its important to remember that while these tools offer insights and efficiency, they dont provide the creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking that only human connection and emotional intelligence can provide. At Havas, we show up with a mindful understanding of what our clients are going through on a day-to-day basis. The heart of our approach is a commitment to people-centricity. Professionals are seeking environments where they feel genuinely valued, where personal and professional growth are nurtured, and contributions recognized in meaningful ways. Creating a culture where employees feel heard, supported, and empowered is essential in this market. This same value extends to client partnerships; our strategy emphasizes human expertise and technological capabilities working in harmony. Technology and automation are a means to an end (not the end itself!). Clients want more diagnostic data tools and increased media data optimization so their reporting can be more accessible and actionable. However, these tools enhance but dont replace the creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking that forge meaningful connections. Our clients are real humans, looking at data points of real customers. This requires their agency partner to go beyond the numbers, partnering with real people at the helm to interpret customers needs with empathy and humility. As businesses face constant recalibration with every news alert, they need their partners to care about the things they care about. By gaining a deeper understanding of their unique challenges and daily nuances, we can offer better visualizations, data granularity, collaborative insights, and recommendations, ultimately turning numbers into stories, patterns into strategy, and clicks into brand affinity. Act in real time Speed is currency in today’s market. By staying informed and monitoring the market, youll be able to quickly recognize and respond to organic waves of market conversation. Success lies in agility. For one fashion client, this meant accelerating planning cycles from weeks to days to capitalize on a products viral moment, leading to increased budgets and stronger future campaigns. Because we spent the time building a trusted and collaborative partnership with this client, we understood their audiences, objectives, and goals. We established media and culture monitoring processes to better react in real time which allowed us to swiftly activate because of our shared understanding. Spot the trend and seize the momentum because in a world that moves fast, the brands that act in real time to consumers wants and needs gain consumer share. When wildfires hit Los Angeles earlier this year, the combination of global media attention, celebrity-driven social coverage, and AI-generated images of Hollywood in flames exacerbated the problem and led tourists to believe the cityand maybe even the statewas closed for business, sparking a wave of misinformation. For Visit California, a nonprofit 501(c) corporation with a mission to market the state as a premier travel destination, speed was essential to deliver a powerful message of hope, resilience, and community during the Oscars. We were able to produce a meaningful moment for our client in several weeks. Leveraging agency connections, the campaign coordinated a strategic integration with award season, providing an empowering message that California is open for business, rolling out the red carpet for visitors from around the world. Activating celebrity ambassadors, strategic media buys, and perfectly timed messaging helped negate misinformation and bolster the state’s tourism and the livelihoods of countless workers who depend on visitors. By staying informed about market conditions, not shying away from client pressures, demonstrating adaptability, and maintaining empathy, you can deliver better, stronger results for your clients. Tomorrows successful media agencies will embrace this and build meaningful partnerships that last longer than any economic turbulence. We only exist because our clients trust us. Understanding their business is our business and agile actions in times that are changing faster than ever before, is how we win together. Greg James is North America CEO of Havas Media Network.
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E-Commerce
When a couple decided to take their relationship further on the most recent season of Love Is Blind, the moment was soundtracked with a familiar song: Billie Eilishs Birds of a Feather. It wasnt a flash-in-the-pan musical surprise. The season was stacked with familiar needle drops Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball, Justin Biebers Holy, Ariana Grandes Into You, Selena Gomezs Lose You to Love Me a gesture away from the little-known, sometimes generic pop songs that used to meet the show’s most emotional moments. Show creator and Kinetic Content CEO Chris Coelen attributed the pivot to the show’s anniversary. We decided, in this Season 8, to coincide with our fifth anniversary, to really embrace popular music in a big way, he said. And so, we ended up using throughout the entire season and in every episode we used popular music cues. Love Is Blind isnt the only reality show that walks the line between what viewers have labeled real songs and unfamiliar music. Where does the unfamiliar music come from? Its not artificial intelligence, where nobody controls the copyright, says The Bachelor music supervisor Jody Friedman. Theres too much risk involved with using AI music in these projects. Excluding big-time pop records, the music used on television comes from a number of sources. It can be custom, original music by the shows composers. It can be licensed directly from artists, or from sync agents, production music libraries or a one stop, what supervisors call a company that has the rights to license both the master recording and the composition rights. Music supervisors might also turn to covers of well-known songs. On the most recent season of The Bachelor, Friedman used a cover of Phil Phillips Sea of Love, a classic 50s tune. Its more affordable to pay to license a cover than the original recording and creatively, its a modern take on an old song, he says. Love Island USA music supervisor Sara Torres also uses covers. That can bring in other listeners that may not necessarily be into pop, but if they hear the song in a different genre, it might pull them in, to go back and listen to the original version, she says. Music libraries companies that represent music catalogs for licensing purposes are key, too, because if a song is too expensive to license, a supervisor can instead find a song that evokes the feeling of BTS Butter without having to pay for it. The indie libraries, lets say, for TV, could be anywhere from $1,000-1,500 per needle drop use, says Friedman. Generally speaking, bigger commercial songs can range from $20,000 to upward of $100,000 depending on the use, he says. A history of using real songs on dating competition shows The use of instantly recognizable pop music differs from program to program. Love Is Blind has used popular music in the past, but sparingly. Coelen points out the use of Lee Ann Womacks I Hope You Dance in Bliss Poureetezadi and Zack Goytowskis story in Season 4. But the frequency of Top 40 hits in the most recent season is new. He says the benefit of using these songs, creatively, is that it elevates the experience, for the viewer: Emotions are so connected to certain pieces of music, and they can conjure up feelings that we relate to. Kinetic Content declined The Associated Press request to speak with the shows music supervisor, Jon Ernst. Love Island USA featured songs like Chappell Roans Kaleidoscope and Sabrina Carpenters Please Please Please in its most recent season. Executive producer James Barker points out that the original U.K. show has always used commercial music, and therefore the U.S. version has endeavored to do the same. The show is meant to feel like youre on vacation with your best friends. Of course, when youre on vacation, youre sharing music, he says. I think that translates into how we create the show. Torres agrees. She adds that the show typically uses more commercial music in the beginning of the season, and then again in the finale you want that big impact. Because the show has a quick turnaround time, with six episodes a week whatever happens in Fiji on Monday airs Tuesday in America, as Barker describes it the show team pre-clears over a thousand songs, just in case they work for a particular narrative moment. That means requests are sent out to publishers and labels ahead of time, but they’re not paid for until the tracks are selected. A show with more lead time, The Bachelor has long used commercial songs in its programming. This year’s season, the show’s 29th, had several memorable musical moments, including a Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin needle drop when I Like It played as the cast made their way to Madrid. This is my first season with The Bachelor, but historically theyve used Colbie Caillat, Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys, lists Friedman. They used Billie Eilish last season. This season we used a David Guetta track, Dropkick Murphys for the episode in Boston. Theres a Karol G track. He adds The Bachelor does use a lot of recognizable pop songs, typically one or two per episode. Each episode does have a budget. So, while they may splurge on a pop song, the rest of the budget is spent on other music that comes at a lower cost, he says. So, will there be more real song drops in the future? For Love Is Blind, Coelen says simply: The answer is yes. Barker from Love Island USA agrees. Not only are you engaged with the characters, but the songs and artists that you care about listening to at home are being represented on television, he adds. Its just a bridge between us all. Maria Sherman, AP music writer
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E-Commerce
Scientists have developed a device that can translate thoughts about speech into spoken words in real time. Although its still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak. A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldnt speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial. It converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences, said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Other brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for speech typically have a slight delay between thoughts of sentences and computerized verbalization. Such delays can disrupt the natural flow of conversation, potentially leading to miscommunication and frustration, researchers said. This is “a pretty big advance in our field, said Jonathan Brumberg of the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, who was not part of the study. A team in California recorded the womans brain activity using electrodes while she spoke sentences silently in her brain. The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. They trained an AI model that translates neural activity into units of sound. It works similarly to existing systems used to transcribe meetings or phone calls in real time, said Anumanchipalli, of the University of California, Berkeley. The implant itself sits on the speech center of the brain so that its listening in, and those signals are translated to pieces of speech that make up sentences. Its a streaming approach, Anumanchipalli said, with each 80-millisecond chunk of speech about half a syllable sent into a recorder. Its not waiting for a sentence to finish, Anumanchipalli said. Its processing it on the fly. Decoding speech that quickly has the potential to keep up with the fast pace of natural speech, said Brumberg. The use of voice samples, he added, would be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech.” Though the work was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, Anumanchipalli said it wasn’t affected by recent NIH research cuts. More research is needed before the technology is ready for wide use, but with sustained investments,” it could be available to patients within a decade, he said. Laura Ungar, AP science writer The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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E-Commerce
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