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Back in January, State Farm announced that it was canceling its plans to run a Super Bowl commercial due to the impact of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. Our focus is firmly on providing support to the people of Los Angeles, the company said in a statement at the time. But now the company is taking its Super Bowl work and bringing it to another pillar of its advertising calendar, March Madness. The spot stars Jason Bateman as . . . Bateman, a less-than-adequate substitute for Batman. Created by agency HighDive, the spot also has Grammy-winning artist SZA, popular streamer Kai Cenat, and content creator Jordan Howlett (aka Jordan the Stallion). Last week, Cenat made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to tease the spot. State Farm CMO Kristyn Cook says March Madness is a huge part of the culture, and a perfect time to use humor to get an important point across. I think today, more than ever, it may seem like insurance companies are all the same, but when it comes to coverage, having insurance is not the same as having State Farm, says Cook. Over the past few years, State Farm has dominated headlines for dropping insurance policies in the areas hit hardest by the fires, due to the risk of extreme weather. It wasnt the only insurance company to do so, but State Farm was hit hardest by the backlash. Now, the brand is putting on a full-court press as a strong sports marketer to counter the criticism. Our consistent investment in sports is all about aligning [with] our business strategy, and that’s about how we reach large, engaged audiences, says Cook. We want to create that emotional connection with fans. And so you see us doing that, whether it’s in our sponsorships or the creative that we deliver. Cook says that its important for the brand to ask people to really compare its record and services to other options. Our category is very competitive, says Cook. It’s important for us to highlight the difference, and the timing couldn’t be better from a business standpoint. If it feels bold, it was meant to be. Because we feel it was important for people to understand the core message of the campaign.
Category:
E-Commerce
Google has made it much easier to find the answers we seek without navigating to various websites, but that has made it much harder to do business for media companies and other creators. And this new era of artificial intelligence-powered search will reshape the future of the internet, according to Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare has a unique vantage point because it counts content creators and artificial intelligence companies among the more than 20% of the internet that sits behind its network. Driven by a mission to build a better internet, the San Francisco-based company is invested in finding a solution that works for all players involved. The search-driven business model of the internet isn’t going to be the business model of the internet going forward, Prince said Sunday during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “And to the extent that we can help figure that business model out, I think it is existential for us as a business, but it’s actually existential for the internet itself to figure out a new business model. After ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, Prince recalled how publishers and content creators began to increasingly identify AI companies as their biggest villain. And because the current dynamic of AI systems crawling these websites for information doesnt provide any incentive for original content creators to churn out new content, thats a problem for everyoneincluding Cloudflare. If people arent creating original content, that’s the gasoline that fuels these engines, so you need to have that original content, Prince said. Prince proposed a three-step possible solution. First, its important to create scarcity so creators dont give away content for free; then if creators have the tools to identify when AI systems are crawling their websites, theyll have control over which of those systems can access this information; and finally, the process should be monetized with a rate card in which content creators dictate how much it costs to crawl their pages. Evolution of a ‘better internet’ That Cloudflare is now thinking about the information ecosystem online is indicative of how much the internet has evolved since the companys founding in 2009. Even the name was a nod to the major internet issues of that time: creating a firewall in the cloud. Whereas an encrypted internet was once the table stakes, Prince said, the standard has now become post-quantum resistant encryption. And looking ahead, Cloudflares mission to help build a better internet could mean protecting customers against Chinese hackers or making sure theyre fairly compensated for the content they create, he added. And he has an even more ambitious goal to make sure that information online continues to be available to all who need it. My utopian vision of the future is that we get to a place where humans get content for free and bots have to pay a lot for it, Prince said. I can afford to sign up for a bunch of paywalls, but I really do worry about the kid in Rwanda who’s brilliant, but today has much less access even though there’s just as much information out there.
Category:
E-Commerce
Organizations talk about wanting innovation, but most aren’t willing to create the right conditions for it. We celebrate disruptors, bold thinkers, and game-changing ideasbut the way most organizations actually run makes creativity nearly impossible. Leaders ask, How do we encourage creativity? But the real question is: “How do we keep it alive in a world that values efficiency over exploration?” Efficiency kills creativity, but not how you think Most discussions around creativity killers focus on rigid hierarchies, tight deadlines, and risk-averse cultures. While these are barriers, the deeper, more insidious problem is the cult of efficiency. Organizations optimize for productivity, predictability, and speedoften at the expense of curiosity and imagination. Creativity, by its very nature, is inefficient. It requires space for ambiguity, exploration, and even failure. Yet, in many workplaces, the pressure to deliver immediate results leaves no room for the wandering that leads to breakthrough ideas. I have seen this firsthand in my work as a leadership advisor. In my early career in finance and strategy, I was conditioned to optimize every process for efficiency. However, I also saw that some of the most groundbreaking solutions came not from speed but from leaders and teams who embraced deep exploration. When I transitioned to coaching executives, I noticed a pattern: Those who created intentional space for creative thinkingwhether through unstructured brainstorming, cross-disciplinary conversations, or reflectionwere the ones who consistently led innovation. Yet, too often, creativity was treated as an afterthought, which happened only in scheduled “innovation sessions” rather than an ongoing practice. Toyota revolutionized manufacturing with Lean principles, but their greatest innovationthe hybrid carwasnt the result of efficiency. It was born from experimentation and long-term thinking. Similarly, Steve Jobss most groundbreaking ideas didnt emerge from staring at spreadsheets but from deep, unstructured contemplationsomething many leaders today would dismiss as unproductive. The paradox is clear: efficiency is necessary for execution, but it is the enemy of exploration. When efficiency becomes the dominant priority, creativity suffocates. Creativity thrives under purposeful inefficiency To sustain creativity, leaders must resist the impulse to manage it like a process and instead design for it like an ecosystem. Creativity flourishes in environments where friction existsnot in the form of bureaucratic red tape but in the form of intellectual collisions, differing perspectives, and permission to explore the unknown. This is what I call deliberate inefficiencyan approach where slowing down actually accelerates long-term innovation. Organizations that optimize solely for speed often end up producing predictable, incremental solutions rather than true breakthroughs. Throughout my career, I have worked with executives who struggled to break out of the cycle of busyness. One executive I coached, a brilliant strategist at a global biotech company, was feeling stagnant. His days were packed with back-to-back meetings, leaving no time for the deep thinking required for innovation. We worked together to redesign his schedule, blocking time for curiosity-driven exploration and structured white space for creative thinking. Within months, his team started generating novel ideas that reshaped their approach to R&D. What changed wasnt their ability to be creativeit was their permission to be creative. The leaders who truly champion creativity do not see themselves as managers of ideas but as orchestrators of creative conditions. They assume three essential roles: the Curator, the Gardener, and the Alchemist. The Curator gathers diverse perspectives and fosters creative collisions, much like Pixars Braintrust, where raw, unpolished ideas are challenged in an environment of candid yet constructive feedback. The Gardener protects ideas when they are still fragile, allowing them to take root before they are subjected to scrutiny. Great ideas are often killed too early simply because they dont look fully formed. The Alchemist combines seemingly unrelated elements to create unexpected breakthroughsthink of how Apple blended technology and design to reinvent entire industries. When leaders embrace these roles, they shift from controlling output to facilitating creative breakthroughs. How to design for creativity Creativity can’t be sustained through one-off initiatives like brainstorming sessions or innovation sprints. The most creative organizations embed creativity into their structural DNA. They don’t wait for inspiration to strike; they engineer the conditions where it can thrive consistently. I have helped organizations shift from ad-hoc creative efforts to more structured creativity ecosystems. One company I worked with struggled with stagnation because they relied too much on periodic brainstorming sessions. We introduced mechanisms that embedded creativity into their daily workflowsthings like interdisciplinary collaboration spaces, regular storytelling forums where employees could share unconventional ideas, and scheduled “curiosity breaks” where teams could step away from execution to reflect and explore. The impact was profound: teams started developing ideas that had been dormant for years, and the organization saw a measurable increase in both engagement and breakthrough thinking. The best creative cultures recognize that innovation isnt about having more ideas; its about creating the right conditions for meaningful ideas to emerge. This requires shifting from a culture of efficiency-driven execution to one that prioritizes exploration. It means rewarding curiosity, not just executionencouraging questions, not just answers. It means fostering a culture where failure is viewed as a necessary part of the learning process, not a career-ending mistake. And it requires carving out white space for deep work and reflection, because creativity does not happen in relentless busynessit happens in the pauses between intense periods of focus. The leaders who will thrive in the future wont just be efficiency expertstheyll be the ones who know how to protect and nurture creativity. They will recognize that innovation isnt about simply having more ideas but about fostering the right conditions for meaningful ideas to emerge. This means prioritizing exploration as much as execution, rewarding curiosity as much as results, and carving out space for deep thinking amid the daily grind. The most innovative organizations wont wait for creativity to strike; theyll build the ecosystems that allow it to flourish.
Category:
E-Commerce
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