Across the two days at MAD//North, Richard Robinson, Executive Director of Ingenuity+, covered near-term AI, lessons Western marketers must learn from Chinese superbrands, why your most important brand is your own, and what Center Parcs is getting exactly right. Here's his take from Manchester.

I walked away with one conclusion: We’ve moved past the era of optimised perfection. The marketing leaders winning today trade polish for reality. It is a refreshing shift. We are finally prioritising substance over slick production values, and the industry is better for it.

As someone who sits at the epicentre of brands and agencies connecting the marketing world, I see this friction daily. Ambition often stalls because the gap between strategy and execution remains too wide. My role involves bridging these worlds, and the conversations in Manchester proved one thing: the most successful people in our industry act as connectors, not gatekeepers.

If you want to lead with impact, here are my four big takeaways from MAD//North.

Amplify your unique grit

Authenticity serves as the only real competitive advantage left. We heard this from Maisie Adam and Gary Neville. Thriving brands double down on personality. While technology makes everything theoretically perfect, the most memorable work feels deeply human. The senior leaders who are winning are the ones championing distinctiveness over sameness and if your brand feels safe, you’re leave equity on the table.

To lead you need to lean into the grit defining your brand. You need to protect the edges of your brand story rather than sanding them down and have the courage to stand for something, even when the data suggests a safer, quieter path. True growth starts when you stop trying to please everyone and start being someone.

Focus on the beauty of simplicity

We heard how smart leaders like The Co-Op’s Kenyatte Nelson and C&C Group’s Cara Chambers prioritise clarity over complexity. I have seen countless times how impactful strategies fit into a single, compelling sentence but too often the wealth of tools, AI, data, and predictive analytics, clutter the vision as opposed to amplifying the signal. To win you need to simplify your narrative, sharpen your strategy, and empower your teams to work alongside your agency partners to deliver world class work. Clear strategy is the foundation of speed while complexity is the enemy of action.

Master the proximity advantage

When you view creative work from a spreadsheet or a dashboard you become disconnected from your greatest lever of growth. Modern CMOs like Center Parcs’ Sara Holt stay close to the work, engaging directly with the teams crafting their message, learning and embracing the nuances of their brand voice in real time. We saw time and again at MAD//North the CMOs who are leading are the ones who use proximity as their unfair advantage for better decision making. Taking this step allows you to strip away the layers of management sitting between you and the creative output you desire, stepping confidently into the space where insight ignites ideas.

Embrace your role as the chief connector

Successful CMOs act as the ultimate connectors within their organisations. Value emerges at the intersection of brand ambition and agency capability with the connector mindset offering you your greatest competitive advantage. Great marketing rarely happens in isolation; it occurs when you bring the right people together at the right time, treating your agency partners as extensions of your own team, building environments where talent collides to accelerate innovation. Your value as a senior marketing leader lies in your ability to bridge these gaps, building cultures where collaboration is a skillset not a pipedream. When you connect the right minds, the results will always follow.

The Northern Soul theme of MAD//North served as a perfect reminder: showing up and leaning into our distinctiveness as an industry built on talent moves us forward. Potential for growth remains immense and we have the tools, the talent, and the momentum to make it happen. 

Looking forward, to win in 2026 and beyond, prioritising making the right connections is the first step to bridging the gap between where your brand sits today and where it needs to be tomorrow.

Let’s keep this conversation going #connectingthemarketingworld

Richard Robinson Executive Director: Ingenuity+

Ingenuity+ is one part of The Ingenuity Group, the UK’s largest connector of brands with agencies, and agencies with brands.