AI era to boost value in brand experiences.

The former Havas AUNZ chairman and founder of groundbreaking agencies Host and One Green Bean, Mr Freedman now runs Common Interest, the business he founded in 2023 in a bid to connect brands and audiences through popular culture.

Common Interest is a “collective of communications and entertainment companies” and includes global brand consultancy Twenty First Century Brand, design studio Otherway, AI platform CultureLab and global experiential agency Amplify, after the group acquired a majority stake in April.

As part of the deal, Amplify’s global leadership team became partners and equity holders in Common Interest, with the business to buy out the full ownership stake across the next five years.

The acquisition rounds out the group’s capabilities to straddle communications and entertainment by tapping into the booming experience economy where commercial brands meet culture, as the rush to AI places more emphasis on real-world actions.

Mr Freedman told The Australian that Common Interest was “focused on the belief that brands with high cultural relevance will outperform in both brand growth, as well as business growth”.

He maintains the explosion of the experience economy alongside the rise of AI and the shift away from traditional advertising and media channels has created a perfect storm for location-based entertainment that incorporates everything from retail pop-ups and brand activations to immersive experiences, events and theme parks.

“We’re seeing this new category of location-based entertainment and this experience economy proliferating on the marketing and communication side as well as on the entertainment side. And it’s very fast growing,” Mr Freedman said.

“There is a huge opportunity for brands to be involved within the entertainment space.

“And a commercial imperative to look at new ways of bringing in income and we’re seeing more and more focus on experiences. On a macro level, we are seeing something that I’m describing as real-world brand action, which is best summarised by brands doing things rather than just saying things.

“That includes the ability to create things that machines cannot manufacture. So in an AI era, where lots of things can be created instantaneously, certain things can’t. And those certain things have, and will continue to have, a disproportionate value both in terms of how audiences interact with them but also over time how AI search engines will recognise those things and value them alongside manufactured content. That includes the way those experiences are then covered online and through digital PR, and therefore represented within the digital landscape. So, across a whole variety of different formats, experiences become more powerful, more valuable and more essential.”

Mr Freedman points to the annual results of global advertising company Omnicom, which is soon to become the biggest in the world through its merger with rival ad group IPG.

Last year Omnicom’s experiential business grew 15.4 per cent and was the fastest growing division, significantly outpacing the next best performing category, which was media and advertising at 7.8 per cent growth.

However, as the traditional advertising businesses such as Omnicom are focused on the impacts of the time and cost-saving efficiencies of AI in terms of jobs and overheads, smaller shops, such as the companies within Common Interests, are free to focus on the benefits that AI can deliver to brands and the allocation of value, Mr Freedman argues.

“Unlike most, we’re less fearful and more excited by the opportunities that are coming from the adoption of AI and certainly in the context of using AI search and being able to use LLMs to deliver things in seconds. For us, that creates a new elevation of the importance of brand, but brand needs to be delivered in a modern context, which is all about real-world brand action, doing stuff, not just saying it.”

The growth is reflected in the steady increase in the scale and ambitions of the projects that Amplify receives, according to global chief executive Jonathan Emmins. Mr Emmins founded the business in Australia in 2008 and it has expanded with offices in Sydney, London, Paris, Los Angeles and New York. It counts Lego, Google, Netflix, Samsung, Nike and PlayStation among its client list. Mr Emmins said while brand investment in the sector had grown, so too had the demands and ambitions.

“The budgets are getting bigger as the respect of experiences and the versatility of experiences grows. We’re seeing more of the ad budgets coming into experience, but it still has to be a really strong idea, with a clear narrative that joins the dots between people, brands and cultures.”

Mr Emmins said the growth also was creating challenges for brands to easily misfire in the rush to engage. “Lots of agencies are congregating on culture. There’s a bit of a danger that ‘culture’ is being used in the same way as ‘authentic’, where it gets used so often that it starts to mean nothing. Lots of things that I’m seeing called culture are not necessarily what we would see as culture from the audience’s perspective.”

He said it was crucial for brands to respect audiences and push to add value rather than just slapping a logo on “something that would have happened anyway”. “Be relevant. If you understand the audience and you’re culturally connected, it’s not hard at all because then it becomes focused and self-selecting.

“We’ve always been excited about pioneering the untraditional with the rigour of the traditional and AI is the next instalment of that. Creativity will always have a value and if we can make culturally resonant creative work that is always going to win for brand and audience alike, then that’s really exciting,” said Mr Emmins.

The global experience economy, which includes entertainment, sport, hospitality, tourism and retail events, is estimated to be worth $12 trillion this year, according to the World Experience Organisation. The sector is expected to continue to grow as more businesses invest in events to grow their brands and products as consumers continue to value experiences over products.