It was a real honour for StrategiQ to host this years AMIN Global conference in London 23-25 June 2025. Against a backdrop of shifting markets and challenging economic circumstances, it was an ideal time for refocus and empower agency leaders for growth and value.
With an agenda shaped around how to optimise and accelerate agency and client growth potential, the agenda was designed to inspire and encourage agencies to reach for the innovative ideas to differentiate and win. Here’s a round up of some of our highlights:
Monday
The conference started with a speed networking session to start conversations and ensure that there was ample opportunity for new working relationships to be formed. Then the delegates were treated to a veritable feast of content.
Jon Evans, Uncensored CMO:
Monday morning we were treated to a seminar on ‘Thinking Differently – The Dangers of Being Dull’ from Uncensored CMO, Jon Evans.
Jon questioned the rationale of measuring brand performance in quarters, whilst most take at least 7 years to build before a level of awareness is there. He encouraged the agency leaders to help CMOs justify long term investment in their brand and that their ultimate goal should be to get the CMO they’re working for promoted.
He demonstrated the power of emotive ads which are 29% more profitable than those that are more rational in nature. He challenged us to understand the value of creativity on brand and how our role is to take risks.
Jon challenged agencies not to produce dull work, illustrating with definitive data ‘the cost of dull’ being $189BN to US brands equating it to the GDP of Greece!
He challenged approaches driven by performance, optimisation, averaging and procurement as more often than not resulting in dull work, showing how more big brands have lost their creative edge and normalised, even down to things like their brand font choice.
Then it was time for inspiration. He shared ads that broke the mould such as Orange using AI to overcome stereotypes about women’s football and Fiat pointing out how dull car colours had become and pledging against it dipping a silver car in a vat of orange paint. And to prove the response to this, Jon shared how System One tracks the effects that ads have on us.
Jon also shared that ‘familiarity breeds contentment (not contempt)’, explaining that audiences like whats comfortable and that ads that run in consistent campaign and creative veins are those people form a greater emotional connection to.
Sophie Devonshire, CEO The Marketing Society:
Sophie challenged us that whilst we need the ability to be agile, which is a benefit to smaller independent agencies, we also need to adopt some other behaviours to enable that.
She spoke on the power of the pause in enabling thought and doing the right work because speed is more about velocity, which is ‘speed in the right direction’.
One of the keys for leaders in the room was the focus on energy, how we get it, when we get it, how we top-up and what we do with it. Energy management is key.
She spoke about the discipline of colour coding your diary, as ‘the diary test’ clearly shows your priorities and highlights where areas need more balance.
Sophie also made the point of having a ‘not to-do list’, which she in jest termed, ‘strategic laziness’, ensuring that we focus our energies on the things only we can do, to optimise our performance.
We discussed our energy and were encouraged to reflect on what speed bumps affect us and cause us to slow down, and also how we can accelerate, who can help and are the right systems and structures in place to enable acceleration.
‘How can we do less? How can we do this faster? Who can we use to speed this up?’
She spoke on empathy and understanding our audience, our team and ourselves, appreciating that how our team works together is the most important thing.
Sophie encouraged us that to move faster leaders need to do less. We need to choose, curate, focus, edit, purge and prioritise to ensure our energy is best spent.
Its a leaders responsibility to set the right pace for their organisation and that in the 21st century, leadership has transitioned from command and control to trust and inspire. Moving from tell to story tell. Not barking orders but structuring for speed.
Russell Mcathy, CEO Ringside Data
Russell helped us to understand the power of data in communicating with the C-Suite, especially around the value of our work as agencies.
He spoke about the 3 foundations of C-suite communication being trust, GAS (Give A Shit) and Integrity.
Its our job to build trust in the industry and the value of data and how it needs to be respected. We also need to build trust in our partnership through continuous relationship improvement, understanding their needs (what they want) and delivering what they want.
Russell expanded on the 5 whys, where we dig deeper to understand what the customer actually needs to understand from their data.
He spoke about how to really measure CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) in a meaningful and transformational way that shows C-Suite how to direct their business and budget.
Russell gave many pointers as to how agencies can actually GAS (Give a Shit) which included:
- focus on supporting the customer
- think actions not reactions
- ensure you debrief after meetings
- don’t be boring with long decks, not making points, not creating context, not having clear outputs, not prioritising actions, not posing decisions or using inaccurate data and most importantly,
- ensure that strategy is aligned to value.
His closing remarks were around data integrity being about having the right data, with the right frequency, in a consistent format, available to the right people.
Tuesday
Tuesday’s session kicked off with a global update from Hans van Eemeren and some AMIN management updates, thank yous and welcomes before diving into sessions on Building Teams & Culture, from our very own Andy and Sarah Smith, with further expert input from Tony Moorcroft. After lunch Will Anderson spoke on building teams by positioning expertise in the right place to optimise your performance before James Bavington expertly chaired a panel on pitching to value. But the highlight of the afternoon was a discussion with Rapha’s founder and former-CEO Simon Mottram.
Simon spoke about obsessing over the customer experience and getting things right.
He built Rapha on the four core values of:
1. Love the sport (cycling)
2. Suffer (push yourself, be ambitious and never give up). Going on to explain to non-cyclists in the room that what makes cycling so fulfilling is the more you put in the better it feels, it’s like therapy, it spins your brain into a calm flow state. Suffering is about putting the effort in. Cycling isn’t about reaching the top, it’s about when you’re half way there and starting to believe you can make it.
3. Think for yourself. Don’t do what the market says. Do something new and fresh and interesting for the customer.
4. Inspire others.
He spoke of his journey from raising capital, to building a brand and a following to ultimately selling and exiting the company and the things that brought him joy in the process landing with:
“A brand is a promise delivered over time through experiences.”
“A lot of what made Nike powerful has been swallowed in growth and scale. I hope they come back. I Believe they’re one of the greatest brands of all time. Nike is like a cult but a good one. I hope the same can be said of Rapha.”
Tuesday evening was the annual Globeys awards which celebrated the talent in the room with some outstanding campaigns. Congrats to the winners!
