This is Contagious

The Contagious team returns from Cannes Lions 2026 to deliver our sunburnt take on the awards, the talks and what it all means for the industry.  Hot from the Croisette, we find out whether How Brands Grow is a brutally boring read, why the UN needs marketers more than ever, how the industry's best work is turning problems into opportunities, and how creative treasure can be found everywhere - fro...

Budgets will be wasted. Brands will be ruthlessly filtered out. The real game starts after full time. James Kirkham, founder of Iconic and ex-head of Copa90, joins Contagious to unpack why the 2026 World Cup is fundamentally different to previous tournaments - and what brands need to do about it. This episode explores the new playbook for World Cup marketing, where winning isn’t about owning the b...

In this episode, Contagious investigates what happens when content supply completely outstrips human attention, and how brands can win in a world dominated by infinite scroll, clip farms, AI slop and algorithmic overload. Along the way, we’ll explore why Universe 25’s infamous rodent utopia experiments feel eerily relevant to modern media, why today’s attention panic may simply be history repeatin...

Pokemon. Meatball lollipops. 17th Century silk traders. In this episode, Contagious explores weird and wonderful brand collabs, why they’re so effective, how to use them as a shortcut to cultural relevance and which brands are doing them well.   Discover the psychology behind ‘optimal incongruence’, how brands like Supreme and Crocs turned collaborations into a business model, and why technology h...

Nostalgia. Cultural déjà vu. Kidulting. Why are so many people desperate to escape the present? In this episode, Contagious investigates everything from why adults are rebuilding their teenage bedrooms, to landlines for kids and the return of the iPod, and revealing why the past has become one of culture’s most powerful refuges. Along the way, we unpack Happy Meals for adults, the psychology of an...

If you work in marketing, you should almost definitely subscribe to Contagious IQ - an intelligence platform that helps brands and agencies supercharge their creativity by learning from the world's most impactful brands, campaigns and trends.