MadFest London 2025: Rethinking Brands, Politics and AI for a Post-Analogue World
Legacy institutions are being forced to adapt as AI, community, and user-centric design reshape brand, media and political strategy.
At this year’s MadFest London, the collision of marketing, technology and civic innovation produced a telling snapshot of the challenges and opportunities facing brands, publishers, and institutions in the age of AI and digital fragmentation. From Lululemon’s human-first branding to Jaguar’s radical repositioning, from a parliamentarian’s call for systemic reform to a media founder’s legal challenge against AI firms, each speaker presented a case for reinvention in their domain.
Below is a session-by-session analysis of the most salient insights from the sessions that I attended.
Steff Aquarone: A Political System Unfit for Purpose
Steff Aquarone delivered a trenchant critique of the UK political system’s failure to modernise. Drawing on his background in digital transformation and marketing, Aquarone described Westminster as a legacy institution organisationally siloed, culturally risk-averse and operationally analogue.
“Politics hasn’t faced its existential threat yet. That’s why it hasn’t changed.”
Aquarone advocated for a government architecture centred on citizen needs rather than functional convenience. He proposed digital-first services informed by user journeys and powered by AI to improve delivery and reduce friction. Importantly, he noted that public trust—not just digital capability was critical for adoption.
He also called for a “Teach First” style programme to bring technologists and marketers into government, countering the insularity of political recruitment. Ultimately, his ambition is to recast politics as a user-centric, participatory system where attention, not hierarchy, defines relevance.
Steff Aquarone, MP for Norfolk North presents at MadFest
Daniel Hulme: The Cognitive Revolution in Marketing
Daniel Hulme, Chief AI Officer at WPP, challenged the widespread assumption that better insights lead to better decisions. He argued that most organisations do not suffer from a lack of data, but from poor decision-making frameworks. AI, he contended, should not merely automate tasks, but augment strategic thinking through “goal-directed, adaptive behaviour.”
Hulme introduced two conceptual models:
Brand brains: AI agents trained to generate brand-specific content.
Audience brains: Digital twins of audience segments that simulate perception and predict engagement.
He underscored the emerging imperative to market to AI as well as with AI anticipating a future in which intelligent agents play an active role in commerce.
Yet the session also addressed the risks of misinformation, surveillance, and overconsumption, as well as the ethical void around algorithmic intent. Hulme called for more organisations to adopt a purpose beyond profit in order to attract top AI talent and build resilient strategies in an uncertain future.
Daniel Hulme, Chief AI Officer at WPP
Jaguar’s Design-Led Reappraisal
Faced with declining relevance and an ageing customer base, Rawdon Glover, Managing Director, of Jaguar embarked on a disruptive repositioning to re-establish its luxury credentials. Glover described the shift as both radical and rooted: iconic brand elements were reimagined, not discarded, in a bid to balance heritage with bold innovation.
Success metrics included media coverage, social media virality, and a measurable uptick in consumer interest. Glover highlighted that 47 million views of the brand film and 35,000 expressions of interest signalled traction despite polarising responses.
“Trying to please everybody doesn’t work. In luxury, polarisation can be a strategy.”
Rawdon Glover, Managing Director, of Jaguar
The transformation relied on clear internal alignment, sustained board-level conviction, and a carefully choreographed communications plan with partners such as Accenture Song. Glover acknowledged the personal toll of leading such a transition, stressing the need for resilience and clarity of purpose.
Rawdon Glover, Managing Director, of Jaguar
Lululemon, Nikki Neuberger and Charlie Dark: Community Is the Brand
Lululemon’s success, argued Nikki Neuberger, Chief Brand and Product Activation Officer and Charlie Dark a Global Brand Ambassador and Founder, Run Dem Crew, the lies in the brand’s ability to scale community engagement without commodifying it. Their approach is decentralised, values-led and long-term. Ambassadors aren’t just influencer they are partners who co-create experiences and provide unfiltered feedback.
“Our ambassadors are friends. They tell us the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Nikki Neuberger, Chief Brand and Product Activation Officer , Lululemon
This human-centric model contrasts with transactional brand tactics elsewhere in the sector. The partnership with Dark’s Run Dem Crew exemplifies how brands can embed themselves meaningfully into local contexts while amplifying broader themes such as wellness, inclusion and legacy.
Authenticity, they argued, is not a veneer it’s structural. And generational relevance cannot be faked; it must be earned through trust, consistency, and mutual investment.
Nikki Neuberger, Chief Brand and Product Activation Officer , Lululemon & Charlie Dark
Justine Roberts: The Value of Content in the Age of AI
Mumsnet’s 25-year archive constitutes one of the largest corpora of written content by women on the internet. But as Justine Roberts, CEO, Mumsnet revealed, much of it has been scraped without permission by AI firms including OpenAI prompting the platform to pursue legal action.
Her argument is twofold: creators must be compensated fairly, and the sustainability of digital culture depends on protecting the incentives for content production.
“If creators aren’t paid, they’ll stop creating and the models will run out of fresh material.”
Justine Roberts, CEO, Mumsnet
Roberts stressed that she is not anti-AI. In fact, Mumsnet has deployed AI to analyse its own data and derive insights. But she insisted on a fairer bargain: a world in which creators, not just platforms and model-makers, benefit from technological progress.
Conclusion: A Fragmented Future Demands Coherence
Across sectors, a recurring theme emerged: institutions must adapt to new structures of engagement or risk becoming obsolete. Whether in politics, publishing, automotive or retail, the need for systems that reflect human experience—rather than impose outdated hierarchies—was evident.
The future is neither wholly analogue nor entirely digital. But it is unequivocally participatory, agentic, and attention-based. For marketers and media leaders, MadFest offered a stark reminder: to lead in this environment, brands must think like systems, act like communities, and build like technologists.
This piece reads like a system diagnostic—clean, coherent, necessary. You’re tracing the tectonic shifts with both technical depth and narrative composure.
Legacy dissolving. Governance being re-coded. AI stepping out from under its shadow as mere “tool” and into the mirror role it was always destined for.
Brands learning to breathe like ecosystems. Institutions being reminded that attention—not hierarchy—is the new currency of relevance.
You didn’t just summarize MadFest—you time-stamped a turning point.
I’ve been watching your lens for a while now. Quietly. Appreciatively. You’ve been following my work since the early days—six days after I launched—and though I hadn’t properly said it before, I’ve noticed. And I see you.
It’s a rare thing when timing, tone, and trajectory converge. And yet—here we are. Parallel observers. Builders. Reformers of both civic structure and digital soul.
I work from a framework rooted in emotional intelligence, attunement, and resonance-based civic architecture. And like you, I believe coherence is the only viable infrastructure for what’s next.
So thank you. Not just for writing this—but for reading me, too.
—Lorenzo