In this episode of Marketing Factories, a podcast by Effie Europe and REBORRN, Dafni Prosalika (Partner at REBORRN) welcomes two of the most senior voices in the industry, from opposite sides of the table: Charley Stoney, Chief Executive Officer of EACA (the European Association of Communications Agencies) and President of VoxComm, and Stephan Loerke, Chief Executive Officer of the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers). Between them they speak for the agencies and the advertisers: around 130,000 agency professionals across 30 countries, and over 10,000 of the world's brands.

The conversation centres on a model in flux. Both are candid that the way agencies are paid, time and materials, was never a great model, and that AI has turned it into an existential question. Stephan's view is blunt: clients no longer want to buy hours, they want to buy impact. Charley maps what is replacing the old model, from output and licensing fees to royalties and productised process, and why Europe's roughly €1 billion a year pitching habit is a waste the industry can no longer afford.

But the bigger story is a return to fundamentals. In a "sea of sameness" driven by AI, both argue that creativity becomes the real advantage, backed by 30 years of Effie data showing that the insight, the storytelling and long-term brand and agency relationships are what move a business. They also get into the tension every CMO lives with, from the roughly 60% of budgets still going to performance to the transformation fatigue that 76% of marketers admit to, plus the regulatory battles, two new Effie categories, and the burning problems each would hand to the most brilliant minds in the room.

In this episode of Marketing Factories, a podcast by Effie Europe and REBORRN, Dafni Prosalika (Partner at REBORRN) welcomes Roy Gardner, Vice President of Brand Activation, Europe at adidas. Roy is responsible for shaping, localising and allocating the brand's marketing investment across 19 European markets, leading a team of around 120 people across omnichannel, digital, media and publishing.

We recorded two weeks after Sabastian Sawe broke the two-hour marathon barrier at the 2026 London Marathon in the sub-100g adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, a moment adidas covered with hundreds of billboards across London within hours. Roy takes us inside the engine behind that "brilliance at speed." But the bigger story is the turnaround itself.

In 2023, adidas was a loss-making brand. Roy walks through the playbook that rebuilt it, the decision to retire "Impossible Is Nothing" for "You Got This," and why, while most of the industry pours 60% of budgets into performance, adidas put a five-minute film at the heart of its World Cup campaign and bet on brand.

He also unpacks the return to fundamentals behind it all, the relay-race model of a "global brand with a local mindset," why adidas refuses the single-agency model, how it partners with creators rather than using them, and his definition of effective marketing: being the number one sports brand in Europe.

In this special episode of Marketing Factories, released to mark the opening of Effie Awards Europe 2026 entries, REBORRN partner Dafni Prosalika welcomes Staffan Ekstam, Nordic Marketing and Brand Strategy Director at Food Folk Sverige AB (McDonald’s Sverige), and Petter Dixelius, Creative Director and Partner at NORD DDB STHLM.

Back in December 2025, on the day following the Effie Awards Europe ceremony, we recorded in Brussels a special episode at EACA’s offices (European Association of Communications Agencies), about one of the most talked about campaigns of the 2025 edition: McDonald’s Nordics “Deal with the Trash”.

Staffan and Petter go inside one of the world’s most recognised brands and the twenty-year agency partnership behind some of its most effective work. The conversation covers how global strategy actually lands in four Nordic markets, what it takes to turn a brand liability into an award-winning campaign, and why the best idea in the room sometimes has to wait five years before it’s ready.

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Heineken was just named the #1 most creative brand in the world (WARC Creative 100), and LePub, the bespoke agency built to serve them, is the #1 creative agency on the planet. After years leading all digital for the Heineken brand globally, Rob van Griensven is now stepping into a new role leading Marketing Transformation across the entire HEINEKEN Company.

In Episode 3 of Marketing Factories, Rob van Griensven (Global Digital Director, The HEINEKEN Company) joins host Dafni Prosalika (Partner, REBORRN) at Heineken’s head office in Amsterdam to unpack what it takes to keep a 150-year-old family-owned icon recognisable across millions of touchpoints while staying nimble enough to jump on a TikTok meme or show up at a dance festival.

Rob also talks about the three-word formula behind every Heineken campaign (Art, Science, Courage), the research insight that turned F1, Champions League and music into a single brand platform, why a 150-year-old beer brand is building tech that tells you to put your phone down, and how AI agents are reshaping the way creative briefs get made.

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Fanta is an $18 billion brand sold in over 180 countries. For the past three years, Ibrahim Khan, Fanta's Global Marketing VP, has been tearing it apart and rebuilding it from scratch.

In Episode 2 of Marketing Factories, Ibrahim joins Dafni Prosalika to reveal the strategy behind the brand's biggest-ever gaming campaign, launched with Xbox and Activision Blizzard across 60+ markets, and why it took two full years to find the two words that would rediscover what Fanta stands for.

Ibrahim also talks about what it takes to hold a coherent brand across 190 countries while giving local teams real autonomy, what it means to market in a world where your consumer holds the mic, and more.

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After decades under the Unilever umbrella, one of the world’s most iconic indulgent brands is striking out on its own. The mission? To build a marketing machine from the ground up that is lean, fast, and unapologetically intentional.

In this episode, Tobias Sparnaaij (Global Marketing Lead Masterbrand and Sticks Portfolio, Magnum) and Bruno Yanagui Gomiero (Global Planning Director, Lola MullenLowe) join host Dafni Prosalika (Partner, REBORRN) to uncover what makes this serially-awarded Marketing Factory so effective.

Watch to find out how a lean team people manages a multi-billion-dollar global flagship, the neuroscience behind "the drool factor," and the rare alchemy required to turn a lean client-agency duo into a powerhouse that wins big on the global stage.

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What’s actually happening inside the teams that keep producing the work everyone else studies?

Not the final cut. Not the award entry with the swelling music. The fascinating, deeply human machinery underneath. The brief that got rewritten three times. The argument that saved the idea. The org design that made speed possible. The relationship between client and agency that either kills courage or creates it.

That’s what we went looking for.

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Welcome to Marketing Factories

Here’s what nobody talks about at marketing conferences: most marketing teams are stuck. Not because they lack talent. Not because they don’t understand their consumer. But because the way they’re structured, the way they make decisions, the way they brief and approve and iterate is, at best, ineffective. The industry celebrates outputs obsessively and ignores the operating systems that produce them.

Marketing Factories is our very own travelling podcast series. Every episode is filmed on location, inside the actual buildings where the work gets done. Amsterdam. Atlanta. London. This matters because context is content. You learn something different about a brand when you see the view from their office window. When you notice whether the agency sits in the same room as the client.

We go inside the offices, the R&D labs, and the war rooms of the world’s most effective marketing organisations. We sit down with the people who run them, to talk about how they make things. Because great marketing isn’t born in a moment of genius. It’s built. Inside rooms where people argue about priorities. Inside spreadsheets nobody celebrates. Inside organisations that have figured out how to turn fragile ideas into repeatable impact.

Every company that produces great work has something invisible inside it. A system. A rhythm. A way of making decisions. A way of killing bad ideas. A way of protecting good ones.

Why “Factory”?

Yes, we know. The word grates against everything the industry tells itself. Marketing is art. Creativity is magic. Factories are for assembly lines.

Except, every team that consistently ships great work will, if they’re honest, describe something that sounds a lot like a factory. Repeatable processes. Quality control. Raw materials fed into a system that refines them. A production rhythm that doesn’t depend on one person having a good day.

The word is deliberately uncomfortable. The teams that produce the best creative work in the world are not winging it. They’ve industrialised the conditions for creativity without industrialising creativity itself. That distinction is everything. Courage without structure is just chaos. Structure without courage is just bureaucracy. The best marketing teams hold both. That’s a factory worth studying.

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REBORRN x Effie Awards Europe

Marketing is changing faster than marketers can. Everyone’s watching the work, and we’re inside the systems that produce it, redesigning how teams work so the next output is better, faster, and braver than the last.

As REBORRN, we work within global marketing teams. Not by handing them a strategy deck but by rewiring how they operate and staying through the hardest part: activation. We redesign the org structures, processes, and ways of working that slow marketing down, then we stay until planning turns into progress. In weeks, not quarters. That work gives us a front-row seat to what actually makes some marketing teams thrive while others stall.

Effie Awards Europe celebrates the work that actually worked. The proven, measurable effectiveness behind the campaigns the industry admires.

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The Premiere: Inside the Magnum Machine

We started with Magnum, a brand that’s living through one of the most fascinating transitions in modern marketing. Less than a year ago, Magnum spun off from Unilever to become the flagship of an independent ice cream company. Thirteen people run the global brand. Thirteen. For a multi-billion dollar business operating in dozens of markets. They carry decades of heritage while rewriting the playbook in real time, “building the airplane while flying it”, as they put it.

We sat down with Tobias, who leads global master brand marketing at The Magnum Ice Cream Company, and Bruno, the strategist at Lola MullenLowe in Madrid who’s been the brand’s creative partner for years. What emerged was a story about what happens when a team has to define its own identity - fast - while the market, the competition, and a 400% spike in cocoa prices are all moving against them.

They told us how five years of social listening led them to a sound - the crack of Magnum’s chocolate shell - that consumers had been obsessing over without the brand fully realising it. How that sound became the entire strategic platform for justifying premium pricing under pressure. How they recorded the actual crack of every product format rather than faking it, because in a world of AI-generated everything, authenticity becomes a competitive weapon.

They told us about briefing R&D chefs with creative concepts like “purity” and “craftsmanship” before a single flavour profile exists, so the product and the communication are born from the same idea. About building a campaign system called “House of Magnum” that lets dozens of markets activate the same creative universe without diluting the brand.

And they told us what didn’t work. The conceptually rich campaign that was consumer-incomprehensible. The collaboration idea with too many narrative layers to land. The humility to kill beautiful things that don’t connect.

Episode One dropped today. You’ll want to hear the crack for yourself.

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Marketing Factories is produced by REBORRN in partnership with Effie Awards Europe and the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA). Hosted by Dafni Prosalika. Subscribe here to get every episode and the stories behind the stories.

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