Best of The Drum - our top stories, interviews and thought leadership of 2015

For our top advertising and brand wins of the year, check out our New Year Honours or the editorial team's personal picks of the best campaigns of 2015. We have also published sector specific detailed reviews of the year in retail, media, ad tech and design.

Collaboration or exploitation?

Startups, the new kids on the block, are in demand from agencies and brands in search of new ideas and creative collaboration. Free from hierarchical structures, the agility of startups to deliver innovative solutions is inspiring brands of all shapes to get in on the action. But as this piece explores, the value exchange isn't always a fair trade.

Heineken bemoans creative agencies' digital disinterest

The creative agency obsession over the 60-second spot is continuing but to the detriment of clients, who are finding it a significant barrier to the pace at which they shift focus to digital channels, as reported by Jen Faull.

Redefining luxury

As social, economic, political and cultural circumstances evolve, so too do our aspirations, our notions of luxury. What’s luxury for one generation is not necessarily luxury for the next. This piece explores the changing definition of luxury for today's millennials, and what impact that has on brands.

Marketers: trade partners are holding us back from shifting spend to digital

Marketers from some of the world’s biggest FMCG brands including Johnson & Johnson and Pernod Ricard suggested that their shift in marketing pounds away from traditional channels, namely TV, is being hampered by a lack of education on the effectiveness of digital by the retail giants that buy their goods.

Anatomy of an Ad: This Girl Can

‘I jiggle, therefore I am’. ‘I kick balls – deal with it’. Rarely does an ad align itself to the concerns of real people as assertively as the glorious technicolour of sweating and jiggling in Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ by FCB Inferno. In this feature we go behind the scenes to find out how the idea was crafted.

Agencies should take the high ground, not the Wonga

In Jeremy Lee's first opinion piece for The Drum, the former Campaign deputy editor waxes lyrical on why agencies should take the moral high ground in business, following Albion ending its relationship with payday lender Wonga.

PepsiCo scraps procurement, signalling 'customer-centric’ times

PepsiCo’s decision to axe its procurement marketing team earlier in the year was emblematic of marketing’s status within business slowly shifting from being seen as a cost to being used as a growth driver, as this piece explores. “It doesn’t make any commercial or logical sense holding procurement outside the marketing function,” said Richard Robinson, managing partner at Oystercatchers.

Philippe Starck in conversation with Maurice Lévy

"Design chose me. it is a small-scale version of what I should have done." The revered designer speaks to Maurice Lévy as part of the Publicis leader's guest-edited issue of The Drum, launched at Cannes.

The sober reality of Cannes

Following the annual 'backslapping delirium' of Cannes Lions, PR man Mark Borkowski questions what has truly been learned about creativity from the festival.

Sorrell: ‘Technology, data and content are key to spate of media pitches’

The vast number of media pitches being held this year by the world’s leading advertisers are being decided based on agencies' ability to provide technology, data or content, according to WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell, as this piece reports.

The US or Europe – who is leading the way in programmatic?

This is the question explored by Marco Bertozzi, president of global clients at VivaKi, who tackles the 'frustrating' assumption that the UK is lagging behind the US when it comes to programmatic advertising.

Launch of Asda's private ad exchange

In January, Asda began selling unsold ad units programmatically across three of its major websites in the first step towards launching a private ad exchange, with the aim of putting it in prime position to compete with traditional publishers.

Content is more than just an ad with a smart media buy

In this video piece, Vice Media's head of innovation Mark Adams reveals the publisher's bugbear; the marketing industry is confusing content with advertising to such an extent that many brands think the C-word is an ad with more media buy behind it. He also reveals how the $4bn, 21-year-old publisher is embracing the tension of new media to show that there is no algorithm for content success.

News UK rethinking how it works with advertisers

When the Sun's paywall came down in November, News UK admitted it hadn't monetised the media brand's poplarity to full effect, pledging to right those wrongs and instil a more progressive commercial attitude at the business. The red top’s paywall hasn’t “worked for us in the right way”, News UK commercial chief Dominic Carter told The Drum.

How to rebuild Lego

Lego rebuilt its brand brick by brick by ushering the company into a new era of content, co-creation and listening to the wants and needs of its customers. In this piece we explore the brand's journey from breaking point to the world's biggest toymaker.

The challenges of rebranding

Times have been pretty tough for many brands in terms of reputation recently – not least Malaysia Airlines, which announced a rebrand in the wake of suffering two air disasters. But a paint job can't fix a broken brand identity, argues Wolff Olins' Chris Moody.

Instagram fully open to all advertisers

Instagram opened up to all advertisers in a push to scale its advertising business that’s underpinned by the creation of a “seamless backend” for marketers to invest more readily in it alongside Facebook. Here we explore how the social network’s business strategy is shifting gears from cautiously slow to the revenue-spinning mode behind its sister Facebook’s mobile growth.

Why do we need to celebrate working mothers in advertising?

Jean Batthany, executive creative director at DDB Chicago, was acknowledged as an Advertising Mother of the Year earlier in 2015. But in this piece, she outlines her hope that in the future we won't need to celebrate working mothers at all.

'If you support a culture of sameness, how can you expect to innovate?'

Diversity was a hot topic in 2015, and for good reason. As part of our ongoing coverage of the issue, this piece explores the rise of the chief diversity officer at companies like Dell, and the role they are playing in establishing inclusion as a tangible asset in the workplace.

When Kardashian met Sorrell

Kim Kardashian West meets Sir Martin Sorrell at Cannes Lions, where they discuss the value of the Kardashian family brand and how the star has built a formidable global audience using social platforms.

Nescafé moves away from dotcom

In a bold move signifying the growing importance of owned media, Nescafé consolidated its global portfolio of websites and moved it on to Tumblr, declaring the dotcom approach dead while it outlined its plans for content collaboration with millennials.

Innovation hubs

Innovation has become a classic marketing buzzword and means many things to different people. The Drum went behind the scenes of three agency innovation hubs in London and New York to explore what they're making, how it works and how the model is driving revenue.

Billboards aren't working

The political poster, once a stalwart of election campaigns, was noticeably absent from May’s general election in the UK. Instead, digital marketing and alternative forms of creativity are emerging – though none effectively utilised by the major political parties, as this piece explores.

Is Harriet Harman having a fucking laugh?

When Harriet Harman tried to appeal to female voters prior to the general election with a patronising pink bus, Abi Ellis, then group creative director at DigitasLBi, took aim.

The end of Black Friday?

Asda, Oasis and Primark opted out of the Black Friday retail holiday this year, as it becomes the domain of online sellers who are confident a seamless experience over a longer trading period can avoid the in-store chaos of previous years. This explores whether the event is worth the hassle for retailers.