Weekly campaign reviews / A new series
Approve.Adapt.Kill.
AI marketing, judged through the consumer’s eyes.
Every week, we review new campaigns as people encounter them: in a feed, on a screen or out in the world. What catches your attention? What do you take away? Does the brand give you a reason to care?
We make a call, explain it and share what we would have done differently. The aim is to sharpen your judgement for the next idea, brief or execution on your desk.
How we make the callThree verdicts.
Something useful in each.
Approve.
The idea and execution work together. We would sign it off, and explain what makes it worth learning from.
Adapt.
There is something worth keeping, but the work needs a change. We identify what to protect, what to fix and how we would approach it.
Kill.
The strategic idea is off, or the execution fails it so badly that we would stop the work and rethink it. We explain why, and where we would start again.
These are editorial judgements about the work we can see. Where results are available, we distinguish them from our interpretation of the creative.
A note from our founder
The main event
of the creative week.
During my time working on some of the world’s biggest brands, the weekly creative review was the main event. We would work through new ideas and executions, ask what was working, and decide what to back, what to change and what to stop.
Approve. Adapt. Kill. brings that rhythm here. We review the finished advertising people see, then consider what we know about the brand, its target audience and the context in which the ad appears. We look at what works brilliantly and what could work harder, explain our verdict and share what we would do differently.
AI is part of the work.
Judgement still matters.
In September 2026, Dotdigital reported that 99% of the 1,500 marketers it surveyed across the UK, US and Australia were using AI. That makes AI marketing a broader question than whether a film looks generated. AI can play a part in research, strategy, production or distribution; we examine what the finished work gives the consumer.
When we discuss a particular campaign’s use of AI, we will say what is documented.
What would you have done?
Each edition will pair the campaign with our verdict, fuller reasoning and the changes we would make here on Destreza Thinking. Disagree with a verdict? Tell us why in the comments on the accompanying LinkedIn post.
Seen something we should feature? Get in touch at [email protected].
First edition in preparation
While we prepare the first reviews, explore our analysis of distinctive ideas and the creative stories in The Weekly Cut.
Explore creative effectiveness