Written by Vinny Wong – Global Social Strategy Lead, TikTok
As part of our Inside the Jury Room series, we spoke with Vinny Wong – Global Social Strategy Lead, TikTok to hear his perspective as a judge for this years M&M Global Awards.
In the interview, Vinny shares his views on the biggest opportunities for media over the next 12 months, how media’s role in shaping consumer behaviour continues to evolve, and the ways brands are using AI to drive greater relevance and effectiveness. He also highlights the campaigns and brands setting new industry benchmarks, what excites him most about this year’s entries, and her advice for entrants looking to impress the jury.
Although the final deadline for the M&M Global Awards has passed you can contact our team now to request an extension for your entries. Enter now to benchmark your work against the industry’s best, gain global recognition, and secure your place among the world’s leading media campaigns.
Request an extension today: Fomawards@festivalofmedia.com
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for media over the next 12 months?
Closing the gap between media planning and content strategy. For too long those have been two separate conversations. One team deciding where to spend, another deciding what to make. But on platforms like TikTok, the format, the placement, and the creative are inseparable. A piece of content that’s built for the platform will outperform a polished ad that’s been repurposed for it every single time.
The biggest opportunity is for media and creative to genuinely work as one brief. And the brands that are already doing that, using organic signals to decide where to put paid behind, building content that earns attention before it pays for it. Those are the ones winning right now.
How are brands leveraging AI in smarter ways to create more impactful campaigns?
The brands getting it right aren’t asking: how do we use AI? They’re asking: where is our biggest bottleneck and can AI fix it? Speed is one answer. On platforms where a trend peaks in 48 hours, being able to go from insight to published content in hours rather than days is a genuine competitive edge. AI is starting to make that possible. But the more interesting shift is AI as a consumer-facing mechanic, not just a production tool.
Coca-Cola India launched “Halftime Surprise” with Google Gemini in May this year. Consumers scan a QR code on the pack, upload a selfie, and Gemini generates personalised content: an AI album cover, a comic strip, a vision board. Three different experiences, all triggered by a Coke can. AI wasn’t in the background cutting production costs. It was the product experience. That’s a fundamentally different use case.
Which campaigns or brands do you think have set new benchmarks recently in the media industry?
A few that genuinely made me think differently:
- P.Louise on TikTok Shop Live, trade press reported they generated £2M in 14 hours on TikTok Shop Live, and increased their average order value from $20 to $80 by rebuilding their product range into giftable bundles designed specifically for the format. The content and the commerce were the same thing. That’s the benchmark.
- Arby’s “Arby’s Boys”, an intentionally rough, semi-unbranded account that racked up a reported 100M+ views with roughly 45K followers. No polish, no big budget. Just content that behaved like the platform. It challenges everything brands think they need to succeed on social.
The common thread: none of these campaigns just ran ads. They each changed what media was for.
What excites you most about this year’s Festival of Media M&M Global Awards entries?
I want to see how brands responded to the pace of the last year. The platforms moved fast, the formats changed, and audiences got harder to impress. The work I’m most excited about will be the work that kept up that showed real agility, not just a big idea and a big budget. I’m also genuinely curious to see how brands are handling the entertainment-to-commerce shift. Are they doing it well? Are they doing it at all? That’ll tell me a lot.
What advice would you give to entrants who want to impress the jury this year?
Tell us why you made the choices you made. Anyone can present great results. What’s harder, and more interesting is explaining the thinking behind the brief. Why that platform? Why that format? Why that moment? The entries that stay with me are the ones where the idea feels obvious in hindsight, because the strategy behind it was so clear. And be honest about what you learned. Work that shows real reflection is far more compelling than work that only shows success.
How has the role of media evolved in shaping consumer behaviour in recent years?
The gap between seeing something and buying something has almost disappeared.
Not long ago, media shaped behaviour slowly, you’d see a brand, build an impression over time, and eventually act on it. Now, on platforms like TikTok, the journey from discovery to decision can happen in a single session. Watch It, Love It, Want It is real. The scroll, the feeling, the tap. It’s one moment. That changes everything. Media isn’t just building awareness anymore. It’s being present at the exact moment someone decides. That’s a much more exciting job and a much harder one to get right.
