Trendsettrs: Ghada Dajani
An interview with Cannes Grand Prix winner and marketer Ghada Dajani
Who is excited for the Super Bowl? I have this wild hair of an idea. Would anyone want to have an “ad watching party” together in the Substack chat?! When I go to game watching parties I can never hear the ads and most don’t work in marketing so I have no one to talk to about it. Email me or comment on this post if you’re interested and I’ll get it scheduled!
xx,
Michelle 🐝
Marketers that Matter: Ghada Dajani
Ghada and I met each other when we were baby marketers studying advertising at The University of Texas (hook ‘em duh) and then we both ended up working at Wieden + Kennedy.
She is a force in the marketing world, most recently leading global brand + integrated marketing at Whatsapp, and is deeply involved with ADCOLOR. She is also an all around lovely person.
We chatted about trends that marketers should pay attention to and how she stays creative. Here is our convo below!
👀 Marketing trends to watch
Branded entertainment
Ghada: Branded entertainment is the only truly creative whitespace we have left in advertising. While I have been excited by the surge of early and successful adopters investing in this space like Adobe, Air, and LVMH, I also see more brands fall flat and ending up with unnecessarily long ads. I hope to see more brands invest in short-form TikTok series, experiences, and long-form content that delivers a greater mission, message and purpose. We don't need any more empty content calories!
For example, I executive produced and led a documentary at WhatsApp with an incredible team of partners called We Are Ayenda. The documentary highlighted the true story of the Afghan Women's Junior National Team's escape from the Taliban and resettlement in Portugal all through the help of a hero named Farkhunda Muhtaj and a WhatsApp group chat. The documentary not only won a Cannes Grand Prix in Entertainment and four other Lions at the festival, but more importantly gave the girls a mic to share their story and support as they continue to pursue their dreams.
Intimate, IRL events
Ghada: From B2B to B2C, I'm seeing more events than ever for product launches, deep consumer engagement, enterprise, internal community, and creator engagement.
Events have always been around, but we're seeing an evolution from traditional branded events to rich branded experiences such as intimate dinner parties, multi-faceted creator & customer trips, or intentional engagement experiences at Cannes. I am biased, but Care of Chan does it best :)
My favorite project I've ever done in this space was the There's No One Like Us gallery in London, UK with creative mastermind and friend Mous Lamrabat. This was a heart & soul project from Mous and our team at WhatsApp that set out to represent a multi-hyphenated, diasporic audience that is typically "othered" - those that know home isn't a physical location, but the people you're connected to all over the globe.
In addition to the gallery, we threw an intimate dinner for the multi-hyphenated creative community of London. We had the table painted to reflect all the cultures represented in the seats, blended together. Vida Habibi (producer), Perfect Cartel, and LEDE company were amazing partners on this activation.
The gallery received incredible reviews but most of all, diaspora communities praised how seen, represented, and uplifted they felt from the exhibit.
Food design experiences
Ghada: This is a growing micro-trend in the fashion and beauty world where brands are hiring food experience studios to help with product launches. It is a relatively new creative practice but a handful of brands are already trying it out like AnanasAnanas for Glossier, Badtastebiz for J. Crew x Christopher John Rogers, and Laila Gohar for Sothebys:
🎨 How Ghada stays creative
IMO, one of the most important ways to be great at marketing is to stay creative. It’s hard to keep your creative juices flowing sometimes when things get busy, so I always like to know what inspires people. ✨
Reading > scrolling
I've been a Substack and beehiiv reader lately as I resolve to less mindless-scrolling in 2025. Favorites include Emily Sundberg's Feed Me, Melanie Masarin's Night Shade, any recipe Zaynab Issa publishes, and of course The Pollinatr 🐝.
Travel
Travel keeps me stimulated and inspiration flowing. I am a person who is so moved by IRL experiences, and believe it is so important to take our break from our rhythms and bubbles to experience the humanity of others. I just got back from a 3-week adventure in Japan where I felt very inspired by the everyday rhythms of their society, and communal values of integrity, craft, and respect.
Keep a smile folder ☺️
At every job I've held, I have a Smile File folder on my desktop with screenshots of positive affirmations, little wins, cheers, and even the most everyday kind message from a colleague. I bop to it often when I need a dopamine boost or have a hard day. 100% of the time it turns your mood around and puts a smile on your face :)
Take a class!
I recently completed an incredible 9-week food design course hosted by Fondo Supper Club and Dr. Francesca Zampollo that filled me to the brim with inspiration and confidence. Food has such a powerful energy to bring people together, have deeper meaning, and provide a more sustainable & ephemeral alternative to traditional event design.
My husband and I worked with Maria Flores to bring a food design concept to life at our own wedding last year - centering foods significant to our Middle Eastern cultures like olives (resilience & deep connection to homeland), grapes (abundance & joy), and figs (purity & prosperity).
2025 will be the year of launching my hobby in food design publicly, hold me to it!
Thank you Ghada for sharing your smart insights with us! I’m excited to see what is in store for you this year. 💗
Dinner Party Fodder
🧠 News of the week - DeepSeek is rocking the AI world, the markets, and tech CEOs. This is our generation’s Space Race. Will be very interesting to see how this all unfolds.
😂 Restaurant of the week - Chili’s is killing it. What can they say, their queso is fire. If you were a tween in Dallas in the 90s, your social calendar consisted of mall, Starbucks, and Chilis.
🔥 Coolest job of the week - Designing Anthro’s window displays
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser🍫 Recipe of the week - If you’re getting in the Valentine’s baking zone like me, these are the literal BEST BROWNIES IN THE WORLD. I’ve made about 100 batches of them and each time they hit. Pro tip: Make them in a disposable pan so you can send them home with friends after your party!
▶️ Reunion of the week - When Harry Met Sally but make it mayonnaise.
🔥 Hot take of the week - Small spoons all day.
📖 Turnaround of the week - Apparently Barnes and Nobles making a comeback bc of #BookTok and revamping their stores for influencers to film content. Talk about a TBT! I do love a good bookstore. Remember when B&N was the “bad guy” for being the big store (a la You’ve Got Mail). Oh how times have changed.
🤓 Insight of the week - How to find insights.
🤝 Collab of the week - Zip Recruiter + Severance. Love a good integrated TV spot! I literally saw their ad and typed the URL into my browser. You know you work in marketing when…
❓Question of the week - Do you like it when all the Super Bowl ads are released before hand? Or not so much?
If you have anyone in mind that I should profile for Marketers that Matter, please LMK! Have a great weekend.
Michelle