The 3 Second Hook is dead. Culture Is the New AI Gold Rush.

From WPP's advertising war chest to Shah Rukh Khan's AI investment, from Ticketmaster's discovery ambitions to Formula 1's fan intelligence, this is moving faster than you can say Tag.

I was once speaking to Piyush Pandey at Arth, a literature festival I helped create. We got talking about our love for advertising, how it was made back in the days, how people consumed it and, of course, how the business of grabbing attention had changed.

I asked him what he thought about the now ridiculous 3 sec hook rule for grabbing eyeballs. He laughed with his head rolled back. Then, in that wonderfully endearing Piyush manner, he told me..

"Swaroop, first get me the chaps at Facebook and i'll give them a little smack on their heads for doing this to the world."

I still smile thinking about that conversation. Piyush passed away late Oct 2025. Indian advertising lost one of its greatest storytellers, and those of us who had the privilege of spending time with him lost that infectious laughter.

I often wonder what he would make of advertising today.

In my world, the 3 sec hook is beginning to look rather generous. We now have algorithms deciding what we see, platforms predicting what we might want, AI generating content at a mammoth scale that would have been unimaginable say even 4/5 years ago.

Let's talk about the gold in the AI rush, earlier between Aug and Sep this year, four companies operating at different intersections of tech and culture announced $766 million in funding. Higgsfield raised $400 million, Fever $250 million, Stability AI $76 million and my friends at Flam $40 million.

My lens as always is on a common denominator. The business of culture.

So, who decides what we watch, listen to, attend, share, recommend and then buy? Who owns the relationship with the audience? who gets paid when that relationship turns into a cart and becomes transaction?

Media agencies got the memo early.

Let's start with the people who have spent decades trying to understand us, influence us and persuade us to buy things.

WPP has been investing heavily in its AI powered marketing operating system, WPP Open. Last year it committed £300Mn to AI driven technology. By December in the same year, more than 70,000 employees were actively using WPP Open monthly, representing approximately 90% of its client facing teams. My mind was blown with this, but given the wide smile my senior friend at WPP had when i tried to push him to buy something similar from me, I find it pretty accurate.

You would think that's it but WPP is on a roll. January 2026 the launch of Agent Hub took this further, putting proprietary agency intel, strategic capabilities and specialised AI agents in the hands of clients and its global workforce. Think of it like an internal app store for AI. There are over 150 vetted agents that have WPP proprietary data and best practices embedded!

Nestlé and Coca-Cola are among the clients already using WPP Open. I’ll get into some of the big culture clients using models like this another time, but let’s look at Coke for a minute.

As early as 2022, Sprite launched Limelight, an AI powered music experience created with WPP’s Open X team. WPP reported a 10% YoY increase in sales performance during the campaign.

And my point is, when you win a multi billion dollar account, you go build something the client can't easily get elsewhere.

Let's look at Havas. Its Converged.AI strategy comes with a €400Mn commitment to data, tech and AI through 2027. The commitment includes Opex, Capex and M&A. Havas is bringing intelligence, targeting, activation, planning, content personalisation and creative production together under one operating system.

More recently, Havas has invested in Vurvey Labs, an agentic intelligence company using AI powered consumer interviews and largely synthetic audiences to help brands test products, messaging and campaigns before going to market. This sets the tone of what is to come.

Dentsu is taking a similar direction with dentsu.Connect 4.0, its agentic AI powered operating system. The ambition is to connect the entire marketing lifecycle, from creative and production to media and consumer experience, with more predictive and outcome led decision making.

Believe me, Martech is on steroids and that is an understatement. The big fellas are putting a ton of cash and getting ready for the future and I believe their client rosters are backing them up.

I want to touch very quickly on what culture brands are doing on their own without the agency tech, not gigantic leaps yet but enough to move forward with speed.

Coke again because I truly love the stuff they do. They have been experimenting with AI across creative production, personalisation and brand experiences. Project Fizzion, developed with Adobe, is an AI powered design intelligence system intended to help creative teams produce locally relevant, brand consistent assets at scale. Coke said it could make content production ten times faster during its pilot phase. What excites me here is now hopefully the ads that work for Brazil will not be pasted into Australia, instead we'll see more culturally relevant creatives for the same master brand.

These networks are heavily leaning on enterprise partnerships to redefine engagement. A great example of this tech in action is how Microsoft's AI infrastructure was leveraged to create an interactive Santa experience for Coca-Cola, engaging more than a million people across 43 markets and 26 languages. On some days i just want to believe Santa drinks Coke.

I have an interesting question though, what happens when this intelligence moves from the campaign into the entire fan journey? And perhaps what Piyush would have said about all of us trying to win the three second battle now using machines.

Search becomes Discovery and eventually Commerce.

For years, brands spent enormous amounts of money ensuring they appeared when consumers searched for something. The era of the SEO. Search engines, social media, influencers, media buying and performance marketing became the machinery of discovery.

There seems to be another doorway that AI has unlocked. Let's be conversational about it I say.

My favourite example here is the Radisson Hotel Group.

Radisson goes to work with Accenture and launches its hotel discovery experience in ChatGPT early July this year. Travellers can explore their hotels, compare prices and amenities, view properties on maps and continue to Radisson's own booking site.

While researching this piece early Oct I came across the report, OpenAI said that the experience delivered a visit to booking conversion rate approximately 1.5 times Radisson's organic search rate during July and August.

Another interesting number here, they also said 54% of recorded checkout and booking events associated with Radisson's sponsored campaigns were attributed through ad views rather than clicks!

Let's read those numbers carefully. The 1.5 times relates to the branded discovery experience, not the sponsored advertisements. The 54% is view through attribution, not essentially proof that those advertisements caused incremental bookings just so we are clear. These are OpenAI's reported figures, without the underlying sample sizes and absolute conversion rates, so up to you for the pinch of salt.

Nevertheless, a major international hotel group is treating conversational discovery and paid visibility as part of its commercial acquisition strategy and that friends is my culture story.

Closer home and inside my own world let's check out Ticketmaster.

In April this year, Ticketmaster brought event discovery to ChatGPT, and then Claude in July and Gemini around August. Fans can now discover events, explore ticket options and compare seating in a conversation, before moving to Ticketmaster to complete the purchase.

I've toured over 150 artists across two decades in the concert business. So let me give you the implications straight out.

A fan could ask for live music in Sydney next weekend, a football match in London, or a family friendly entertainment experience in Dubai. Instead of starting with a search engine and jumping between multiple websites, the discovery process can begin inside ChatGPT.

And the good fellas at Ticketmaster decided they weren't going to wait around for that behaviour to become mainstream so they simply showed up where the conversation is happening.

Full marks to TM here.

Fever is driving on the same route. Its catalogue has been made accessible through Gemini, while its own tech supports the discovery and booking of live experiences.

New distribution partnerships tactics be dammed, this is a fight to remain visible when the consumer's journey starts somewhere other than your own website or usual search engines.

The commercial implications are massive. You would agree that ticket inventory is perishable and a seat for Friday night's concert has little value on Saturday morning. The ability to match intent with inventory, pricing and availability in real time has an immediate economic value and I am seeing various versions of this erupt across ticketing geographies.

I work with hotels, airlines, restaurants, entertainment venues, sports properties and tourism businesses. All have something to gain from being discovered at the precise moment a consumer is ready to make a decision.

The wise ones that have a team that understands what's going on in the AI Martech world are simply getting there faster. From chat to cart if I were to be cheeky.

You would think Music has stopped arguing about copyright.

The music business offers perhaps the clearest example of how complicated the relationship between culture and AI has become. For years, labels have been fighting AI businesses over the use of copyrighted recordings, voices and compositions. You probably know every litigation that is live, I certainly do.

But look at the more recent developments.

Universal, Sony and Warner Music Group have all invested in Stability AI's latest $76 million funding round, with EA and tech investors.

Warner has moved from its legal settlement with Suno to a development partnership. Universal has entered licensing arrangements with ElevenLabs. The labels are exploring ways to protect their catalogues while participating in the new economics of AI generated music, voice and creative production so to speak.

And yet what baffles me is, Universal and Sony continue to pursue copyright litigation against Suno.

It is only natural that my artist friends are probably furious and feel deeply betrayed. I mean how would you feel if I cried foul over AI being existential threat, to AI now an essential revenue tool? We'll see how this pans out in my next blog.

Then there's a once in a generation superstar like Shah Rukh Khan who to me is one of the glamour worlds most acute business minds.

His family office joined the $40 million Series B funding round of Indian AI interactive content company Flam, alongside QED Investors and others. The good people at FLAM have signed more than 100 enterprise customers across six quarters, with applications spanning marketing, entertainment, product visualisation, fan engagement and sales.

Full Disclosure here, I advise an AI business services agency that counts Flam among its global partners but this particular announcement in my world of culture is a remarkable signal which is why it sits here. Everyone is talking about Ben Affleck and Netflix but to me this is bigger.

Top tier talent is not going to remain on the receiving end of tech partnerships. Artists, their management companies and family offices can participate in the businesses building the next generation of content and distribution and trust me, they get it better than people outside culture.

But Sport has something AI will want most, the fan. After all nothing is as live and large as sport.

In July 2025, the Premier League signed a five year strategic partnership with Microsoft, making it its official cloud and AI partner. That's alright. Its Premier League Companion uses Copilot and draws on more than 30 seasons of statistics, 300,000 articles and 9,000 videos. Beat that.

Fans can explore players, clubs, historic matches and statistics through a personalised conversational experience.

Because my new fav young driver is Kimi Antonelli, let's talk about Formula 1 which is also investing in the relationship between data and its global fan base. Its tech partnerships are helping bring more information, context and personalised experiences to audiences than ever before.

But let me give you the lay of the Sports land, which in my genre of culture wins hands down. A sports property has an incredible collection of commercial assets like live events, player data, broadcast archives, historical moments, fan behaviour, merchandise, hospitality, sponsorship inventory and years of true emotional attachment.

AI can potentially make all of these more accessible, more personalised and more commercially useful.

Imagine a football fan asking Claude for the best way to experience a particular match. The answer could include tickets, seating recommendations, transport, hospitality, merchandise and even a sponsor funded experience.

Or a cricket fan discovering a historic player through an archive, then being offered a personalised content experience, a merchandise product or a ticket to the next match. I can go on and on!

Let us also not forget the warning here though. ESPN's AI generated animated portrait of Tony Parker was brutally talked about when a real photograph was easily available. Of course they had to drop it.

My favourite line to clients, mate, tech can create content but to create cultural relevance is a joint partnership between me and your AI.

The Business of Talent Management, would I let AI choose for me?

This is where advertising, entertainment and the business of influence start converging. For a long time, brands selected celebrities and creators using a familiar combination of reach, relevance, audience demographics, fees, perceived brand fit and more often than not the celebrity that the CEO loves.

But today we know AI introduces a much deeper layer of intelligence.

Who is gaining momentum in a particular market? Which creator influences a particular purchase decision? Which artist resonates with an audience beyond their home territory? Which sporting property has the strongest affinity with a particular consumer category?

I would argue the opportunity is not to let AI choose the celebrity but let's please give the people making those decisions better intelligence?

Moving on, 56% people preferred AI recommendations that included creator perspectives. 65% said credible creator reviews made them more confident in an AI recommendation. This is IAB's 2026 research across AI assisted shopping users in the US, UK, Australia, Mexico and India. I wish there was China data here or South America but this will do.

This to me is a particularly interesting finding because it suggests that my credibility remains valuable even when the discovery mechanism becomes automated but, but, but for talent, the equation could change.

A million followers are useful, yes. But being the person whose recommendation actually influences a purchase may be worth a lot more.

For brands, the ability to identify that influence across markets, categories and cultural communities could change how endorsement and partnership budgets are allocated. This is a live discussion across many of my client tables, I increasingly rely on a mountain of intel before I propose a celebrity, where earlier I would simply sell access to famous people for a fee, I now bind it with an absolute intel led culture outcome that holds true across brackets.

I hate predictions but i absolutely love a bet.

1. AI discovery becomes a measurable media budget.

By end of next year, I expect at least one major ticketing, travel or entertainment platform to publish meaningful data on the revenue originating from AI assisted discovery because the battle for visibility will become a measurable acquisition channel and one that can be tabled to clients for a larger fee.

2. More cultural rights holders take equity in AI.

By mid to late 2027, I expect another major music, sports or entertainment rights holder to announce an equity investment in an AI business, rather than limit its relationship to licensing. Some discussions are out there but there may be a tsunami level announcement here, we'll see.

3. Fan intelligence becomes a licensable asset.

By end 2027, I would expect a major sports property to announce a commercial data or archive licensing arrangement with an AI company outside its existing tech partnership. My read is that the commercial value of historical and real time fan intelligence is still being underestimated as we speak.

4. Choosing Talent becomes a much more sophisticated business.

By the end of 2027, I see at least one if not two major talent agencies or entertainment groups introduce a dedicated AI powered cultural intelligence proposition for brand partnerships. Also they have understood follower counts will remain relevant, but they will no longer be enough for brands.

Of course, my entire thesis could run into a hole. Fans may not trust AI recommendations. Rights holders may make licensing too expensive. Advertising budgets may fail to migrate as quickly as they should. And cheaper content may prove to be just that, cheaper content without decent results. I do see some geographies win faster than others.

Overall the investments are becoming hard to ignore if like me you pan your camera wider and scope it.

So, who's connecting the dots?

Advertising is trying to understand people better. Brands want to reach them more precisely. Media companies want to retain their attention. Ticketing platforms want to own the discovery and transaction. Music companies want to protect and monetise their intellectual property. Sports properties want deeper fan relationships. Talent businesses want to understand where influence actually creates value. Phew!

And tech companies want to sit somewhere in the middle of all of it. I want to know and ask if this means our entire workforces are equipped to understand and play with this kind of Martech evolving at the speed of light?

The companies that can put people who understand culture, commercial strategy and technology together, rather than simply deploy another AI tool, will increasingly have advantage. Forward deployed teams that work with clients to turn tech into actual business outcomes have to become as important as the platforms themselves.

I keep coming back to that conversation with Piyush. He truly understood that advertising was never just about grabbing attention. It was about understanding people, their aspirations, their humour, their habits and the things that moved them with a beautiful dose of culture.

Tech has moved beyond recognition but human tendencies, values, culture footprints don't change drastically, they may adapt and allow advancements from time to time. The win is in playing the game.

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