The Halo Effect: 5 Reasons Marketing Leaders are Rethinking Content Operations

Marketing leaders have their backs against the wall. The old way of creating a single ‘hero’ campaign and trickling out adaptations is under strain. That’s because today, for each campaign brands are in need of hundreds, even thousands, of personalised assets across digital – and they need them faster than ever.

While this is going on, economic pressures are forcing CMOs and marketing operations heads to do way more, with far less.

It’s the perfect storm for change, and a new model of content operations is emerging to meet the moment – inspired by tech-enabled processes and known as ‘Halo content production’ – that puts intelligent automation and modern operating models at the core.

At Inspired Thinking Group (ITG), it’s what the team does best. So LBB sat down with chief growth officer, Dan Birks to discuss his five key reasons why now is the time to overhaul your content operations and embrace AI and automated creative production as your halo content solution.

1. Economic Pressures Demand Efficiency Now

Tough market conditions have their way of accelerating innovation. Even without a full-blown recession, many marketers feel recession-like pressure to maximise every pound of spend. Industry research shows that budget growth has stalled despite soaring content demands. Historically, challenging economic moments tend to drive transformation and push businesses to find new ways of working.

We’re at one of those inflection points again.

The difference is that in 2025, technology and automation are mature enough to offer a solution at scale. Large enterprises are already seeing seven-figure savings by automating production tasks.

But these savings don’t come from cutting quality – they come from working smarter. By streamlining adaptation and activation work, marketing teams can reallocate budget to big creative ideas while the routine production is handled by tech.

What ITG realises is that an agile content operation built for efficiency, is actually mission critical.

2. Automation Goes Mainstream

Not too long ago, AI and automation in marketing were buzzwords. But today they are business imperatives. This was palpable at the Cannes Lions Festival, where discussions seemed to move from ‘what if?’ to ‘what now?’ for AI-enabled creative production.

Industry-wide, there’s a subtle recognition that it is time to act. The mainstreaming of marketing AI means that an automation-led content operation is no longer considered the risky bet it once was, but rather a savvy move to stay competitive and keep your edge. Early adopters have ironed out many kinks and the technology is proving its mettle in an abundance of real campaigns that you’re seeing every single day.

3. Busting Myths

One reason some teams have hesitation to double down on the tech-enabled halo content production at scale, with automation at the heart, is fear. Fear that automation might undermine creative quality or brand consistency.

But it’s time to put those misconceptions to rest. The goal isn’t about automating creative thinking at all. Instead, automation targets the tedious, time-consuming parts of content production – tasks like adapting, resizing, formatting, versioning, and transcreation.

By letting tech handle the objective work, you free up your human talent to focus on high-value creative tasks.

A great example is retailer McArthurGlen, whose in-house agency was caught up in churning out endless adaptations and localisations. After adopting an automated halo approach, they liberated their creative team members from repetitive production work, refocusing them on actual creative design. This led to improved morale, more original creative output, and lower costs.

It also strengthens brand control and consistency, contrary to another myth. With rules-based templates and smart workflows, global marketing teams can set brand guardrails centrally and let local markets activate campaigns without going off-script. It’s more control, not less – the system enforces brand guidelines while empowering local teams to tweak content. This can mean a reduction in the off-brand deviations and rogue content that all marketers wince to see, and crucially, solutions tha work for both central and local teams.

It’s also worth addressing the general tech fatigue out there – we’ve all heard “this tool will make your life easier” too many times. Scepticism is natural. The key is to be transparent about what it takes to get results – that’s something ITG commits to from the outset. Successful improvements in operations and automation aren’t flipping a switch. It requires upfront effort to configure systems and train people.

But when done right, the payoff isn’t a promise – it’s proven in case after case.

4. Making the Model Work

As mentioned briefly above, rethinking content operations comes down to mindset and process as much as it does tools. So implementing an automation-centric model quickly, demands a strong focus on people, change and engagement from day one. Tech alone won’t transform your marketing org; you need to bring your people along for the ride.

Companies that succeed with content automation initiatives tend to invest in communications, project management and change management to support the rollout. This means getting the right stakeholders involved early, aligning everyone on objectives, and possibly reallocating roles and responsibilities.

Education matters, but it’s engagement – building relationships, being supportive and providing more than just a platform – that really makes the difference when it comes to long-term adoption and change. When people are fully engaged, you can create a model that’s efficient, resilient, and ready to evolve with the market.

5. Speed, Scale, and Savings in Action

Why make the leap to a new operating model now? Put simply: because the results are undeniable.

Across industries, brands that have embraced automated halo content production are reporting faster go-to-market, greater scale of content, and significant cost reductions; that’s before we even consider business growth. Consider the following examples:

Some of the best-known names in retail, hospitality, and consumer goods are already realising seven-figure savings through automation.

These are companies spending many millions every year on content. ITG is often able to reduce that spend by multiple millions – not just to deliver the same, but to deliver more with more impact. So if you’re looking at budget pressures in the current market, the reality is that automation can save millions within just a few months.

And on the other side, it’s not just about cost-cutting. If you look at a brand like Costa Coffee, automation has helped enable digital transformation. That’s driven revenue – significant percentage-point improvements in sales by moving from traditional in-store print to dynamic digital screens. They’re able to produce hundreds of thousands of digital assets – and that kind of scale just isn’t possible manually.

And these aren’t isolated examples. So, the business case becomes clear: you can both save and grow by millions.

The payoff ITG promises isn’t just efficiency for its own sake – it’s smarter use of talent, faster response to market opportunities, and marketing campaigns that truly operate at the speed and scale of today’s consumers.

For marketing decision-makers, the message post-Cannes couldn’t be clearer – the future belongs to those who transform how content gets made, leaving old bottlenecks behind in favour of agile, tech-powered creativity.