Marketing Strategy Market: Mediasense's Jack Shearring: Governance Beats Gadgets in Marketing

Jack Shearring, vice president of strategy at Mediasense and Drum Awards Festival juror, emphasizes that governance, not technology, is the key to successful marketing transformation. He argues that many organizations have sophisticated tech but unclear data ownership and fragmented agency relationships. For 2026, he would invest in measurement infrastructure over flashy tools, noting that better inputs matter more than better tools in a world of platform automation. He advocates for managing brand and performance as complementary, and for a shift toward probabilistic, modelled, and judgement-driven measurement. Leadership, he says, will favor those who ask good questions and create clarity, not necessarily those with the most knowledge.