Zoe Scaman began her career writing pay-per-click ads for a pornography website. Thanks to what she calls “right place, right time,” from there she built a career in advertising, which ultimately took her to Australia where she worked on the iconic “Share a Coke” campaign, and ended up running strategy for filmmaker Ridley Scott.

She’s now founded her own strategy studio which works with some of the most creative and innovative organisations in the world including Nike, EA Games and Unilever, helping them to figure out how to adapt to a world fuelled by the possibilities of generative AI. 

The impact is that younger generations understand creation as play – meaning that games, or even movies, with a set narrative developed by a studio and provided for consumers to enjoy may not be enough anymore. As they get older, Scaman asks, “will they want brands to just vomit stuff at them and they just passively consume it? Or do they want brands to become toolkits?” She cites an example from a film company called The Simulation, which demonstrated a tool at the Venice Film Festival 2023 which generates bespoke episodes of South Park according to user prompts. 

Scaman is convinced that the multiplayer concept is also relevant for organisations that don’t think of themselves as entertainment companies per se, creating opportunities to enhance how automotive brands personalise driving experiences and how hotel companies personalise different customers’ sensory experiences. 

For all the excitement and potential of the new technology, Scaman concedes that “it’s hugely risky.” Handing over your brand to your customers would have been an anathema to most marketers as recently as last year. “It’s about picking specific projects, it might be that you go out to a closed, hand picked group of people and you give them some assets and you see how it goes.” Nike’s dot.swoosh platform is a public experiment in exactly this, where people can take the 3D file from Air Force Ones and use them to design virtual shoes and apparel as part of a growing virtual Nike digital world. She goes on, “Make it small initially, have a hypothesis, validate or invalidate it and then go from there.” 

This new approach to brand ownership has very real implications for how companies think about IP. Scaman’s interest in fandom, and what makes fans different from consumers, was inspired by her work for Ridley Scott on properties such as Bladerunner and Alien. “They are groups of people who are creative as a result of their love of a particular IP… building on belief systems, rules and language and hierarchy…” Star Trek, Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, BTS are great examples. Fandoms feel a deep sense of ownership over the worlds they’re creating so the legal IP owners need to tread carefully when seeking to monetise – cynical attempts to cash in will invite a backlash. 

She’s currently working with the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, on a project to define the skills that Gen Alpha, now aged 13 and younger, need to be learning to excel in the workforce of the 2030s and beyond. She lists these as collaboration, perseverance, problem solving, emotional regulation and social curiosity. As established businesses set about weathering the next phase of disruption, these are skills that will serve business leaders well, too. 

Zoe is a very popular speaker and can deliver talks on a variety of themes including AI, fandom, the multiplayer brand and more. Please contact Sarah Dryden to make a booking.