The Real Takeaways from ANA AFM 2025: Value, Voice, and Visibility
Reflecting on this year’s ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference, my focus is on the deeper aspects, rather than the glitzy spectacles. And let me be clear — there was ample glitz. As for the conference, participants fulfilled the social networking aspects of the conference, as there was abundant social interaction during vendor-sponsored lunches, dinners, and receptions. The decade anniversary of the Stagwell karaoke night drew a partying crowd and a lot of the best conversations happened on the lawn in the bright SoCal sun. Major highlights had to include the R3/MediaSense joint dinner on Sunday night, where many in-person attendees were treated to dinner, music, and a few strategically timed speeches. Other, less in the spotlight interactions included the Women in Marketing Procurement (WiMP) dinner that RAUS Global hosted, the topics of discussion ranged from the anxiety parents were experiencing as they helped their kids navigate the ABCs of college admissions to the pride we all felt watching so many women take the ANA AFM stage this year. However, for me what stands out is not what filled the schedule, rather what strategically and quietly moved everything forward, especially in the areas we too often leave under-explored.
A US film tax credit strategy was showcased by Aflac’s Terri Burns and her two partners from Ernst-Van Praag (EVP) and Alta Incentives Group. Unlike other sessions that feature attention-grabbing headlines, this one stood out for its practical application in marketing procurement work. The rest of the participants in the room, including myself, had a fair understanding of production incentives and tax credits, but it was a topic that was never discussed in a structured manner during industry conferences. In spite of the value held in the credits, there is a widespread perception that they should be tackled by someone in finance, legal, or production. What Terri and her partners showed us is that unlocking these incentives goes beyond just having a strategy — instead, it requires interdepartmental collaboration, strict adherence to procedures, and constructive financial responses.
Terri made a compelling point early on: “Free money kind of screams.” And once Aflac’s brand, finance, procurement, and agency teams were all at the table, they created a repeatable process to identify and capture production incentives — one that not only helped fund innovation and special projects but gave marketing more budgetary flexibility over all Aflac Tax credits.
Jillian Gibbs, CEO of APR, noted an important point during the Q&A: the misconception that the production companies and agencies have a right to claim the incentive money is derived from the feature film production custom where the producer pays for the shoot. In advertising, the client pays for the production, and therefore, the credit goes to the brand.
This didn’t just inform in this session — it built a strong argument for why procurement should own this space, or at least, make sure it appears in the conversation. It’s a lesson that true value is not always in the big ticket items like a major scope of work renegotiation or platform change, but rather where it would be concealed in the details of where and how we film our content.
A session that impressed me because it shifted from theory to practice was Denis Budniewski’s session on ‘What Sets Apart a Top Performing Agency.” Denis who has spent time on the agency side and client side, leading Verizon’s agency ecosystem most recently, shared one of the most practical frameworks I have encountered for judging agency performance in a multi-agency environment.
The crux of his message was clear — agencies are an investment. Not only from a monetary point of view, but also time, trust, and leadership energy. And like any other investment, the returns are proportional to the inputs. In his own words: “Clients get the work they deserve.” This proclamation surely struck the marketers and procurement leaders in the crowd.
What drove the session’s effectiveness was how Denis articulated the specific characteristics of top-performing agencies in practice, not only in theory but also with examples and KPIs. He did not shy away from saying strategy, proactivity, and execution all have to come together — and that there is such a thing as fair, two-way performance evaluations. His quote was, “If you track and quantify it, people will pay attention — and improve.”
One quite impactful instance during the Q&A was when someone asked how to balance delivering the scoped work and giving agencies headspace to strive for proactive, high-impact ideas. “If you’re not delivering your core scope, being proactive won’t save the relationship. But if you are, and your agency brings you something bold, don’t punish that,” Denis candidly responded. “Leave process or budget room to fund great ideas when they appear.”
The combination of frankness and practicality was not missed by anyone. It reminded us that performance evaluations are not simply busy work — they’re tools for managing relationships. Perform them right, and they can change a transactional engagement into a trusted partnership.
And then there was the session that caught everyone a little off guard — in the best way. Dan DiPiazzo, Chief Marketing and Experience Officer at the Georgia Aquarium, brought the conversation back to purpose, people, and the planet in a way that felt refreshingly grounded. His session on sustainability wasn’t a PR exercise or ESG checklist. It was a pragmatic, often funny, and sometimes sobering look at how our industry — especially digital marketing — impacts the environment, and what it means to build a truly sustainable brand from the inside out.
A story about shrimp was shared by Dan. To be specific, it was about mysid shrimp, the little shrimp that supply food to whale sharks at Georgia Aquarium. Shipments of these are imported from various parts of the globe, but the aquarium chose to spend more by cultivating them in-house, prioritizing long-term sustainability over short-term savings. “It’s more work,” Dan shared, “but it’s the kind of work that helps us further our mission — and that is worth investing in.”
He related that shrimp example to marketing work: the carbon emissions footprint from digital advertising (akin to the aviation industry), the increased proliferation of MFA (Made-for-Advertising) websites, and evaluating if the content we produce is worth the carbon expenditure. “We would never dream of commuting to work 110 times just to get a message across,” he joked, “yet that’s effectively what we’re doing when we let programmatic run wild without guardrails.”
It wasn’t about shaming people into action or attempting to appear more green than reality. It was about accountability, constructive imagination, and alignment. Dan told us to no longer remain myopic, not solely about our agency partners, but us as well. “Is your ads, your impressions, your campaign, worthy of the impact it carries for the environment?” he challenged.
Chuckling: “Are we creating work is worthy of its place in the world — or are we simply filling the air with sound?”
In the Q&A, someone asked what media sustainability KPIs his team had. Dan replied quite freely: “We’re still constructing the dashboard. Our site doesn’t pass the carbon test, either. But we are working on it — and that’s the point. Deliverables don’t exist. Sustainability does.”
Each one of these sessions, in one way or another, challenged my thinking about the underlying, quieter work we do that is not part of the keynote address — the systems-level choices that design a more transparent, efficient, and equitable marketing ecosystem.
While I step back to finish other tasks, I think about the remarkable women I had the privilege to host at the Women in Marketing Procurement (WiMP) dinner. I remember that real impact often does not come with a spotlight. Rather, it emerges in the understated brilliance of a well-organized panel, a frank discussion over dinner, or a small but profound change in perception around how value is thought of. The sessions that will stick with me were not the most ostentatious, but they were the most constructive.
