The Economist has never pretended to be for everyone - and rather than shy away from that, they turned it into a strategy. The idea was simple: use discomfort as a filter, attracting the genuinely curious and leaving everyone else behind. The result was their Live acquisition programme, which grew into the brand's second most profitable subscriber channel and quietly set a template that plenty of competitors scrambled to follow.

The creative work leaned into the brand's more unexpected editorial territory - its coverage of Climate Change and the Future of Food - and brought it to life through a series of deliberately provocative taste experiences. Think insect-infused ice cream and crepes, lab-grown meat burgers that bled, cat-poo and toilet-water coffee, and waste-food smoothies. Each one a conversation starter, and a pretty effective gateway into the journalism itself.

It's a great example of a brand mining its own contradictions to brilliant effect - and the strategic thinking behind it, credited to Alex Smith, was the foundation that made all of it possible.