Presidents’ Day week is typically quiet. Indie Agency News members, apparently, did not get that memo. This edition features a group of agencies tackling the genuinely unusual with a straight face—a German football stadium doubling as a health clinic, a humor specialist making comedy a C-suite discipline, and a media team having a very honest conversation about where AI actually earns its keep. There’s also a job listing that might be the most self-aware piece of agency writing in recent memory. Buckle up.
🏟️ The Most Unlikely Healthcare Campaign of the Quarter
Sometimes a campaign is so specific in its logic that you just have to tip your hat. Serviceplan Group — via their Saint Elmo’s colleagues, in collaboration with F/A/Q and Borussia Dortmund — used a Bundesliga matchday to tackle testicular cancer awareness in the most direct way imaginable. The “Balls for Balls” initiative invited fans attending the February 13 Borussia Dortmund vs. Mainz 05 match to get a free urological exam at the stadium, and in return received a football signed by BVB players. Queues formed before kickoff. Over 500 fans showed up. Friends encouraged each other. Partners gave final pushes. What started as a health initiative at a sports stadium turned into an actual cultural moment — proof that the right creative frame makes even the most avoided conversations approachable. The campaign continues at ballsforballs.de.
😄 Comedy as a Business Discipline
Party Land made an organizational decision last year that says a lot about how seriously they take their positioning: they created a dedicated Director of Brand Growth & Strategy role specifically to put the business of humor front and center. Haley Hunter and Suzy Langdell — the two faces of that approach — joined Jody Sutter to discuss what it looks like when comedy stops being a tonal choice and becomes a strategic campaign vehicle. The question of whether brands can build genuine humor positioning, rather than just occasionally being funny, is a live one. Party Land’s answer appears to be: yes, if you structure your agency for it.
🤖 The AI Conversation That Doesn’t Oversell
There’s an exhausting amount of AI content out there that either declares the apocalypse or promises miracles. Stoltz Marketing Group Media Director Seth Mariscal took a more useful approach: a direct breakdown of where AI actually helps in media buying and where human expertise remains essential. Planning smarter. Optimizing faster. Uncovering opportunities. But — and this is the important part — with strategy, judgment, and client relationships staying squarely in human hands. “AI is an accelerator. Not a replacement.” Four words that do more work than most AI think-pieces manage in 2,000.
🧡 The Human Dimension of Internal Culture
Two agencies this week offered a window into internal culture that was genuinely worth pausing on.
Highdive gave out The Louis Award — their highest internal honor, named after late Managing Partner Louis Slotkin — to Senior Producer Serena Lignel. The agency described her as “the kind” of person the award exists for: relentless positivity, creativity, and problem-solving in the spirit of someone they clearly still miss. It’s a small thing to post about. It’s also the kind of thing that tells you exactly what an agency values.
TiNY, meanwhile, marked Presidents’ Day by issuing formal “decrees” in honor of their president, Michael Stoopack — including mandatory Radio Bakery croissants and black coffee on morning calls. Working at the mixing board described elsewhere in their content as “like doing brain surgery on himself.” (The AMP Awards entry link, for those interested, is at amp.awardcore.com.)
📺 The Super Bowl Verdict from Someone Who Actually Had Thoughts
The Big Game debrief continues. Innocean USA SVP ECD Ryan Scott shared his read on this year’s ad lineup with Marketing Dive — a piece that, based on its headline, took a fairly dim view of the collective creative ambition on display. Read Scott’s perspective alongside Marketing Dive’s Chris Kelly and Peter Adams for a fuller picture of whether the industry played it safe or just… played it.
🏆 Long Partnerships, New Chapters
Young & Laramore hit a milestone worth noting: twenty years helping build Brizo Kitchen & Bath Company. Two decades of thoughtful, fashion-forward campaigns for a luxury brand, and now they’re adding organic social to the relationship. There’s something quietly impressive about that — not just winning a client, but growing with one long enough to take on the channels that didn’t exist when you started.
Curiosity landed on Miami University’s RedHawk 50, recognizing the fastest-growing Miami-led businesses globally. Owners Greg Livingston and Ashley Walters went to school there. That’s a specific kind of full-circle moment.
🔬 Someone Burned Themselves on a Postcard
Epica Awards spotlighted a bronze win for blackjet inc’s “Signed, Seared, Delivered” — a campaign for The Climate Emergency Unit that turned postcards into protest tools by recreating wildfire devastation imagery. The full entry speaks for itself: an object you can hold, that shows you something you can’t ignore, that asks you to act.
🍫 The Branding Job That Comes With the Good Stuff
mnstr and their Project WorldWide sister agency Motive handled packaging design for Tony’s Chocolonely’s new Filled bars. Not bad work if you can get it.
📋 From the Community Noticeboard
A few worth flagging from the broader week:
Doe-Anderson joined the Ad Age Small Agency Network this week — and their post announcing it was sharp: “In a world obsessed with optimization and efficiency, we’re proud to join a group that prioritizes ingenuity, culture, and the impact of independent thinking.” That’s the kind of sentence that earns the membership.
BackPocket Agency VP of Marketing Strategy Janet Celosia was featured in a new Protech Associates guide on smarter association communications and member engagement — available here for anyone working in that space.
Lewis had a piece reshared by Little Black Book on how health and wellness trends are reshaping the food and beverage category. The framing — “better-for-you is now the baseline, not the bonus” — captures the shift cleanly. Read the full LBB feature.
Mythology is hunting for a freelance design researcher/archivist. Specifically: “The kind of person who disappears down a rabbit hole tracing the origins of a logo and emerges three hours later, thrilled.” If you know someone, you know someone. Email ca*****@*******gy.com.
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Kyle O’Brien is managing editor of Indie Agency News.
