There’s a thread running through this stretch of member content that has nothing to do with platforms or pixels. It’s about pressure. 47% of AI chatbot users say they’d switch brands on a single AI recommendation. A $420 million jury verdict just landed against a gaming company that thought a regulatory gap meant safety. 4% of the roughly 25,000 US marketing agencies are woman-owned. And in the middle of all of it, Indie Agency News members are publishing the data, building the responses, and — in at least one case — installing actual bunk beds in Manhattan to earn the headline. Here’s what stood out.
🛏️ Stunts That Earned the Press
Sometimes the answer is “build the thing in real life and let the press do the rest.”
Project Worldwide, Praytell, and Motive: A Project WorldWide Agency ran a 32-day sprint to bring Air New Zealand’s Skynest — the airline industry’s first Economy-class sleep pods — to life in New York City. Praytell architected the media narrative; Motive built the 360° experiential moment.
Innocean USA launched El Pollo Loco’s “interplanetary” Loco Tenders campaign across social, digital, broadcast, and CTV.
Saylor jumped on the viral “Kablow Kaboom” trend with Tubi, building a Drop Dead Diva fancam that pulled 2M views and 157K likes.
🏆 The Trophy Case Got Crowded
A spring of recognition — including two Webby pickups inside 24 hours.
Highdive picked up two more KFC | Obsession trophies at the Shots Awards — Gold for Cinematography (Up to 2 minutes) and Bronze for Production Design.
Alto took home Best Use of Music in the Ad Age Creativity Awards for their Life360 work, which they note is the “blackmarket surgeons harvesting your daughter’s organs” song people apparently love.
David&Goliath won a Webby for Best Public Service & Activism in the Advertising, PR & Media category for Hnds Up, made with Courageous Conversation Global Foundation.
TogetherWith‘s Amplifier project Encoded picked up two Webbys — Best Community Engagement and Best Use of AR.
Public Inc. earned Silver for Best Cause Marketing Initiative at the Halo Awards for their Meals on Wheels America work.
Project Worldwide agencies racked up wins and shortlists across multiple shows: George P Johnson Experience Marketing took two Event Marketer Ex Awards (Best Outdoor Activation, Best B2B Conference) and was named a 2026 Effie finalist for IBM’s AI Sports Club in the Park, while ARGONAUT picked up a Clio for the RAM-DEMPTION campaign.
🤖 The AI Loyalty Stress Test
Brand equity is being re-tested in real time, and a few members are publishing what they’re learning.
Creativ Company pointed to fresh eMarketer data showing 47% of AI chatbot users would switch brands based on a single AI recommendation — roughly 4x the influence of a traditional social ad.
Yes& Agency VP of Digital Strategy Chrissie Koeppen wrote up the Starbucks + ChatGPT integration as a signal flare: users are starting with intent, not menus, and brands are becoming agents, not pages.
Goodway Group announced a new partnership with Optable, with Michael Wolk framing the stakes plainly: “AI on top of fast, wrong data is still wrong.”
Fohr launched Predictive Campaign Intelligence — pitched as the first forecasting engine for influencer marketing, ending the “we’ll see” era for the one line item in every media plan that never came with a forecast.
Buntin posted a one-page rundown of last week’s five AI shifts: Anthropic Claude Design (a swing at Figma), OpenAI’s new ad format inside ChatGPT, Shutterstock making commercial video accessible, and HubSpot’s brand discovery tools.
📊 The Numbers People Are Quoting
A handful of stats that landed with a thud.
Davis+Gilbert LLP‘s Gary Kibel weighed in on the $420M Skillz v. Papaya Gaming jury verdict, noting the message it sends to companies in emerging digital markets: a lack of industry-specific regulation isn’t immunity from consumer-protection law.
SRH dropped a deep-dive on Yorkshire Tea’s decade-long climb: from third place to a 40% value share of the UK black tea market, with parent Bettys & Taylors hitting a record £319.2 million in 2024 — the first time in the company’s 138-year history past the £300M mark.
Stoltz Marketing Group highlighted Own It data at the org’s annual summit in Chicago: of roughly 25,000 US marketing agencies, 1,000 — about 4% — are woman-owned. Christy Hiler and Jean Freeman started Own It three years ago.
Response Media flagged the WFA Global Risk Barometer, where 97% of marketing leaders report budget pressure heading into the next planning cycle.
🎬 Campaigns Worth a Closer Look
Specific work, specific craft, specific risks.
Venables Bell and Partners launched “Rivals” for Scout Motors, shot in Minneapolis with local hockey players and PRETTYBIRD director Max Malkin.
Witness Me covered Greenpoint Pictures’ ROOS direction of Nissan’s “Happy Chaos” campaign for the 2026 Rogue.
Zambezi launched “It’s Time to Get Honest” for The Honest Company’s Flushable Wipes — built on the premise that women already talk about “down there” topics in the group chat, so why are brands still whispering?
Mother‘s Shanghai office made “Song of the Earth” for Qiao Fu Da Yuan, the first chapter of a stewardship-not-just-harvest brand platform rooted in the black soil of Wuchang.
Rethink put out IKEA “Unpackaged Goods”, which uses IKEA’s storage solutions to bring calm to other brands’ ads.
Hanson Dodge helped Utah Office of Tourism celebrate Dark Sky Month with a homepage toggle that switches visitutah.com between “Daylight” and “Dark Skies” — complete with ambient audio.
TRG enlisted “3 Big Chonks,” otherwise known as hefty cats, to promote World’s Best Cat Litter, complete with a song and feline dance.
🎙️ Voices Worth Your Commute
Three podcasts, two op-eds, and a fireside — every one worth slowing down for.
Antidote opened a piece with Maya Angelou’s confession — “I’ve written eleven books but each time I think, ‘Uh oh… I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out'” — to frame the steep emotional cost of real expertise. Einstein (“involuntary swindler”) and a weeping Churchill make appearances.
AXM (Ars X Machina) founders Josy Amann and Taji Zaminasli reflected on 21 years of building the company on the Outstanding Women Leaders podcast: “All the things we wanted for our life, we built a company around.”
White Rabbit Group hosted Salwa Whiting — 14 years across agency campaigns, in-house brand systems, digital interfaces, and physical retail — on the Pixel Perfect Podcast. Her sharpest observation: in financial services, adding friction can build trust. The scroll-to-the-bottom isn’t bad UX. It’s designed confidence.
Consiglieri founder Tiffany Holland wrote for Advertising Week on why every CMO wants to be a challenger brand, and why most are fighting the wrong battle.
Doe-Anderson hosted organizational psychologist Alison Fragale for an agency-wide chat on the science of status, built around her book Likeable Badass.
🎪 Coachella Was a Brand Festival
A throughline across multiple members’ weekends.
Clever Creative made the case that Coachella has stopped being a music festival and started being a brand showcase, naming Benefit, Gap, Rhode, Aperol, Barbie, 818, YSL Beauty, and Pinterest as the takeover squad in 2026.
G7 Entertainment Marketing delivered White Claw’s Shore Club for the third straight year, with Teddy Swims pulling up to play “Lose Control.”
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