A couple of things kept surfacing across Indie Agency News member feeds this week. The first is that the search bar everyone built their careers around is quietly changing shape — two separate member studies put hard numbers on how people now type questions instead of keywords, and on how Google’s grip on search spend just slipped below half for the first time in two decades. The second is that effectiveness season is in full swing, with Effie hardware, Clio Health metal, and a wall of Addys landing in the same few days. And underneath all of it, the indie crowd is packing for Cannes, mashing up snack brands into desserts, and flying Marks & Spencer to Ibiza. Here’s what caught our eye.
📊 The numbers don’t lie
Research worth bookmarking.
Stella Rising surveyed 500+ LLM users and had them write actual prompts: 60% wrote questions, 25% used the word “best,” and 28% mentioned price. Their conclusion — the keyword is dead — comes with data to back the GEO conversation up.
Creativ Company pointed to eMarketer’s 2026 forecast, which has Google capturing 48.5% of US search ad spending this year — the first time in more than two decades its share has dipped below 50%, with Amazon and retail media closing the gap on purchase intent.
Response Media flagged a Harvard Business Review analysis of 16,000 US customers showing that after privacy laws took effect in California and Virginia, users actually shared more data — reframing compliance from a burden into a strategic asset.
Graybox shared eight years of work with Northwest Permanente, where paid-media recruiting cut cost per conversion by 59%, pushed conversion rates above 10%, and filled every open CRNA seat in a cycle — through a GA4 migration and a national physician shortage, no less.
🏆 Effie season
The work that worked.
Special U.S. took home a Grand Effie for Uber Eats, capping what they called “a ridiculous effort to make a reality” — the kind of hard idea an Effie judge noted people are often afraid to say yes to. Innocean USA celebrated two Effie Worldwide wins: a Silver for Wienerschnitzel’s “Unleashing Wiener Pride” and a Bronze for Hyundai’s “So Right It Feels Wrong.” Joan Creative earned a Bronze Effie for Brawny’s “Summon the Strongest” with Georgia-Pacific. And Rethink picked up Effie recognition for its work with Kraft Heinz — fitting, given what they did to that brand’s mac and cheese (more on that below).
🎟️ The road to Cannes
The indie contingent is booking flights.
VaynerMedia rolled out stop #2 on its Road to Cannes series, with VaynerX CBO Kaylen McNamara previewing four days of programming at Chez Vayner on the Croisette.
TogetherWith is bringing three panels to the festival, including one on Paraboles — billed as the first multimedia performance created in microgravity — and CCO Heidi Singleton’s session on unifying culture across a PE-backed network spanning Toronto, Buenos Aires, and Miami. Raven Public Relations is reviving Cannes Closet Confidential for 2026, promising “more execs, more designer labels, more hot takes.”
🍔 Stunts, mashups, and one trip to Ibiza
The work people will actually talk about.
Rethink convinced Kraft Heinz to fuse Kraft Dinner with cheesecake into the KD Mac & Cheesecake — a real, findable dessert — and, separately, built a “Smashed A&W” pop-up so Toronto could smash an A&W Smash Burger in the smashiest way possible.
Loop.co teamed with Paramount Pictures for Scary Movie 6 and built Subservient Ghostface, a callback to the old Subservient Chicken where you tell Ghostface what to do next.
Mother took Marks & Spencer to Ibiza and built Casa del Compliments, a rebranded resort with Amelia Dimoldenberg as General Manager — M&S’s first live fashion show, with 29 models and 57 looks that pulled 2.3 million linear-TV viewers, on par with Coronation Street. Highdive ran Mentos’ 30-year-old Freshmaker jingle through social listening and rewrote it nine times for the absurd problems Gen Z faces, each ending on the year’s most honest tagline: “we can’t help you, but we can give you Mentos.”
📈 Up the ladder
People moves and leadership worth noting.
SRH promoted Milly Segovia to VP of Media and Analytics and Jeff Ohm to VP of Client Services and Insights. Klick Chief People Officer Glenn Zujew talked people-first culture with MM+M, distilling it to “Happy people create great work. Great work means happy clients, and happy clients reward us.”
Rethink CCO Tara Lawall sat down with Campaign to discuss her path to becoming an Academy Award nominee and the difference between insights and facts. And Reverve Agency featured Carolina C., SVP/GM of GoGo squeeZ US at Bel Group, on running a $650M business with a mission to take it to $1B — and why the real work was trusting herself, not hitting numbers.
🎖️ The rest of the trophy case
Beyond the Effies.
Super Nice brought back 2x National Gold Addys for its Hidden Island activation for Norwegian Cruise Line, part of a run that also included a District 7 Best of Show. McKinney took Silver in Environmental Health at the Clio Health Awards for “The Petition Paper” for the Wildlife Conservation Society, while Chemistry Agency earned a Bronze and two shortlists at Clio Health for “Weird Looking Stools” with Georgia CORE. Colossus collected a Gold, two Silvers, and a Bronze at the 47th Annual Telly Awards for Wellness Pet Company and Embark Veterinary, and Household won a Shop! Association Gold for its Amazon Devices store-within-a-store at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Alto got named to Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies — “proof we occasionally leave our laptops,” as they put it.
🧠 Smart takes
Frameworks, books, and new ways of working.
Chameleon Collective released Collective Capitalism, a book from Freddie Laker, Juan Carlos Morales, and Paul Lewis making the case for partner-owned companies built on trust and shared ownership. Two Things detailed a four-month experiment letting designers build directly in the codebase alongside engineers using Claude Code and Figma’s MCP server, turning design artifacts into production-ready code from day one. Giant Spoon, with Wpromote, hosted its third Alchemy Dinner around the idea that Gen Z attention spans aren’t shrinking — they’re seeking out longer-form media to slow down — with NFL analyst Peter Schrager and a James Beard–nominated chef at the table.
🌵 Worth noting
Anniversaries, finalists, and a five-year-old hero.
Cactus marked its 36th anniversary on June 1 by tying it to the start of Men’s Mental Health Month, with founder Joe Conrad sharing news the team is proud of. Stirling Brandworks and The Canal Collective both landed IAN Top 40 finalist nods — Stirling for craft and strategy work with 3S Artspace and MassArt Art Museum, Canal for Rodan + Fields and a Baby Jergens campaign that earned three finalist spots across Idea, Craft, and Strategy. Drake Cooper celebrated five years of ExtraMan, the convenience-store hero still saving snack breaks for ExtraMile. And over on The Many, Clayton English weighed in on Atlanta’s World Cup readiness on The Spread Sheet — a good palate cleanser before the tournament arrives.
Want your agency’s work in the next Indie Spin? Indie Agency News members get their campaigns, wins, and ideas in front of the indie community every week. Not a member yet? Come join the most interesting agencies in the business at indieagency.news.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
