Some promises are made in the heat of a trade rumor. Others get made in a pitch meeting. Today’s batch from Indie Agency News members has a lot of both coming due at once: a seven-year-old free-food pledge to an NBA star, a year-round gaming program that started as a test, and a whole lot of talk about what AI is (and isn’t) supposed to fix. Fried chicken shows up twice. Football shows up three times. And a surprising number of agencies are spending their energy not on reach, but on giving people a reason to stick around. Let’s get into it.
🍗 Tender Moments
Two continents, one chicken, and a bill that’s finally landed on the table.
Rethink is collecting on a 2019 stunt. Back then, the agency worked with Raptors Republic to convince Kawhi Leonard to stay in Toronto, with hundreds of restaurants displaying “Ka’Wine & Dine” badges promising him free food for life. Now that he’s re-signed, Rethink is welcoming those restaurants to make good on the deal.
Special Australia could have told people KFC’s tenders were bigger and crispier. Instead, the agency “boybanded” them for the new “More Tender Than Ever” work. The shop also congratulated Uber Eats and The Kid LAROI on an ARIA nomination for their collaboration.
Mother is taking KFC UK & Ireland into programming with Don’t Crack, an original game show billed as “the ultimate test of devotion”. It premieres on YouTube tomorrow, September 30, at 8pm BST.
🎮 People Who Chose to Show Up
The measure isn’t how many saw it. It’s how many stuck around.
The Many says Panda Express first dropped its mascot PeiPei into Fortnite and Roblox in mid-2025 as a test. It’s now a year-round gaming program, and Roblox players had more than 1.1 million chats with PeiPei. Group Media Director Crystal Chou walks through the whole arc at Advertising Week New York on October 5.
Motive: A Project WorldWide Agency helped Subaru of America turn a decade-old ambassador program into SubieCrew, a chapter-based community network of nearly 700 ambassadors in 50 chapters. It was built alongside fellow Project Worldwide agency Wondersauce.
Praytell turned If You Care’s parchment paper into a wearable dress Busy Philipps debuted at New York Fashion Week. The numbers: 600+ placements (People, InStyle, Entertainment Tonight, E!), 1B+ impressions and a 346% jump in on-site searches. For a pantry staple, that’s quite a runway.
🏈 Football Season, Indie Edition
Legends, lotteries and one personalized ad for a guy named Mike.
Highdive paired Danny DeVito and Eli Manning for new Jersey Mike’s Subs work, then wrapped its State Farm football campaign with one more personalized commercial, this one for Mike.
GYK cast Patriots legends Matt Light and Danny Amendola to launch the New Hampshire Lottery’s new $5 Patriots Scratch Ticket.
Allen & Gerritsen‘s Voice of Logan campaign for Massachusetts Port Authority took off from the airport and landed on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
🤖 AI, Minus the Magic Tricks
Less “use it more,” more “decide what it’s for.”
Chameleon Collective partner Jon Michel Greenwood argues AI workslop is a leadership problem, not a tool problem. His four fixes include naming the deliverables that require human authorship and making reviewer time a visible cost.
Butler/Till CSO Scott Ensign sat down with Index Exchange’s Michael Richardson on how agentic AI and sell-side decisioning are reshaping programmatic — and why the agency’s job is still understanding what it buys for clients. Meanwhile, the team is at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O introducing a framework for measuring AI visibility, citations and “share of answer” alongside Salix Pharmaceuticals.
Bits&Letters founder David Demaree tried Meta’s new AI agent and read the discourse, then wondered whether people want to be productive at all.
Klick Health‘s latest Wire finds 50% of consumers are likely to use AI for healthcare, while 30% of U.S. women say they’ve had to push to be taken seriously.
CYLNDR Studios is opening its West Adams studio for 4As Presents: GenJam Los Angeles — a blind brief and three hours to make a :30–:60 spot, for creatives already past the AI basics.
🏆 Pencils, Scores and Quotes
Specific hardware, specifically earned.
Serviceplan Group was named “Independent Network of the Year” in D&AD’s rankings, powered by 7 Graphite, 4 Wood and 1 Yellow Pencil for work including “Breastmilk Money” and “The Period Uniform.”
Campfire published its 2025 Impact Report nine months into 2026 on purpose — it spends the first half of the year auditing. Highlight: a B Corp recertification score of 133, which the agency says puts it in roughly the top 5% of B Corps globally.
Cactus clients cleaned up at the NASPL Batchy Awards: four wins for the Colorado Lottery, two for the North Carolina Education Lottery, and Hoosier Lottery a finalist across five categories.
RP3 Agency CSO Laura Thomas landed Ad Age’s Quote of the Week in a story on how small agencies can manage CMO churn, while founder and CEO Beth Johnson was celebrated in Campaign US’s 40 Over 40.
🪑 New Names on the Door
Leadership handoffs, new hires and one very sweet new client.
Rethink‘s Montreal office is turning a page: Mélanie Chateauneuf, Xavier Blais and Pascal Routhier will lead the office after founding partners Nicolas Quintal and Alex Lefebvre depart at year’s end.
Mother LA brought in Stephanie Thiel as Managing Director, from the Bay Area.
Drake Cooper‘s Mindy Stomp and Dylan Amundson told Campaign US how being 100% employee-owned shows up in the work and in client relationships.
Lafayette American added Ben & Jerry’s to its roster, with first work built around the idea that no two scoops are identical.
📚 Worth Your Coffee Break
Reads and listens that earn the time.
StayGold looks at why Hugo Boss faced its Nazi past while Adidas and Puma didn’t, and what that teaches about brand trust.
Atlantic New York asks whether phones are the new cigarettes — and what happens to brands built on 3-second hooks if culture starts optimizing for presence instead of screen time.
Fuse Create partner and ECD Steve Miller shares three agency-culture lessons from a trip to Honduras, where 12 staffers helped client Soles4Souls fit children with new shoes.
Ardmore used Irish-language proficiency data to target its media for Beacon CARE Fertility, in its first collaboration with Bonfire Dublin.
Familiar Creatures client Crunch Fitness and CMO Chad Waetzig featured on Ad Age Insider’s look at mid-size marketers.
And Standard Practice, having lost the Colorado round at our trivia night, sent co-founder David Schiff to an hour of Colorado radio to talk conspiracy theories, toll roads and a demonic airport horse. Redemption pending.
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