A 300-Year-Old Vampire Finally Lands His First Brand Deal

Indie Agency News members spent the past week doing something sneaky: taking the stuff people already do every day — showering, brushing their teeth, getting the kids out the door, checking a dashboard — and quietly rewiring it. Halloween is doing a lot of the heavy lifting (one client’s mascot waited three centuries for this moment), and Advertising Week New York pulled half the industry into Midtown. But under the costumes, there’s a sharper thread running through this batch: the numbers that look healthy aren’t always honest, the AI terms of service don’t say what you think they say, and the most memorable work keeps borrowing its format from somewhere else entirely.

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🚿 The Routine Is the Medium

Why invent a new habit when you can hijack an old one?

Special brought in Taika Waititi to direct “Save your life. Rinse. Repeat.” for Breast Cancer Foundation NZ, turning the daily shower into a prompt for breast self-checks — because nearly every New Zealand woman knows checking matters, and nearly everyone forgets.

Giant Spoon opened its Ritual campaign with a stat that does most of the work: around 70% of perimenopause supplements come from brands led by men. Their answer is “The Women’s Health Men’s Choir,” starring Jackie Tohn, and a simple directive to let her do the talking.

Joan Creative says each team member has brushed their teeth 236 times since pitching SURI. The wait ended with “Good days,” the first work under the “Designed for Life” platform, live across UK TV and OOH now and headed to the US in 2027.

Corner Table Creative landed in Ad Age’s roundup with “Clocked In” for Little Spoon — reality-show vignettes and unscripted confessionals from three real families running the 5-to-9 shift before most people are awake, plus a coffee cart for parents “après drop-off.”

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🧛 Spooky Season Is Open for Business

Garlic, gourds, and one very patient undead influencer.

Cornett handed Cup Noodles’ socials to Vladison, a vampire who waited 300 years to land his first brand deal — and whose sponsor is a blood-red Hot Garlic Chicken flavor. The six-week takeover also made Ad Age’s list of Halloween foods brands are betting on.

SRH used the razor-blades-in-apples myth (and the 1970s Bubble Yum spider-egg panic) to make a point about buyer uncertainty: the real monsters are the tiny unanswered doubts in a buyer’s head. Earlier in the week, they broke down how Spirit Halloween owns two very specific occasions — “I need a costume” and “I need a seven-foot animatronic clown.”

Lupine Creative‘s month-long in-store activation for Hot Topic, celebrating 20 years of My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade,” got written up in Billboard.

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📺 Borrowed Formats, Original Ideas

Dating shows, couples therapy, celebrity interviews, and a K-pop single — none of them what they seem.

Mother made IKEA a dating show. “Storage is Sexy,” hosted by Charley Marlowe, asks whether you could fall for someone based on their wardrobe alone. Two episodes are up now.

Witness Me director Renny Maslow (of CHROMISTA) put phone loyalty on Dr. Orna’s couch for Samsung’s “Switchers,” a parody of Showtime’s Couples Therapy that recreates the show’s look to get at why people are scared to switch phones.

Raindrop sat Martha Stewart down with Purrcy for a PrettyLitter conversation about what cats are trying to tell us through the litter box.

Here Be Dragons keeps turning client testimonials into songs. The latest, a K-pop track called “5 Days with Dragons,” was written by Foley Family Wines & Spirits’ Charlie Landis about the agency’s Evil Bean work — and it’s part of a whole catalog of “hits”.

YPR saw lululemon’s giant bag going viral and pitched editors on MUJI’s own oversized tote. The result: a Daily Hive head-to-head pitting a $9.90 bag against a $268 one.

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🔢 Numbers Worth a Second Look

Some of these are good news. One of them is honest news.

Delve Deeper found that UNICEF’s GA4 was counting donations per session instead of per transaction, with a confirmation page firing on reload. The fix, detailed in their case study, trimmed reported revenue by 8% across 10 markets. Same fundraising performance, more honest numbers.

GTE Canada laid out the Q4 TV squeeze: 55% of advertisers are raising holiday TV budgets, political spend is projected at $11.6 billion with roughly 23% going to connected TV, and 77% of advertisers will be in market by November.

KSV points out that nearly 1 in 3 Americans are struggling to pay their electric bills, and argues energy brands should answer with clear, predictable messaging that builds trust rather than surprises.

Klick Health‘s latest Klick Wire rounds up research suggesting 50% of physicians’ tasks could already be handled by AI and 73% of branded searches now trigger Google AI Overviews.

GYK client Milo’s Tea passed $1 billion in annual retail sales a year ahead of schedule. Per GYK, distribution is up 50% to more than 65,000 stores, and household penetration is up 56% to one in four U.S. homes.

Rise and Shine and Partners is an OMMA Awards finalist for its Mushroom Council influencer campaign: 109 million impressions and 4.3 million engagements. Not bad for fungi.

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⚖️ Read the Fine Print (Especially the AI Parts)

Ownership, disclosure, shopping agents, and a case for being a little dumber.

Davis+Gilbert flagged that California’s SB 1050 will require advertisers to disclose synthetic performers in certain ads starting January 1, 2027, making it the second state after New York to do so.

Legal+Creative warned that when an AI platform says you own the output, that’s not the same as the output being ownable — it mostly means the platform won’t hold you liable. Their on-demand session also notes your ad platform and project management tool belong on the list of terms to check.

Barbarian managing director Jeff Blackman talked to The New York Times about what AI shopping agents mean for brands: build for both the agent and the person behind it.

VaynerMedia unveiled “The Relevance Barbell” at Advertising Week alongside CMOs from JPMorganChase and Target — marketing is splitting into extreme digitization and extreme analog, and live events should double as social production days.

Atlantic New York made the case that AI has joined espresso and company-expensed happy hours as a workplace vice — and one that’s closing the door on entry-level roles.

Worldwide Partners shared Paula Bloodworth’s IGNITE Copenhagen talk on why stupidity might be a superpower: let AI be the smartest person in the room, and spend your time on the absurd ideas that don’t immediately make sense.

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🎪 Things You Can Walk Into (or Wear, or Drink)

Fairgrounds, listening rooms, rockets, and a beer with a therapy session attached.

Colossus went all in on The Big E’s “unexpect everything” campaign for America’s only multi-state fair: mobile ads on trucks that look like they’re hauling live goats, and billboards dripping with cheese.

Motive and Project Worldwide sibling Praytell turned an Austin house into Denon House, a series of rooms each built around a different way people listen to music, from a packed party to a quiet late night.

Mnstr created a two-minute VR experience for Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue that combines sound, light, and scent, now in select Guerlain boutiques worldwide.

100Percent got Sibos delegates to stop by LSEG’s booth by sending them into space in a 4D VR rocket. Hard to beat for a banking conference.

Wondersauce teamed with Motive on SubieCrew, Subaru’s reimagined owner community, building a web app that helps ambassadors organize events across 50 chapters nationwide.

Curiosity helped launch Spill! Session Ale, a beer born from employee passion where every can connects drinkers with a free first therapy session through Rivertown Wellness.

Party Land made TRULY LOST merch for Truly — a fall collection for tailgaters and watch-party regulars “who have absolutely no idea what just happened.”

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🏆 The Trophy Shelf

LIA, Cresta, MM+M, ADWEEK, and the 4As — a busy week for acceptance speeches.

Klick Health collected 23 recognitions at LIA (3 Gold, 5 Silver, 6 Bronze, 9 finalists), then was named MM+M’s Market Access Agency of the Year (Gold) with nine client campaign awards on top.

Serviceplan Group took 21 LIA wins, the strongest haul among German agencies, led by “I WOOL SURVIVE” — then was named Cresta’s Independent Network of the Year for the second straight year, where “Sheep Happens” also earned the Jury Chair Award.

Rethink brought home a Grand LIA and several more awards, while McKinney‘s “The Petition Papers” for the Wildlife Conservation Society — fish market wrapping paper that doubles as an official petition to protect Hudson Canyon — earned LIA Silver.

Innocean USA‘s social team, Highdive‘s Randy McEntee and Ben Doessel, and Party Land‘s leadership team all won ADWEEK Team Visionary Awards — in Agency Social, Technology/Innovation, and Legacy Leadership respectively.

Allen & Gerritsen‘s “Making A Mark On America’s 250th” for Visit Philadelphia was shortlisted for the 4As Jay Chiat Award for B2B Strategy.

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💼 Independence, Reconsidered

New money, new briefs, and an agency that refuses to specialize.

Zambezi announced a strategic investment from private equity firm Manna Tree, with CEO Jean Freeman and President Laura Stayt staying in place. The agency framed the deal around keeping its selectivity about which brands it works with.

DCA profiled Execute, which set out to make a feature-length documentary in six months and did it. “The People’s Emergency Briefing” started as an event-clip brief, became a BBFC-certified feature led by Chris Packham, and has now had over 4,000 screenings, with a BBC Panorama feature coming.

D/CAL launched NSF’s first-ever U.S. consumer campaign under the platform “Trust is our science,” giving meaning to a certification mark found on hundreds of thousands of products.

Bakery is officially AOR for WILDE Snacks. Their words: “Don’t like it? Get Clucked!”

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