There’s a version of this week’s member content that’s a polished tour through the industry’s greatest hits. That’s not this version. What came through from Indie Agency News members this week was sharper and more useful than that: a story about a utility company that read Reddit hate threads aloud in its own commercials and came out 17 points ahead, a framework for why your brand might not exist in the AI conversation at all, a piece on why human faces in brand imagery are becoming a strategic decision rather than a cost decision, and a creative director who keeps the campaigns that died a fiery death because those are the ones that actually taught her something. Plus: the Mischief shortlist situation at Ad Age, a Godfather-themed avocado oil campaign, and spring’s image problem.
🔥 Reading Your Own Reddit Hate Thread Out Loud
Duncan Channon took on PG&E when the utility’s favorability was near historic lows — and made a deliberate choice not to run a traditional campaign singing the company’s praises. Instead: radical candor. Unscripted customers. Linemen reading verbatim from the Reddit “PG&E Sucks” megathread. A commercial where a customer actually talks about the “stupid commercials.” There was plenty of handwringing after launch. PG&E leadership stayed the course. One year later, brand trust is up 17%. “Turns out honesty and transparency — even when it’s awkward — can be pretty powerful stuff.” That’s a case study worth pinning.
🤖 If AI Can’t Find Your Brand, Do You Exist?
Three members this week made the same point from different angles, and the convergence is hard to ignore.
AXM (Ars X Machina) co-founder Taji Zaminasli laid out the stakes clearly: search has changed more in the last year than the previous 20. Consumers aren’t browsing links — they’re asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude for answers. Visibility is no longer about where you rank. It’s about whether AI knows your brand, trusts your content, and chooses to cite you.
Mother Bear Agency put the same problem through a more visceral lens for World Bear Day: “Recommendation now beats ranking. If your brand isn’t clearly structured, consistently reinforced, and aligned with how AI generates answers, you won’t make the cut — even if you’re the better option.” They’ve built a tool called BearSense AI specifically to diagnose brand readiness for this new environment.
Mower Agency‘s Geoff Thomas wrote for MediaPost that more channels doesn’t equal better marketing — coordination beats saturation — borrowing a lesson from the Olympics to argue for intentional, moment-driven strategy over broad presence. A quiet but direct counterpoint to the “be everywhere” playbook.
👁️ The Human Face Problem
Friends Everywhere published an essay on The Everywhere Edit that cuts through the AI imagery debate with a more useful frame than most. The issue isn’t that AI can’t generate convincing faces. It’s that the specific details AI struggles with — genuine smiles, hands in motion, eyes that hold a moment — are exactly the details that signal trust. AI over-smooths and regularizes the cues that make human imagery feel present rather than plausible. The conclusion: “Human imagery is a strategic decision, not a cost decision.” As AI-generated visuals become more common, brands that commit to real human presence are signaling something worth signaling.
🏆 The Mischief Shortlist Situation
Mischief @ No Fixed Address landed 10+ shortlists at the Ad Age Creativity Awards — and framed the announcement the way only Mischief would: imagining themselves in JCPenney threads, taking the family Slate Auto to Chili’s for margs before the gala, spraying Kraft Heinz A1 Sauce like champagne in celebration. The actual shortlist covers CCO of the Year (Greg Hahn), CSO of the Year (Jeff McCrory), Best ROI for JCPenney, Best Rebrand for JCPenney, Best Brand Launch for Slate, Brand of the Year for Chili’s, Best Partnership for Chili’s and Tecovas, and more. That’s a lot of hardware for one ecosystem of work.
🥑 An Offer You Can’t Refuse (It’s Avocado Oil)
Humanaut made a Godfather-inspired campaign for Chosen Foods that is exactly as committed to the bit as you’d hope. Watch it here. “An offer we couldn’t refuse 🤌 🥑 🇮🇹 🐴” — their words, and hard to argue with.
📰 The Dead Campaigns Are the Good Ones
Laughlin Constable‘s Rachel Bottlinger-Howe was featured in LBBonline on the work that shaped her career — and the framing is worth reading past the headline: “The projects that changed my career aren’t just the ones that made it into the ad trades — they’re also the ones that died a fiery death and never saw the light of day. In this industry, every piece of work teaches you something, and that constant evolution is why I love what I do.” A useful reminder that the portfolio isn’t always the point.
🌱 Spring Has an Image Problem (Day One Agency Has Notes)
Day One Agency CCO Jamie Falkowski was tapped by The New York Times to pitch the client du jour: spring. His take — “Spring is our wake-up call as people. To go out there and live life again” — is exactly the kind of brief that sounds deceptively simple until you try to execute it.
🐻 Communities, Niche Culture, and What Brands Actually Earn
mnstr ECD Guillaume Carrère wrote for Advertising Week ahead of his panel appearance this week: “Communities do not need brands to exist. Brands need to understand them if they want to play a role in those groups shaping culture.” A clean articulation of something the industry has been fumbling toward for years.
The Many continued their Participation Exchange run with an essay on brainrot — Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year — and what it means that the most participatory generation in history is also the one most described by a term for mental degradation from low-quality content. Worth five minutes.
💡 Asking the Questions Nobody Else Asks
Left Off Madison published a blog post on 10 questions they ask before writing a headline or allocating a single dollar of media — including “Are the goals based on reality or hope?”, “Is the target audience actually buying the product?”, and “What would actually cause this campaign to fail?” Uncomfortable questions, which is probably why most agencies avoid them.
DCA published a piece on Quiet Storm, the UK indie that’s spent nearly three decades deliberately making clients uncomfortable in service of work that moves people. Their Haribo “Kids’ Voices” campaign required recording children completely unscripted first, before a single brief was written. The Haribo Global CCO once told a boardroom: “If you don’t feel slightly nervous, Trev’s not doing his job.” That’s a positioning statement worth stealing.
❤️ Twelve People, Honduras, and a Pair of Shoes
FUSE Create is sending 12 people to Honduras in April to work with Soles4Souls Canada, visiting schools, churches, and community centers. The agency is covering the cost. They’re asking for help with donations to extend the reach further. If you want to contribute.
🎬 SXSW, Cannabis Launches, and the Curio Wellness Case
SpecialGuest won the Music Video Audience Award at SXSW — the work for OK Go took home the honor.
Planit launched Curio Wellness’s Missouri Flower brand with what they describe as a literal launch — see the case study. Nothing wrong with making the metaphor physical.
Preacher collaborated with Amsterdam-based artist Geoffrey Lillemon to turn survey data from 500 people into an interactive visual experience exploring how much people enjoy exercising compared to other everyday activities, and which body parts they find most attractive in themselves and others. A research project that doesn’t feel like a research project.
Not yet a member of Indie Agency News? Connect with the indie agency community of over 345 members at indieagency.news.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
