There’s a certain pleasure in watching the indie world produce work that is, by turns, absurd and moving in the same news cycle. This edition of Indie Spin features a Bridgerton-inspired Meta film, a grief PSA that punched well above its media budget, a PE firm AI strategy guide with zero hype, and a long-overdue takedown of a 2009 Jeff Bezos quote that has aged like warm milk. Indie Agency News members showed up this week in galleries, galas, hockey arenas, and a Nairobi hospital. There’s a lot to get to.
🎬 Spectacle Dressed as Strategy
Rethink has had a week. Their second film for Meta Marketplace and Netflix—”Regency Riders”—turns the post-thrift-store-find feeling into a full Bridgerton spectacle, directed by Tom Noakes and Prettybird. That same week, they launched a batch of KAYAK travel films and a new Heinz campaign. Three distinct clients, three wildly different tones, all executed without visible strain.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVOWmd_APa0
Lewis got LBBonline coverage for “Deepfake the Super Bowl,” a C Spire campaign that used AI not as a gimmick but to expose its own shadow side. The piece is worth reading—it’s one of the sharper uses of the format this cycle.
https://lbbonline.com/work/160466
🔍 The Search Is Different Now
Iris put out what might be the clearest-eyed take on AI search this month: “Discoverability is being rebuilt from scratch. Visibility no longer means ranking—it means being cited, summarized and recommended by AI.” That sentence is doing a lot of work for a LinkedIn post. The brands that miss this shift in 2026 won’t know what hit them.
Goodway Group is covering the YouTube side of the same conversation—their piece with Google’s Tom Swierczewski and Fernando Belfort on full-funnel YouTube strategy is worth the read for any agency building video into client planning.
https://www.goodwaygroup.com/youtube-full-funnel-strategy
Chameleon Collective took the AI angle into private equity territory. Adam Towvim’s blog post—on how PE firms can deploy AI to actually move EBITDA, not just check a strategy box—is refreshingly direct. No hype. No acronym soup.
https://chameleoncollective.com/blog/how-pe-firms-can-deploy-ai-to-boost-portfolio-value
🏒 Sports Made Us Show Up Together
Two Things made the most of the USA Hockey Olympic gold moment, and not in the way you’d expect. Rather than a brand cheerleading post, they wrote a meditation on appointment viewing—what it means when fragmented culture occasionally reassembles around a single shared moment. “We all showed up at the same time. For a puck. For a team. For a country. That almost never happens anymore.” Their sports philosophy page is a useful read for any agency advising clients on cultural relevance.
https://www.twothings.co/sports
🕯️ When Thin Budgets Do Heavy Lifting
Here Be Monsters shared results from a December campaign for Lumara Grief & Bereavement Society—a grief awareness PSA targeting families during the holidays, built on donated airtime and a very thin media budget. It worked. “Advertising works. And it can do good, too.” is not a flashy opening line, but after reading what they pulled off, it lands.
Klick released a video series following 20+ team members who traveled to Baraka Hospital in Kenya over 15 years of support, with 1,600 surgeries completed through that work. It’s a rare case of a company story that earns its emotion rather than manufacturing it.
🏆 The Wins Column
Guesthouse took gold at the AAF Nashville awards for their “Get More Done” campaign with SAS. B2B creative winning a room full of people who typically celebrate consumer work is always a small victory for the genre.
https://www.welcometoguesthouse.com/sas
BackPocket Agency posted 30% year-over-year growth, covered in Illinois Business Review, with an expanding healthcare and association marketing portfolio. Growth that lands in editorial coverage carries more weight than a self-reported post.
Mother had an unusual week even by Mother standards: winning Cannes Lions PR Agency of the Year, acquiring The Romans, and opening their Berlin office—all in the same seven days. One of these alone would constitute a good week.
Special Australia announced a new partnership with KFC. Their post noted “the scent of 11 secret herbs and spices” and earned it.
🧠 Thinking Out Loud
SRH took on the Bezos quote—the one where he said advertising is the price you pay for an unremarkable product. Their post is patient, specific, and ultimately correct. It’s the kind of thing worth sending to a client who has heard that line and nodded along.
Joybyte made a distinction that more agencies should be making to clients: “Legacy brands don’t need reinvention. They need reintroduction.” The full post breaks down micro-influencer strategy as the bridge—consistent, curated, always-on rather than one-off.
Day One Agency CEO Josh Rosenberg spoke at the ANA Creator Marketing Conference with a line worth keeping: “Influence isn’t built in a single moment. Influence is built in repetition, familiarity, and continuity.” Client education, right there.
Oberland‘s Drew Train made the case that small agencies don’t just survive the industry—they shape it. “The agencies that change the industry aren’t always the biggest ones in the room.” True in 2026. True in most decades.
Giant Spoon turned Coinbase’s Bitcoin Pizza Day into cultural content that delivered 20M+ impressions for their client, in partnership with Vox Media Creative. Their piece on “The Stir” breaks down the four questions that guided the strategy.
https://giantspoon.com/the-stir
🎨 Place Before Fonts
Clever Creative designed Hotel Viking’s brand by starting with Newport itself—cobblestone streets, harbor air, brass, history—before touching a single typeface. “People don’t travel here for modern luxury. They come for charm, texture, and the feeling that this place has been here before them.” That’s a brief, a creative philosophy, and a result in three sentences.
Uncharted got OOH placement for Dex, an AI recruitment platform, targeting software engineers in tech hubs with campaigns built directly from research on what high performers find insulting about standard hiring messaging. LBBonline covered it.
https://lbbonline.com/news/Dex-OOH-Recruitment-Campaign
🎲 Culture Miscellany
TiNY hosted their Slogan Slam last week. The winning entry: “Forever smiling.” The runner-up that deserved more: “A chomping stone gathers no floss.” Reader, they gave it a cubic zirconia.
Doe-Anderson spent Saturday at the Kentucky Derby Museum exploring the “Black Heritage in Racing” exhibit. “These aren’t just racing stories. They are the essential human foundation of the Sport of Kings.” Good use of a Saturday.
Innocean USA wrapped their office recycling bins in creative inspired by their adopted whale, FINN—part of their ongoing Project .wav ocean conservation initiative. Every can collected goes toward the cause.
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Kyle O’Brien is managing editor of Indie Agency News.
