The gap between what executives track and what creates business impact keeps widening. Indie Agency News members spent the past week tackling that disconnect head-on—publishing frameworks that connect attention to conviction, revealing why identical promo strategies produce opposite results, and making the case for measurement systems built around how customers behave, not how we wish they’d behave.
Meanwhile, some agencies reminded us that culture-shaping work doesn’t always announce itself with fanfare; sometimes it shows up as a honey brand teaching the world a new flavor category, or a snack cookie sparking joy across generations. These are the stories that caught our attention.
📊 When Metrics Meet Reality
The measurement problem isn’t data scarcity—it’s knowing which signals matter
Buntin published their Conviction framework, a proprietary scoring system revealing how brand actions and interactions lead to business impact—moving beyond attention metrics to what creates measurable conviction in healthcare marketing.
Response Media released a white paper on closing the CPG measurement gap, addressing how brands investing heavily in media and promotions across fragmented retail still struggle to connect those efforts to verified purchase behavior through their retail-agnostic, data-driven framework.
Lewis shared a case study on LED Technologies showing how the same promotional strategy drove new customer acquisition for one brand (reVive Light Therapy) while attracting 33% returning buyers for another (dpl)—proving that one-size-fits-all promo approaches leave money on the table.
🌶️ Culture Shapers & Category Creators
Building brands that become vocabulary words
Another Thing continues partnering with Mike’s Hot Honey to bring their bold creative platform to life, shaping culture around the “swicy” trend—that sweet-meets-spicy flavor profile taking over everything from pizza to cocktails.
Raindrop turned Hello Panda into a cultural moment by building Panda-Monium, a whimsical campaign world where cookies, creativity, and storytelling sparked joy across generations—starting with one insight: everyone deserves a treat break.
Colossus landed Archer Roose Wines on the cover of ADWEEK alongside Elizabeth Banks, celebrating a four-year relationship that started with a radio spot written “for short money” and evolved into venomous snake giveaways, sentient puppets, and business that’s now “boomin’.”
🏆 Wins Worth Watching
Recognition that reflects real strategic thinking
Curiosity was named first AOR for NICKS, the Swedish better-for-you ice cream brand bringing data-obsessed marketing to protein-packed frozen treats. Their Question Everything podcast features NICKS CEO Stefan Lagerqvist on why data-obsessed brands do it better.
Stoltz Marketing Group earned a national Grand Award from the American Public Transportation Association for their “Let’s Ride, BOI” campaign with Valley Regional Transit—one of only 14 agencies nationwide receiving top honors for combining bold creative with genuine community insight.
👀 What’s Working Right Now
According to the people actually doing the work
Cornett’s Chief Creative Officer Whit Hiler picked Judy’s Family Cafe in Galesburg, Illinois as a brand winning in 2025—citing an unforgettable name, social videos as weird as they are wonderful, and pancakes that sell themselves.
Pereira O’Dell Creative Director Ricky Lu shared his picks for brands crushing it in 2025, offering a window into what’s resonating with creatives leading work at scale.
McKinney documented fiber’s cultural glow-up from digestive health ads to bold snacking, taste-testing fiber-forward products redefining the category with zero sugar crash and “actual gut love.”
⚖️ The Legal Landscape Gets Complicated
Where AI meets disclosure requirements
Davis+Gilbert published guidance on navigating AI disclosure requirements, addressing how advertisers struggling with whether and how to disclose AI in ads must now track newly enacted state laws and platform-specific rules from Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit.
Legal+Creative | Toerek Law explored AI’s rewriting of SEO rules through a podcast with RankBot founder Carl Holden, breaking down specific AI-driven shifts agencies need to understand and how to turn transformation into opportunity.
🎯 Media Strategy That Makes Sense
Getting specific about what works where
Day One Agency CEO Josh Rosenberg spoke to The PR Net about thriving in fragmented media, emphasizing that business built on relationships—and the ability to shape, foster, and expand them—remains key across any media landscape: past, present, and future.
Untamed Outdoor Agency made the case for lookalike audiences to stop burning ad budgets on vague “outdoorsy” targeting and instead zero in on buyers who behave like best customers—no guessing, no wasted clicks.
Oink Ink Creative Audio highlighted radio’s reach advantage, noting AM/FM radio reaches 84% of U.S. adults weekly—outperforming social media, connected TV, and traditional television.
Witness Me represented Love Song director Daniel Wolfe’s “Keep Thinking” spot for Anthropic’s Claude, created with Mother to celebrate critical thinkers and innovators while reframing AI as a tool solving modern problems.
🧠 The Thinking Behind the Work
Frameworks worth borrowing
SRH answered a puzzling question in their Empirical Marketing Dispatch: how many Distinctive Brand Assets is too many? Their deep dive examines when brand systems strengthen recall versus when they create confusion.
Model B explored how to harness creativity in everyone through a conversation with Mozilla’s Christina Lang, VP of Marketing, Global, on their Beyond the Brief podcast—discussing her journey from music industry to tech marketing and Mozilla’s mission to empower users with choice and privacy.
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