In this issue of Sunday Strategy, we look at seven stories to think about next week, including: Advertising Isn’t Shrinking, It’s Stretching; AI Shoppers May Be More Like Us Than We Thought; Selling the Risk of Trading Down (Too Much); Designing for the Household of One; The End of the Late Spanish Dinner; Hobbies Are Having a Moment; The Push and Pull of Technology & Community.
In addition, we have ads from Apple, Carhartt, adidas x DoorDash and Chili’s.
// Stories of the Week:
1.) Advertising Isn’t Shrinking, It’s Stretching
If you were to go by the IPA’s latest UK agency census, you’d assume the industry is contracting – as employment in creative agencies fell 14.3% last year and, across all members, total headcount fell by 6.8%. However, ad spend is still slowly climbing – projected to be 5% in 2026 and outpace GDP growth.
So is the industry doing more with less? Or is the money just passing through in different ways? The growth of retail media spend (growing 26.1% to $62bn) and a greater focus on creators (crossing $12bn in media plans) shows that the money is still flowing – though potentially to new destinations. What classifies as a creative agency within the IPA’s remit may not encapsulate the true range of today’s advertising industry. In the US, 82% of ANA members now run an in-house agency, with 61% of all work done internally among those who still use outside shops. Advertising is still chugging along, but the centre of gravity may be shifting away from large creative agencies.
The knock-on effect is real for employment in the creative fields, with open vacancies down 40.8%, and Forrester forecasting another 15% of US agency jobs going in 2026. Meanwhile US full-time-equivalent creator jobs went from roughly 200,000 in 2020 to 1.5 million in 2024, and around 4,000 creator-economy roles are open right now, most of them inside brands and retailers. Similar to the industry as a whole, jobs in advertising seem to be stretching their meaning more than going away completely.
2.) AI Shoppers May Be More Like Us Than We Thought
If AI shoppers lack the limited attention, tiredness and cost of comparison that human shoppers have, why do they still have the same biases? New research into agentic commerce describes agentic shoppers as strongly biased even without the cognitive limits that shape human bias, shifting predictably as prices, ratings and nudges are varied around them. While they lack the humanity to explain it, agentic consumers look to inherit and even amplify human biases – breaking the objectivity myth we may have held about them but highlighting that existing consumer research may be more applicable to agentic shopping than expected.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Algorithmic Authority Contested
3.) Selling the Risk of Trading Down (Too Much)
With three in four consumers trading down to cheaper brands, even value conscious department stores are scrambling to deal with the shift. As consumers move more towards retailers like TJX, Ross and Burlington, the US off-price sector added more than $2.5bn in combined quarterly revenue while overall retail stayed flat.
While most retailers might answer that with a price message, JCPenney has launched a campaign focused on the returns bin. Its ‘Retail Regrets’ Trade-In campaign asked US shoppers to bring in something they regret buying, to get $15 off $50, with collections donated to the charity Good360. The ad behind it sends off-price fashion victims to a wellness-style rehab and positions the brand as affordable, but not ‘too affordable’ or cheap. As economic disruption shifts buying behavior, redrawing the lines on where affordability and value sit is necessary.
4.) Designing for the Household of One
BCG’s study of 13,000 people, across 12 markets, named solo living as one of five structural shifts reshaping consumer demand. Though it may seem like an innocuous shift, because so much of what brands make assumes a default unit of more than one person – the potential for disruption is higher than expected. Pack sizes, family bundles, two-for-one mechanics, holiday pricing and household loyalty schemes all often assume customers are shopping for two or more. When a growing share of demand comes from people buying for themselves, products that aren’t ‘over sized’ for solo shoppers may see greater relevance.
5.) The End of the Late Spanish Dinner
Spain’s late dinners have long been treated inside and outside the country as an unmovable tradition. However, there are signs that the tradition is unwinding. CoverManager, which handles reservations for thousands of Spanish restaurants, reports that half of all dinner bookings are now for before 9pm, against 27% ten years ago. TheFork has watched its 8pm bookings in Spain nearly triple since 2019 while 10pm reservations have halved.
While many have attributed late Spanish dinners to heat or cultural attitude, it may also have come from time zones. In March 1940, Franco moved Spain’s clocks forward an hour to sit alongside Nazi Germany on Central European Time, and it was never reversed, leaving the country running on a different time than others around it (like the UK and Portugal). That’s why the sun is still up in Madrid at half past nine in July and dinner at ten happens in the light.
However, what survived 8 decades of mismatch may have been irreparably eroded by the pandemic. With an 11pm curfew during Covid, diners began to shift, with Tardeo (afternoon socialising, drinks and tapas from around four) capturing some of the demand. 59% of Spanish bars and restaurants now run tardeo and it accounts for 26.5% of their revenue, with Gen Z and millennials starting earlier and drinking less on the way. With nights ending earlier everywhere and ‘nightlife’ changing, a transformation that started during Covid may have finally even shifted the most seemingly immovable of cultural traditions.
6.) Hobbies Are Having a Moment
Both Pinterest and European holiday makers are showing how hobbies are hot right now. Pinterest’s 2026 Hobbies report shows a growing list of skills that can become new hobbies. Pinterest reports 51% of Gen Z say a hobby contributes to their joy, and eight in ten monthly users claim it pushes them to try something offline. Searches for rosette ribbons are up 3,816%, sashiko mending 1,509%, barn jacket outfits 1,109%, banana syrup 916% and learn astrology 733%, clustered into categories named Kitchen Witch, Backyard Botanist and Secondhand Sidequest.
Alongside hobbies in our daily life, holiday makers are looking to find something new to take home with them. A 27,000-person Mastercard survey found nearly half of European holidaymakers now plan to learn a skill while travelling, led by Gen Z, with sewing, cooking and repair framed partly as screen-free time and partly as long-term skill acquisition. Even in our down time, many of us are wondering what we can pick up.
This story is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Real-Life Antidote
7.) The Push and Pull of Technology & Community
Technology has the power to connect us and disconnect us from each other, especially in our cities. Strava’s global heat map, showing where public runs, rides and hikes are occurring, has reportedly become a way to decide what neighborhoods are safe and desirable to live in. Turning running data into a proxy of class and wealth (alongside wearable ownership), the map has been creating a short list of neighborhoods for users.
The problem is what it measures, which is Strava users – people with disposable income, leisure time, good pavements and nearby parks. An athletic user demographic serves as a safety rating and areas that have infrastructure for athletic endeavours get more attention and users. Coupled with the idea that Strava Metro is used by more than 4,000 city planners and transport agencies, with Paris alone building over 100 miles of bike lanes partly based on those insights, we run the risk of making a closed loop of athletic investment.
However, technology used creatively can also break this loop. Justin Blinder’s Ground Truth is one example: a device that clamps to a NYC Citi Bike and stiffens the brakes according to rent affordability in the neighbourhood you are riding through, so economic disparity is felt in your hands and your speed as you travel. One idea helps you avoid less affluent parts of the city, the other slows you down so you can’t fly by them.
// Ads You Might Have Missed:
1.) ‘Mac mini’ – Apple:
Can Apple sell AI by leaning into craft? In their announcement ad for the Mac mini M6, the brand has once again leaned into non-AI imagery and claymation, with no CGI, to sell technology that’s enabling AI. In the ad, the Mac mini becomes a clay bodybuilder, a race car and a rocket, with every character, prop and motion line physically built and animated in stop-motion.
This tension is the idea. A machine whose whole pitch is speed gets introduced through the slowest technique available, and the handmade quality becomes a counterpoint to how much power sits in the box. Apple seems to win over both AI-friendly and adversarial audiences simultaneously by combining craft with computational capability.
This ad is part of a trend Airgo tracks: Craft Resistance
2.) ‘Making Football Possible’ – Carhartt:
While other apparel brands are using athletes to capture attention, Carhartt has highlighted the tradespeople and workers who make the game possible. Building on their ‘making it possible’ platform, the brand celebrates the 1,400 tradespeople who put up the Bills’ new Highmark Stadium. A thirty-second cut runs backwards from fans celebrating to the work that made the game possible, and in real life, rally towels handed to the first 20,000 fans entering the new stadium carried the name of every person on the build. Sponsoring the making-of rather than the event’s stars sidesteps rights inflation, while doing something authentic to the brand’s ethos.
3.) ‘The Chili’s Golf Club’ – Chili’s x Rhoback:
There has never been a Chili’s on a golf course, a gap only obvious when finally solved. For one weekend in Burbank, California there was one, built with apparel brand Rhoback and aimed at the golfer with a less than professional handicap. As much ‘Caddyshack’ as clubhouse, the nostalgia-laden brand of the everyday diner temporarily stretches to the everyday player, offering triple dippers in place of a triple bogey.
4.) ‘Match Day Delivery’ – adidas x DoorDash:
The time zone based pains of international sports fans aren’t just a useful advertising foil during this year’s World Cup. With the All Blacks Rugby team touring South Africa, kick-off is at dawn in New Zealand. So adidas has helped Kiwi rugby fans get ready for the game regardless of the time, through a store on DoorDash that runs 24 hours on test match days – delivering supporters’ jerseys, hoodies and scarves to people up at an unreasonable hour to watch.
Those who order during the tour go into a draw to have the delivery made by an All Blacks legend. The approach isn’t unique, but the combination of two brands, one sporting lifestyle and the other anytime delivery, shows how sports fans can be engaged at any hour of the day in creative ways.
// Sunday Snippets
// Advertising & Marketing //
– IAMS and Strava have built a month-long marathon that no dog will run, asking owners to log 26.2 miles with their pet across September with daily distance capped at 5K for the animal’s safety. [Pets]
– Ireland’s Road Safety Authority shot its new junction-safety campaign in the visual language of a film set, where a take can be reset and run again. [Public Safety]
– First Interstate Bank takes the category promise of being with you every step of the way and stages it literally, putting the banker physically inside the proposal, the first child and the drive to college. [Finance]
– Grand Theft Auto VI previewed a fictional 30,000-calorie Prairie Sandwich Box Meal widely read as a parody of Arby’s, and Arby’s posted a response to the placement days later. [Gaming]
– Images of a Jack in the Box and Simpsons Treehouse of Horror collaboration leaked in August, complete with glow-in-the-dark collectible cups, weeks before the brand has confirmed any of it. [Food & Drink]
– After years positioning itself as a global company headquartered in Singapore, Shein had to rebuild its ties to China and re-own its Chinese identity to secure its Hong Kong listing. [Retail]
// Media & Technology //
– Simon Weckert has made an $88 shirt that stops AI object detection classifying the wearer as a person, developed in an adversarial loop against the detector itself and tested on a live camera at the Berlin junction where an AI surveillance pilot begins this month. [Tech]
– Reddit opened its first physical community pop-up, a bodega at 213 Bowery running across this weekend with a resident cat, a zine and a plushie for every visitor. [Social Media]
– Ann Taylor’s comeback runs through a Substack newsletter called The Desk, publishing career and style advice as a way to talk like a mentor rather than a retailer. [Social Media]
– Rival Technologies finds 62% of Gen Z use social media for news while only 33% trust social platforms, with established news organisations scoring almost twice as high on trust. [Media]
– New research finds leisure guilt is real and measurable, with people spending around 14% of their downtime feeling bad about taking it. [Media]
// Lifestyle & Culture //
– The no-mascara or ghost lash look has moved from niche styling to celebrities and major runways, building a status aesthetic out of visibly opting out of a staple product. [Fashion]
– Walt Disney World is replacing its fan-beloved flat-topped bins with solar-powered compacting models, removing the improvised tables that guests had turned them into during festivals. [Culture]
– YouGov finds 50% of Britons think their views are broadly similar to the public’s against 18% who think they differ, with confidence rising steadily by age from 35% of 18 to 24 year olds to 63% of the over-65s. [Culture]
– A survey of US Gen Z knowledge workers finds 82% already consider themselves part of a global workforce and 54% say the American Dream can mean pursuing the best opportunity outside America. [Culture]
– Euromonitor reports Asian restaurants outgrowing the wider restaurant market in every major region, with nearly 40% of ready meals now Asian dishes. [Food & Drink]
– A pay-what-you-can practice started by Mexico City’s Masala y Maiz has grown into a global day involving more than 100 restaurants across around 14 countries, including fine-dining rooms. [Food & Drink]
– Survey data finds 75% of Americans view prenuptial agreements positively and 80% treat poor financial literacy as a romantic deal-breaker, moving money from a post-commitment issue to an early compatibility test. [Consumer Behavior]
– A Fountain and Propeller Insights survey finds 77% of US frontline workers are proud of what they do while 69% feel at least somewhat replaceable. [Culture]
– An FT investigation found a thriving US market for clinics selling unproven stem-cell and longevity treatments. [Health]
– Thousands of Canadians describe replacing US groceries, tech, streaming and financial providers with domestic alternatives, accepting higher prices and turning a boycott into standing category-by-category purchasing rules. [Culture]
– Twenty years after the International Astronomical Union voted Pluto out, the demotion still splits planetary scientists from dynamicists, with campaigners marking the anniversary in Pluto Resistance shirts. [Space]
// Related Issues
– Social Media’s Posting Recession, Rent as a Prize + The End of Trapped Loyalty
– What Happens When Slop Is An Accusation Beyond AI
– Modern Ownership & Owned Media: Where’s the Line?
// Until Next Sunday
As always, let me know what you think by email (dubose@newclassic.agency), website or on LinkedIn. You can also listen to an audio summary and discussion of each week’s newsletter on Spotify. We’re also on TikTok!
