In this issue of Sunday Strategy, we look at four stories to think about next week, including: Agencies Stuck Between Billable Hours & Outcome Pricing, the Problem with Humanoid Robots, The Risk of Picky Eaters, AI’s Real Risk to Workers and Where Do Fans Fit Into This Summers’ World Cup?
In addition, we have ads from: Zillow, Folgers, Childhood Cancer Canada, Hargreaves Lansdown and ZIP.
// Stories of the Week:
1.) Can Agencies Shift From Billable Hours Without Moving Into Outcomes?
The existential crisis facing large advertising and media agencies has put their billing model under scrutiny. The billable hour, an invention that turned advertising agencies from ‘working dogs’ to ‘lap dogs,’ as Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland once claimed, is increasingly unfit for purpose as agencies grapple with automation, variable technology costs, and pressure to demonstrate innovation. While selling time was always a stopgap measure, traditional scope-based contracts now face pressure from AI platforms and automation that can deliver similar work faster and cheaper.
Agencies from WPP, Publicis, and S4 Capital’s Monks are attempting to shift clients toward subscription-based models – charging recurring fees for access to technology and talent rather than hourly rates. The appeal is clear: to focus on output and ongoing partnership rather than time tracking. However, agencies’ natural aversion to outcome-based pricing reveals the tension: finding a way to sell impact without tying compensation to results.
Subscriptions may be a viable stopgap, but like SaaS products that thrive on recurring revenue, the conversation inevitably shifts to deliverables and measurable value. The question becomes: what am I actually getting for this monthly fee and why shouldn’t I swap? New pricing models for agencies may simply be delayed outcome-based pricing, creating a transitional phase before clients demand that payment correlates directly with performance. The only question is how long agencies can maintain this middle ground before being forced to either prove their value or lose the client – forcing old ‘lap dogs’ to get back to work.
2.) Who Actually Wants Humanoid Robots?
Despite a cultural predisposition to build robots in our image across sci-fi movies and TV shows, do we actually need humanoid robots? Companies and governments betting on them seem to think so, but the wider market seems unconvinced.
China’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala featured dozens of humanoid robots executing martial arts, comedy sketches, and acrobatic flips. The country shipped 14,500 humanoid robots in 2025—90% of global production—while companies like Unitree offer models at $13,500. Tesla’s Optimus, by contrast, shipped only 150 units last year at higher prices.
The reality is that humanoid robots aren’t yet doing real work. In China, they’re rented as retail greeters for $300/month or deployed at government functions as showpieces. The Chinese government is the largest buyer, purchasing units to meet political technology targets. When applied to factory work, humanoids operate at 30-40% of human speed carrying boxes. The often-cited vision of general-purpose robots handling varied household tasks remains far more challenging. When even simple food delivery robots are suffering attacks in public, a humanoid version may face risks outside of productivity.
The few productive deployments come from automakers like Mercedes and BMW testing robots in their own factories—essentially building their own demand rather than waiting for a market to emerge. There is no doubt potential exists. However, with massive production capacity already built through government subsidies and companies like Tesla touting it as a key opportunity, the window is narrowing to prove commercial viability before supply massively outpaces demand.
3.) The Risk of the ‘Child Pleasing’ Food.
The myth of the ‘picky child’ when it comes to food hasn’t always been accepted. In fact, as the NYT piece below notes, children in 19th century America ate oysters, organ meats and bold spices – not because they were forced but because it was normal practice. Picky eating in children emerged only after solutions for picky eaters and ‘child pleasing’ created an expectation. However, the food or advertising industry didn’t invent pickiness in a vacuum, but they took a wider parenting tension and normalized the idea that children’s tastes were narrow. By the time Kix rolled out ‘Kid tested, Mother approved’ as a cereal slogan in 1978, we had taken the idea as a timeless constant.
The risk in this two-tier approach to food is that children are locked into a consumption pattern that persists into adulthood. Once a child grows up eating only foods engineered for palatability (with narrow flavor profiles, consistent textures and predictable sweetness) their actual capability to engage with diverse cuisines doesn’t expand naturally. New foods must either adapt to these limited palates or leverage cultural cachet to overcome the dietary boundaries we’ve built.
The growth of sushi among Generation Alpha in the US simultaneously proves the myth of children’s pickiness and reveals the force needed to overcome learned behavior. Sushi’s success required presentation adaptation and pop culture presence to break through. This presents an irony: many US sushi rolls for children anchor against familiar foods (cream cheese, tempura, teriyaki), the opposite of how sushi is introduced in Japan. Japan’s food culture and national food education law (shokuiku) ensure children build palates through gradual exposure and expansion, with challenging flavors normalized and sushi as an everyday part of this progression. In many ways, new foods must come find children in the US, whereas 19th-century American children (and their modern Japanese counterparts) seek out food.
4.) AI Anxiety and Toxic Work Culture.
The real threat from AI may not be the technology—it’s what we’ll do to feel safe from it. With founders framing the market as in a “once in a generation moment,,” workers are accepting more justification for 996 work culture (9am-9pm, six days a week) and 72-hour weeks. Hustle culture may have shifted from aspirational rallying cry to survival mechanism.
As AI’s potential and impact remain unclear across sectors, this uncertainty leaves workers scrambling to compete – with each other and with AI itself. The result is a race to prove human indispensability through sheer volume of work, regardless of sustainability or output quality. This worker uncertainty means the largest risk from AI isn’t the technology displacing jobs; it’s how anxiety about displacement reshapes work culture into something more brutal and less human.
5.) Where Do Fans Fit Into the 2026 World Cup?
This week’s cancellation of the planned New York/New Jersey ‘FIFA Fan Zone’ for the World Cup, planned to be hosted at Liberty State Park isn’t just another misstep in the run-up to the tournament, it’s a metaphor. The park’s backdrop of the Statue of Liberty and proximity to MetLife stadium aimed to give access to American and international supporters who couldn’t go to the games themselves. With ticket prices more than 5x what a seat cost in Qatar 2022, and a 5-10x increase on the original proposed starting price of $21 in the tournament bid – fan zones look to play a critical role in the supporter experience. While the $5m allocated to the NY / NJ fan zone will be spread around the state, both FIFA and many host cities still don’t have concrete answers on what fans can expect from a costly tournament.
With soccer as the third favorite sport in the US, and supporters engaging with different club leagues across the Men and Women’s game, the 2026 World Cup could be another milestone in Soccer’s journey in the United States. While excitement for the tournament is still there (500m ticket requests globally were lodged), in person fans left out of a way to engage with the game can squander a generational opportunity for the sport in the country. The lack of engagement looks to limit fan experiences and brand opportunities, as the passion behind the ‘people’s game’ needs ‘people’ to deliver its full impact.
The energy fans and brands are looking for around the World Cup may not be found in stadiums. Instead, it could be found in bars, neighborhood watch parties and communities. With little time left and less organization than expected, it may be down to fans to find a home for the tournament across the US, vs. finding a place within it.
// Ads You Might Have Missed:
1.) ‘Zillow for Warcraft’ – Zillow:
Despite being a 21 year old MMORPG, World of Warcraft has announced the introduction of player houses, allowing gamers to create their own homes amongst public and private neighborhoods in the world. Alongside the game update, property brand Zillow has created ‘Zillow for Warcraft’, taking the property portal’s experience and transplanting it to the fictional world of Azeroth. The site features properties across the game, sharing tours and allowing gamers to ‘contact’ agents from the game’s Alliance and Horde factions. The move between Zillow and Blizzard may also have an uncomfortable truth to it – that gamers waiting 21 years to buy a virtual home may be waiting longer for the real thing in a tough market.
2.) ‘The Best Part of Wakin’ Up’ – Folgers:
The familiarity that comes with brand heritage is often an asset and a challenge. While every marketer’s goal is to have their brand be recognizable, the fear of standing still or habituation often drives change. Jingles, like coffee brand Folgers’ ‘The Best Part of Wakin’ Up’, are more likely to be redone or remixed than reused as time goes on. Folgers balances heritage and novelty in their new ad, which uses the brand’s jingle, deeply familiar to many American Gen X and Millennials, but bridges it through other songs with similar lyrics around ‘waking up’.
From ‘Wake Up Little Suzie’ to ‘Wake Me Up’ by Avicii and ‘Bring Me to Life’ by Evanescence, the ad heaps nostalgia on nostalgia – keeping brand heritage at the core while showing you can stretch it in different directions. As the GCD on the ad says, ‘the job wasn’t to replace it, it was to remind people why it matters’. The musical references and jingle itself don’t stretch to new audiences, as much as remind those who already know them about their meaning – highlighting how audience focus can reward with greater relevance. It isn’t Folgers for a ‘new generation’ vs. Folgers for those that know Folgers.
3.) ‘Let’s Face the Unimaginable’ – Childhood Cancer Canada:
Self-protection keeps us from imagining the worst. It also keeps us from supporting those living through it. Childhood Cancer Canada tackles this defense mechanism head on in their latest ad, with the belief that ‘We can’t conquer childhood cancer until we confront it’. ‘Let’s Face the Unimaginable’ doesn’t sugarcoat the spiral of crisis that can occur when a child is sick with cancer. Instead it puts viewers in the middle of it and asks them to not look away. Confrontational messaging can work for charities but often at the cost of dignity for those depicted. This ad navigates that tension carefully, with a directness that comes from showing parental crisis and not exploiting images of sick children.
4.) ‘Helping Britain Invest Through it All’ – Hargreaves Lansdown:
The last 45 years of British history may feel like a century to many. From Thatcher and ‘Cool Britannia’, ‘New Labour’ and Brexit, through to Covid & Liz Truss vs. a Lettuce – it’s been a challenging and eventful stretch. Investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown aims to talk about navigating Britain’s recent history to lay a claim to expertise, while staying distinctly neutral on the events themselves – a challenge few could do well (and may explain why the video’s comment section is disabled on YouTube).
Investment is naturally opportunistic at the best of times, so can a platform brand talk about political events in today’s polarized climate without being pulled to a side? They aim to walk a tightrope with partisanship on one side and neutral cynicism on the other. Even if they navigate this successfully, can a brand reference Brexit, Covid, and Truss without any perspective beyond “we were there”? Heritage implies expertise and expertise implies a point of view. Neutrality may not mesh with the message of disruption that comes across in the ad – leaving Hargreaves in a no man’s land between a negative reaction and none at all from potential investors.
5.) ‘In You We Trust’ – Zip:
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) brands have to balance the emotional benefits of enabling consumers to buy the things they want now, with a risk of being seen as predatory. Normally, brands like Klarna, Affirm or others err on the side of ‘responsible access’, but US financial brand ZIP has taken a different tone. Amongst financial uncertainty and greater debt, the brand says it believes in customers to manage their finances – shifting the focus on where risk could come from.
Zip’s ‘In You We Trust’ campaign sidesteps the brand’s role in financial decisions by doubling down on consumer autonomy and decision-making power. Through vignettes of customers making varied purchases, the ad positions money management as a matter of personal trust and capability. While economic uncertainty pushes other brands toward more paternalistic consumer protection messaging, Zip embraces a libertarian approach – shifting not just the conversation, but potentially the blame, back to consumers.
The strategy is, depending on your worldview, clever positioning or passing the buck: if customers are trusted and empowered, then poor outcomes become personal responsibility rather than predatory lending. But it raises uncomfortable questions: Is “we trust you” genuine empowerment, or preemptive blame-shifting for debt spirals? For a financial category facing increasing regulatory scrutiny, Zip’s approach may try to inoculate it against criticism (“we trusted consumers to decide”), but potentially may make them a target for exactly that reason.
// Sunday Snippets
// Marketing & Advertising //
– The Salvation Army has created a thrift store in Roblox. The metaverse, rethrifted. [Gaming]
– Skincare brand NIOD highlights the elements New Yorkers’ skin is exposed to as the ‘New York Facial’ in a new ad [Health]
– Could the US Supreme Court’s tariff reversal trigger greater advertiser spending? [Ads]
– The NHS Quit Smoking app features some fancy moves to convince smokers to quit in the UK [Ads]
– IKEA has donated more stuffed monkeys to the Ichikawa Zoo, and created responsive ads, after Punch the Monkey because an internet sensation for his love of their stuffed toy [Animals]
– Peanuts characters and Duncan Hines are collaborating on a new line of baking products [Food]
– Succession star Nicholas Braun stars in a new Rimowa campaign where the luggage does everything but travel [Travel]
– Polly Pocket gives Bridgerton the toy treatment in a new playset with scenes from season 4 [Toys]
– McDonalds announces its very own trading card game [Collectibles]
– Disney brings its Disney princess style to a line of athletic dresses [Fashion]
– Building on last year’s ‘Never Become a Former New Yorker’ campaign, StreetEasy wants you to ‘Be a Forever New Yorker’ [Real Estate]
– Dollywood and Allegiant Air launch the first Dolly Parton themed ‘fan flight’ from Orlando to Tennessee [Travel]
– Drake and McDonald’s Canada partner to launch ‘The Afters Meal’ [Collabs]
– Grocery store LIDL’s ‘Trolley Bag’ is a viral fashion sensation [Fashion]
// Technology & Media //
– Claude shifts its focus to security with a new ‘Claude Code Security’ feature [AI]
– Reddit tests shoppable community recommendations [Social Media]
– Google launches ‘photoshoot’ in Pomeli, an AI tool that turns product photos into professional studio shots for ads [AI]
– The NYT breaks down what we’ve known for a while, chatbots are the new channel of influence [AI]
– Google aims to bring market mix modelling to non-technical teams with Scenario Planner [Media]
– Microsoft is seeing a growing trend of websites poisoning AI memory for promotional purposes [AI]
– Game of Thrones heads to the stage this summer with ‘The Mad King’ at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre [Theatre]
– OpenAI says ChatGPT is asked about local news over 1 million times a week [News]
– Perplexity joins Anthropic in trolling OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads [AI]
– Netflix announces the acquisition of the movie rights for board games ‘Settlers of Catan’ and ‘Ticket to Ride’. I can see the gritty reboot now. [Movies]
– A24 have launched, and sold out, an ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Mahjong set [Movies]
– Waymo is asking DoorDash drivers to shut the doors of its self-driving cars [Travel]
– Paramount is opening Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pizzerias. Apparently not all located in NYC sewers [Food]
// Life & Culture //
– As Chinese cultural aesthetics and ‘Chinesemaxxing’ blow up on social media – how does the cultural moment balance appreciation vs. appropriation? [Culture]
– Locked out of home buying, more Gen Z are putting money in investments [Finance]
– The modern day protein obsession has found a way into cocktails and drinking [Health]
– Crypto and Fintech firms are seeking a shortcut into banking, by buying banks [Finance]
– Crumbl launches chocolate chip cookie friends and bundt cake flavours [Food]
– Is tartan making a comeback? [Fashion]
// 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!
