Kim K launches Drink | World Cup, Cannes & Small Agency Winners | Atari makes 10 movies | Big Resource Revamp

Welcome to The Hidden Gems Monthly Randomly timed Newsletter
_{Only three months this time instead of four. We call that progress.}

For more information on what The Hidden Gems is: Either click here to unveil the person behind it, and click here to get a fun “explainer” on us. If you work in advertising, production, marketing, creative, media, experiential, digital, product, or some funky combination - we welcome you to stick around.

OH and we’ve MASSIVELY revamped and beautified our resources. Ping me if you haven’t gotten them yet!

What’s (un)covered in this newsletter?

• Who actually won the World Cup (the advertising one)

• The Small Agency Awards in LA

• Kim Kardashian launches her drink - UPDATE

• Cannes Lions 2026, Sport Beach, and the 25% drop nobody expected

• Agency news: a big CEO exit, a bankruptcy, a Havas shopping spree (oh my!)

• What’s new at The Hidden Gems (big updates & upgrades!)

• Philosophical Musing

Advertising Industry News - 2026 so far (April-Aug)

This will not be an exhaustive list, or you’d be, well, exhausted. Forgive us if your excellent work/news isn’t listed!

• Who won the World Cup? Spain. But we care about the other competition.

  • The non-sponsors did. LEGO took 82% of the top 50 most-engaging non-sponsor posts, roughly 12x the average official sponsor, having paid FIFA exactly nothing.

  • Nike’s “Rip the Script”: six minutes, Wieden+Kennedy, 30+ stars from Ronaldo to Kim Kardashian. Adidas paid for the rights. Nike showed up anyway.

  • Adidas earned it though. Messi in “La Preparación Americana”, plus “Home of Soccer” fan hubs across eight North American cities. More on those below.

  • Who actually moved the needle? According to YouGov stats - Gap Kids, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Bustelo, and a lot of snacks!

  • Nearly 63 million US viewers for the final, the most-watched soccer telecast in American history. The 2022 final drew 22.3 million.

• Cannes Lions 2026

  • Titanium Grand Prix: Suncorp’s “Haven” out of Leo Sydney, showing homeowners exactly where their house is vulnerable to disaster. Useful, not just clever.

  • Mother London took Film. Kenya won its first Grand Prix ever, which is the bigger story. Every winner.

  • Entries fell 25.5%, 26,900 down to 20,050, after new integrity rules: proof of impact, personal sign-off from the agency CEO and the CMO, bans up to three years. A lot of award-winning work doesn’t survive the proof-check.

  • Independents are now nearly a third of all entries. There’s a fascinating trend!

  • Off the awards floor, Sport Beach was the place to be. Fourth year at Plage du Festival, first since spinning out as its own Stagwell business. Serena teased a memoir, Mo Farah led a morning run, and the new phone-free Speakeasy was the hardest ticket there. Cannes then made it official with LIONS Sport. Sport is now a track, not a sideshow.

• New Inspo-worthy brand work

  • My favorite ad of late may surprise some people… it’s for Kim Kardashian’s Energy drink: UPDATE. They just came out with their first campaign. Here’s My take.

    • Fun (well, sad) fact - Celebrity brands always overstate their involvement. This one didn’t. And worth noting 28% of Celeb brands never launch at all - from our friend Scott @ HotStart.

  • Dove’s “r/eal reviews” ran the first 50 Reddit reviews of its repair mask verbatim, including “I hate the smell, it’s like an old lady.” A billion impressions and an hour-long line in Manhattan. Brave for a beauty brand.

  • Hawkstone put a choir of 34 working farmers in a beer ad. The choir then went and won Britain’s Got Talent. The ad became a real thing in the world.

  • Beefeater 0.0 got Jay Kay to recreate “Virtual Insanity” thirty years on. Nine physical rooms, in-camera, no CG and no AI.

  • The pattern across H1: it’s barely advertising anymore. It’s products and installations you can physically walk into. Experiential. Love it!

• Agency News:

  • Who won the Small Agency Awards? Ad Age’s event wrapped in LA July 21-22. FerebeeLane took Southeast Gold, Saylor Social/Influencer Silver, Siberia Business Impact Silver, Copacino Fujikado the Northwest again. Full list.

  • Insightful & telling quote from Yannick Bolloré of Havas: “I’m not sure scale is an advantage today.” Havas then bought Archrival, MUT and SportVibes in a matter of weeks. Three great indies now aboard.

  • More buying: Meet The People took Dallas shop The LOOMIS Agency, and CAA and TPG put $250M into Compound Creative, a holding company built purely to buy creator-led businesses. A holdco for YouTubers.

  • Ogilvy lost its US CEO. Lyndsey Corona is out after less than a year running their largest region by revenue. She had only started in January!

  • Stagwell had its best quarter ever. $171M in net new business, up 45%, with IBM, Heineken and Navy Federal all landing in the same three months.

  • From the ashes, the phoenix resurrects. Four Madwell alums launched Five Cherries. Peter Nicholson and Tim Rivera launched Skinny, explicitly against a model “crushed under its own weight.” Canadian shop Courage opened in New York. This is the churn that keeps the good work coming.

  • And the indies getting big wins: StarKist to Tombras, Altafiber to HLK, Home Run Inn to Quench, Ka’Chava to Someoddpilot, Great Wolf to Tux Creative House.

  • Once original, now plagiarists. Accidental ones though… I hope!? Dentsu revived the once hot 360i in June as an “AI-native, social-first” shop. Its “New State of Social // 2026” report then turned out to lift multiple paragraphs, uncredited, from a guest essay by Matthew Stasoff in Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio. The culprit? AI. How ironic.

• Additional

  • Creators have become hit makers AND news shapers. 38% of adults under 30 now get news from influencers rather than newsrooms. The people deciding what “good” means increasingly don’t work in our industry, and weren’t at Cannes.

  • Atari signs with Universal to develop 10 new movies. It doesn't really fit the typical news here, but personally I’m intrigued. IP comes from all formats.

New Brands served by Hidden Gems
_{(Since April 2026)}

From BIG to small, here’s some new brands being served aptly by Hidden Gems. We can’t share the work publicly but feel free to message and inquire on what went down!

Citi (Financial), Google…again (Tech), Adidas (Sportswear), Supercell (Gaming), Nationwide (Insurance), Envista (Dental/Healthcare), AnswerLab (UX Research), Alliance Pharma (Pharmaceuticals), BarBurrito (Food/Restaurant), Pinnacle Propane (Energy), Happy Camp3r (Apparel), Part3 (Construction Software), Emerge Apps (Insurance Tech), ProphetX (Prediction Markets)… and many more.

And here’s our All Time Favorites from some Hidden Gems
Note: This only showcases creative-led work (Content, Experiential, Design) since it’s the most visibly flashy, but much much more goes on here. Curious about the teams behind any piece of work?  The cost, timeline?  Just ask!

What’s New at The Hidden Gems

• We massively revamped and beautified our resources. If you haven’t received the latest, let me know!

• A loud summer from our experiential “Hidden Gems” (pics below). 

  • World Cup: Built Supercell’s Brawl Stars activation inside adidas’ “Home of Soccer” at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Starr Cup Shootout, a Robo Keeper you take penalties against, and a two-week in-game tournament played with the official World Cup ball.

  • Comic-Con, Adult Swim Fan Fest: a Bayfront Park takeover. Carnival rides, a mechanical bull built from scratch, live table reads at night including Rick and Morty, DJ laser dance party to close. Take the tour.

  • Comic-Con, Supercell’s “Clash for the Stache”: a built Clash of Clans challenge room at Seaport Village where teams raid to rescue the Barbarian’s mustache. Sold out its full San Diego run, and it keeps going through September 7.

  • We were also Lollapalooza and now in action at Black Hat (Vegas Cybersecurity conference)… assets to come!

• Through diligent research and interviews, we’re creating guides to help those who evaluate partners:

  • What to look for in an agency/production relationship - cross references by discipline and by industry.

  • What to ask

  • Red flags to look out for

  • Expected costs & timelines

  • Optimal processes & workflows

    Interested in getting the links? Let us know!

Philosophical Musing

The Von Restorff Effect, aka the isolation effect. When everything in a group looks the same, the one thing that breaks the pattern is the one people remember. Very akin to Seth Godin’s Purple Cow Effect

It’s why LEGO out-engaged the official sponsors while paying FIFA nothing. It’s why a beer brand’s farmer choir won Britain’s Got Talent.

Everyone in your category buys the same media, hires the same three shops, and says the same four things. You don’t win that by saying them slightly better.

Which is a pretty good argument for not hiring the agency everyone else already hired.

What the heck is “The Hidden Gems”?

The Hidden Gems was founded by David Drexler to solve for the frequent inefficiencies in the Advertising Agency & Production landscape. We believe that small/boutique partners give biggest “bang for the buck”, care, and craft. Your most optimal partners have yet to be uncovered.

We are THE Agency & Production Matchmaker.  The secret weapon of many marketers, creatives, experientialists, innovators, media mavens, and producers. When they seek recommendations on which external partners to consider for engagement… we provide them with incredible Hidden Gems worth considering, that are otherwise flying under their radar.  Literally that simple.  No paperwork nor transactions ever needed with The Hidden Gems itself. 

Reach out to us at any time for questions, needs, inspiration, gutchecks… or a laugh.

Here to be helpful,
David Drexler
Founder, The Hidden Gems
Agency & Production Matchmaker
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