BIG QUESTIONS
Do you disagree? Maybe you should.
In some company cultures, politeness reigns. And that is very nice indeed. But when it comes to doing the difficult and highly subjective work of creating breakthrough content and marketing, it often takes friction to reach greatness. An honest clash of perspectives is like oxygen for ideas. As with our old friend Socrates, the goal of the disagreements is not to win an argument or claim power, but to arrive at the truth (or a better version of it) together. One nice benefit of these (gentle) intellectual tussles is that it often helps clients understand the creative team’s thinking and choices, which often are not readily obvious when looking at the work. Conversely, it can help the creative team realize things and ideas they may have overlooked. To harness the wisdom and passion that everyone has to offer, Pinwheel likes to encourage a spirited (though respectful) exchange of perspectives.
Sure, you can find agencies who will do whatever you say without asking questions or asserting their opinions. But as advertising legend David Ogilvy famously said, “Why keep a dog and bark yourself?” You want an open-minded agency that will assert their deep experience and invite you to see multiple points of view.
TOOL JOY
Todoist’s Habit Tracker: A better way to do “to-do”
Setting a personal resolution or a work goal is the easy part. Sticking to it is where it gets, well, sticky. As we near the end of January, some of us are still clinging heroically to our 2026 New Year’s resolutions. If you haven’t found a tool to help you stay committed, here’s one to look at: Todoist. It’s a task manager for both work and personal life, and it comes with a Habit Tracker feature to monitor daily/weekly consistency, streaks, and completion history. One month down, 11 to go.
DESIGN WE ❤️
Future of Brand report by Motto
If being a creative leader in this era of perpetual tectonic change is like attempting to swim upstream in a raging rapid, the Future of Brand report by Motto agency is a timely lifesaver tossed deftly your way. This beautifully designed report is chock full of truly actionable, bite-size insights. Smartly organized into five forces driving change across the dimensions of tech, design, culture, and leadership, you’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of how to navigate the myriad obstacles brands face in 2026.
We highly recommend dedicating an hour to reading it through, but if you can’t swing that, here’s a TL;DR: aspire to shift from brand as expression (what you say) to brand as infrastructure (how you operate), where the brand acts as a central “operating system” that drives organizational coherence, aligns culture with vision, and empowers people to make better decisions, faster.
BEEP BOOP
2026 is the new 2016: The viral #2016core trend has been filling feeds with throwbacks to simpler times – think flower crown filters, sepia haze photos, and mannequin challenges, plus a 452% surge in searches for “2016” on TikTok.
Ham & cheese with a side of cancer: Deli meat has officially been classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a Group 1 carcinogen, placing it in the same category as tobacco, asbestos, and arsenic.
Yahoo… late as always: As is their way, Yahoo just launched their copycat AI search product about three years late. It’s called Scout – a notable departure from their plain naming convention of the past 300 years (Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, etc.). Let us know what you think.
Business leaders finally get over laryngitis: Last Sunday, more than 60 CEOs, including the leaders of 3M, UnitedHealth Group, and General Mills, released a statement calling for de-escalation in Minneapolis. More of this, please.
It slices! It dices! It invoices! The adoption of fractional CMOs has surged by over 60% in the last five years, and 1 in 4 U.S. businesses currently uses fractional leaders, a number projected to reach 30% among midsize enterprises by 2027.
WORD TO THE WISE
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”
– Margaret Heffernan, CEO and writer
BECAUSE WE CARE
Good brief
When branding agency Nomad raised the question “what makes a good brief?”, agency founders weighed in with their own briefing wishlists. Answers were based on real-world experiences across separate fields in copywriting, design, and advertising.
In their words, a great brief needs to do these five things:
- Declare the possibility, not just the problem.
- Provoke, don’t dictate.
- Outline parameters – especially the budget – honestly.
- Err on the side of short and very organized.
- Clearly define what a successful outcome looks like.
We would add: “Tell us everything there is to know about the audience as it pertains to this project.” You can’t sell to someone you do not know.
ICEBREAKER
What’s your favorite Super Bowl commercial — past or present?
Melissa: Go back to 2002… and Yahoo was king. And they put out this gem – the Dolphin ad. (And yes, I did work at Yahoo, but that has not clouded my choice!)
Sarah: Bringing it back to 2016 to Budweiser’s PSA-style #GiveADamn spot with Helen Mirren slamming anyone even thinking of driving drunk after the game.
Jason: This wasn’t a Super Bowl commercial, but given the major storm, this is one of my all time favorites, Apple – Misunderstood in 2013.
Todd: In this climate of perpetual insanity, I take my hat off to Rocket Mortgage for their 2026 “Won’t you be my neighbor” spot featuring Lady Gaga singing Fred Rogers’ famous little diddy. Kinda reminds me of what’s important.
Kim: Gotta go with my hero Conan O’Brien’s “Swedish” Bud Light commercial from 2009.
Emily: The Super Bowl commercial that had us all fumbling for the remote, Chevy’s blackout fakeout in 2015. The panic felt nationwide was palpable.
FALLACIES, PARADOXES & THEORIES…OH MY
Bean Soup Theory: Most things aren’t about you, and that’s a good thing
Think of the world as a giant pot of soup, and you’re one bean. Many of us, particularly those of us who live on social media, tend to think the soup exists for our benefit. Everything that happens is somehow about us. Everyone is watching our every move. Our drama is the main narrative of the universe. So when we see something, we react to it in a way that suggests how that thing is not meeting our needs or consistent with our viewpoints. But in reality, again, you’re just a little bean simmering in a pot with the rest of us. And that’s remarkably freeing, actually. That’s the bean soup theory, sweet pea.
